Are semantic and syntactic cues inducing the same processes in the identification of word order?

The purpose of this study was to find a common pattern of event-related potential (ERP) fluctuations regardless of the type of information (either semantic or syntactic) determining the presence of a reversed word order. ERPs were recorded while subjects read Spanish transitive sentences in which either semantic or syntactic information determined the actual word order. On the one hand (semantic condition), the order could be reversed by using an inanimate noun in the first noun phrase (NP), together with a verb representing an action that cannot correspond to an inanimate entity. On the other hand (syntactic condition), word order could be manipulated depending on the presence of a preposition preceding the second NP, which confirms the preferred word order, or a determiner, conveying a reversed word order. Interestingly, the inanimate first noun elicited a frontal negativity, which could be interpreted as the detection of an initial difficulty for using that noun as the subject of the sentence. At the point of disambiguation in either condition, a late posterior positivity was observed. The P600/SPS might, therefore, be an indicator of the syntactic processing costs incurred by the variation of word order, reflecting phrase structure reallocation processes common to this operation regardless of the cue used. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.