Speech prosody enhances the neural processing of syntax

Abstract

Human language relies on the correct processing of syntactic information, as it is essential for successful communication between speakers. As an abstract level of language, syntax has often been studied separately from the physical form of the speech signal, thus often masking the interactions that can promote better syntactic processing in the human brain. We analyzed a MEG dataset to investigate how acoustic cues, specifically prosody, interact with syntactic representations. We examined whether prosody enhances the cortical encoding of syntactic representations. We decoded syntactic phrase boundaries directly from brain activity, and evaluated possible modulations of the decoding by the presence of prosodic boundaries. Our findings demonstrate that the presence of a prosodic boundary improves the representation of phrase boundaries, indicating the facilitative role of prosodic cues in processing abstract linguistic features. This study gives neurobiological evidence for the boosting of syntactic processing via interactions with prosody.