Tone-grammar association within words: Concurrent ERP and fMRI show rapid neural pre-activation and involvement of left inferior frontal gyrus in pseudoword processing

•Listeners use word-initial tonal information to pre-activate word endings.•More predictive word stems lead to pre-activation negativity in ERPs.•Early pre-activation negativity correlated with activity in auditory cortex (BA41).•Less predictive word stems increase processing in prefrontal areas.

Using a concurrent ERP/fMRI paradigm, we investigated how listeners take advantage of morphologically relevant tonal information at the beginning of words to predict and pre-activate likely word endings. More predictive, low tone word stems gave rise to a 'pre-activation negativity' (PrAN) in the ERPs, a brain potential which has previously been found to increase along with the degree of predictive certainty as regards how a word is going to end. It is suggested that more predictive, low tone stems lead to rapid access to word endings with processing subserved by the left primary auditory cortex as well as the supramarginal gyrus, while high tone stems - which are less predictive - decrease predictive certainty, leading to increased competition between activated word endings, which needs to be resolved by the left inferior frontal gyrus.