Processing of Linguistic and Musical Syntax: Evidence from Event-related Potentials

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of either morpho-syntactically misused honorific markers or music-syntactically incongruous notes on neural responses. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants responded to language or music stimuli containing such anomalies. Confirming previous studies, morpho-syntactic violations elicited a left anterior negativity (LAN), and music-syntactic violations also evoked the same LAN component. To the extent that morpho-syntax of the inflectional honorific marker is arguably comparable to music-syntax of the tonal melody, the current electrophysiological evidence points to the fact that syntactic processing of language and music depends on at least partly shared neural resources.