Language
Can brain waves show a language changing before speakers do?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
For verbs whose grammar is shifting in Icelandic, readers' brain responses already treated the new word order as normal, even though their conscious judgments still partly favoured the old rule.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Within-subject EEG experiment: participants read Icelandic relative clauses with three verb types (active, alternating, dative-subject experiencer) whose post-verbal noun was nominative or dative, then judged acceptability and answered a comprehension question
- N
- N=23 · 23 right-handed native Icelandic-speaking university students; seven earlier participants run with a different, acceptability-only protocol were excluded
- Population
- Students at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik
- Outcome
- Single-trial ERP amplitudes in the N400 and late-positivity windows at the critical noun; acceptability judgments and comprehension accuracy
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Key findings
For active verbs, the dative-first order produced a clear N400 followed by a late positivity, the classic brain signature of an unexpected structure, and was consistently judged unacceptable. Alternating verbs showed a similar but weaker pattern that emerged over the course of the experiment, with more variable judgments. For experiencer verbs, which prescriptively require the dative-first order, judgments were highly variable and brain responses did not distinguish the two orders at all, suggesting case marking had become uninformative during online reading. Late-positivity amplitude predicted trial-by-trial acceptability better than N400 amplitude, and overall comprehension accuracy was 75%.
Methodology
Icelandic, like Old English, marks who does what to whom with case endings, and some of its verbs seem to be drifting toward the English-style pattern where the subject is nominative and comes first. Native Icelandic students read sentences word by word while their EEG was recorded; the sentences used active verbs (already fitting the new pattern), alternating verbs (allowing both orders) or dative-subject experiencer verbs (requiring the old, dative-first pattern). The key noun was marked either nominative or dative, so the sentence followed a nominative-before-dative or a dative-before-nominative order. After each sentence participants judged whether it was acceptable and answered a question about who did what.
Limitations
The study is a single snapshot with a small student sample and no longitudinal or historical data, so it cannot show that these brain responses actually precede or predict future change; the authors present that as a hypothesis. No production data were collected, so it is unknown whether participants who accept or process the new order also use it themselves. Trial numbers differed across verb classes and the effects for alternating verbs changed during the session, possibly influenced by the many active-verb sentences. Interpreting a null ERP difference as 'case has become uninformative' rests on theoretical assumptions about what the N400 reflects.
How this study connects
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