Prosodic intonation modulates semantic incongruence: Evidence from an electrophysiological study

Abstract

People always make semantic predictions based on preceding contexts which, however, can be beyond semantic information. This study examines the role of prosodic intonation as a non-semantic cue in semantic prediction. To compare effects of different intonation conditions on attenuating semantic incongruence between preceding contexts and target utterances, we recorded electroencephalogram when the participants listened to emotional utterances with congruent or incongruent endings and focused on two event-related potential components, N400 and P600, which relate to semantic and pragmatic processing, respectively. Interestingly, we observed that surprising intonation can mitigate the N400 in response to semantic incongruence, and this modulation was strongly correlated (r = 0.78) with the increase of P600 amplitude induced by the same intonation across individual participants. These findings consistently indicate the importance of prosodic intonation in promoting semantic prediction by lessening listeners’ perceived semantic incongruence, broadening our understanding of how non-semantic cues affect human verbal communication.