Brain Activity During Speaking: From Syntax to Phonology in 40 Milliseconds
Miranda van Turennout,
*
Peter Hagoort,
Colin M. Brown
In normal conversation, speakers translate thoughts into words at
high speed. To enable this speed, the retrieval of distinct types of
linguistic knowledge has to be orchestrated with millisecond precision.
The nature of this orchestration is still largely unknown. This report
presents dynamic measures of the real-time activation of two basic
types of linguistic knowledge, syntax and phonology. Electrophysiological data demonstrate that during noun-phrase production speakers retrieve the syntactic gender of a noun before its
abstract phonological properties. This two-step process operates at
high speed: the data show that phonological information is already
available 40 milliseconds after syntactic properties have been
retrieved.
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD
Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed at Laboratory of Brain
and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, Building 10, Room
4C104, 10 Center Drive MSC 1366, Bethesda, MD 20892-1366, USA.
