A comparative study attempting to explain the occurrence of non-V2 in Dutch comparative correlatives ("Hoe A-er, hoe B-er"). The presented theories (from previous studies) described in the thesis...Show moreA comparative study attempting to explain the occurrence of non-V2 in Dutch comparative correlatives ("Hoe A-er, hoe B-er"). The presented theories (from previous studies) described in the thesis are based on non-V2 phenomena in Dutch and Northern Norwegian. The research question ("Can theories about non-V2 in the Tromsø Norwegian wh-questions be applied to the Dutch non-V2 comparative correlative constructions with wh-elements?") is answered by using analyses in comparative syntax, phonology, information structure and psycholinguistics.Show less
With the help of biographical information, psychology, and linguistics to provide necessary context, this thesis aims to apply different algorithmic textual analyses of Vincent van Gogh’s...Show moreWith the help of biographical information, psychology, and linguistics to provide necessary context, this thesis aims to apply different algorithmic textual analyses of Vincent van Gogh’s correspondence in order to establish a connection between his mental state and the language he uses in his letters.Show less
In previous studies, linguistic anticipatory processes in the brain have been investigated extensively, but mostly in a monolingual environment where native speakers of a certain language were...Show moreIn previous studies, linguistic anticipatory processes in the brain have been investigated extensively, but mostly in a monolingual environment where native speakers of a certain language were listening to native speakers of the same language. In this study, we investigated the effect of non-native speech on predictions made by native listeners of Dutch, in a within-subjects design. We used highly predictive sentence contexts in combination with mismatched articles in order to measure the anticipatory effects before the occurence of the predicted noun. We found both an early (120 - 300 ms) and a late (400 - 600 ms) ERP negativity which were affected independently by the speaker accent variable: when participants listened to foreign-accented speech, the early negativity disappeared. However, behavioural performance, as measured by a subsequent lexical recognition task, was not affected by speaker accent. We argue that the results from our experiment have implications for the interpretation of the N400 as well as the proposed Phonological Mismatch Negativity effects and consequently provide an interesting view on the specifics of top-down sentence comprehension.Show less
