Object Shift and Event-Related Brain Potentials

Object Shift in Swedish is restricted to unstressed pronouns. Sentences where an object pronoun precedes a sentence adverb, such as Han åt den inte ‘(lit.) He ate it not’, are thus well-formed, whereas sentences with a full noun phrase (NP) object preceding a sentence adverb, such as Han åt sylt/sylten inte ‘(lit.) He ate jam/the jam not’, are ill-formed. The neural correlates to violation of this word category restriction were explored using Event-Related Potentials. In the indefinite full NP object condition, there was a posterior negative deflection appearing 200–400 ms after the detection point of the grammatical anomaly, suggesting increased semantic integration cost. It was marginally larger than in the definite condition. A P600 followed the negativity in both full NP object conditions. Furthermore, a subsequent effect, interpreted as a left anterior negativity (LAN), was significant in the indefinite full NP object condition.