The frontal cortex is engaged in top-down-control and conflict resolution (hence, the establishment and updating of word-order-expectations). Anterior lIFG has been shown to correlate with aboutness information (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al., 2012). Parietal brain regions are involved in linking single sentences to the previous discourse. However, these assumptions would need to be tested systematically

in the future with experimental techniques other than ERPs and comprehensibility judgments. In summary, the results of the offline comprehensibility judgments are directly reflected during online processing of the sentence-initial topic in these sentences. Offline measures, such as behavioral judgments, most likely coincide with metalinguistic http://www.selleckchem.com/products/byl719.html awareness (Sprouse & Schütze, 2013). The additional online measure using ERPs emphasizes the impact of the topic information on the processing of non-canonical sentences in German. Thus, our ERP findings add explanatory information regarding the subsequent steps of sentence comprehension modulated by preceding discourse AZD2281 cost information. As processing of non-canonical sentences was crucially modulated by the preceding topic context, we argue that the processing of specific syntactic structures (e.g., with varying word order) is sensitive to discourse level

information. Our data nicely fit to the SDM (see Schumacher & Hung, 2012 or Wang & Schumacher, 2013) which assumes two core processes of referential processing: (1) During discourse linking the expectation of the listener immediately modulates the processing of incoming information to connect current information to previously given information (not modulated in our study). (2) During discourse updating, the listener updates the previously established internal discourse representation and Fossariinae adapts the syntax-discourse mapping accordingly. The aboutness topic in the present study effectively reduced the

discourse updating costs as reflected in the reduced late positivity in the non-canonical sentences and the higher comprehensibility judgments, even though all referents were given in the previous context. The present study characterized the nature and time course of an aboutness topic context on the comprehension of German declarative sentences within fictitious discourses. For non-canonical, but not for canonical sentences, we found an impact of the topic context which indicated one of two previously given characters of the scene as the aboutness topic compared to a context in which a wide scope of the scene was induced (neutral context). The results of both experiments, the offline comprehensibility judgment task and the ERPs during online sentence processing, indicate that the topic context selectively facilitated comprehension of the non-canonical word order.