Portions and sorts in Icelandic: An ERP study Matthew Whelpton a , Drew Trotter b , Þórhalla Guðmundsdóttir Beck a , Curt Anderson b , Joan Maling c , Karthik Durvasula b , Alan Beretta b,⇑ a University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland b Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA c Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA article info Article history: Accepted 24 July 2014 Keywords: ERP Coercion Compounds Gender Icelandic abstract An ERP study investigated the processing of mass nouns used to convey ‘portions’ vs. ‘sorts’ interpreta- tions in Icelandic. The sorts interpretation requires semantic Coercion to a count noun; the portions inter- pretation entails extra syntactic processing. Compared to a Neutral condition, Coercion escaped the expected penalty (N400), but the Extra Syntax condition incurred the anticipated costs (anterior negativ- ity followed by P600). Furthermore, we examined the effects of having to revise an initial commitment to head-noun status. When another noun follows the mass noun (creating a compound), the second noun becomes the head- noun. We hypothesized, for Icelandic, there would be no effect for Extra Syntax because the compound should have been built before the second noun was encountered; by contrast, for the Coercion and Neu- tral conditions, processing costs would be incurred to detect and reconfigure the second noun as the head. These predictions were largely borne out (early and sustained anterior negativities). Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Theories that address the distribution of labor between syntax, semantics and the lexicon have sought to account for the limitless expressive power of language by adopting a principle of composi- tionality (e.g., Montague, 1970). This principle states that the inter- pretation of any structured expression is predictable from the meanings of words and the rules that combine them. For instance, the interpretation of a constituent such as black cup is a function of the meaning of black, the meaning of cup, and the syntactic rule of adjectival modification. Simple compositionality runs into numerous difficulties which provide some of the central challenges for semantics (Ramchand, 2008; Wood, 2012). This paper addresses one such difficulty: the use of mass nouns, which typically refer to unbounded substances, as count nouns, which typically refer to bounded individuals. (i) I like coffee. [mass noun referring to the substance coffee] (ii) I’ll have another coffee. [count noun referring to an implicit portion, typically a cup, of coffee] Wiese and Maling (2005), hereafter WM, suggest that languages differ in their strategies for handling mass-to-count coercions and in the ways that the distribution of labor between syntax and semantics occurs. In particular, they suggest that, whereas cases like (ii) in English really do involve coercion (the use of a mass noun as a count noun), the equivalent example in Icelandic does not. Rather, in Icelandic there is implicit syntactic structure: the mass noun continues to be a mass noun and the countable reading is introduced by an elided head noun. The pre-theoretical domain of coercion in their account is therefore split into examples of gen- uine coercion (syntax–semantics mismatch) and examples of com- plex syntax. In this paper we investigate their analysis of the minimal contrast in Icelandic between coercion and complex syn- tax, using experimental data from EEG. 1.1. Mass-count coercion There is a traditional account of the mass/count distinction. Mass terms, such as water, oil, and snow, are non-pluralizable and uncountable. They apply to substances. By contrast, count terms, such as cat, flower, and bottle are pluralizable and countable. They apply to objects. In a standard view of what is involved in the mass/count division work (following Pelletier, 2010), nouns are marked with the syntactic features +mass or +count and these features serve to constrain what combinations are permissible. Combining a http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2014.07.008 0093-934X/Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Department of Linguistics, B465 Wells Hall, 619 Red Cedar Road, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. E-mail addresses: whelpton@hi.is (M. Whelpton), trotte11@msu.edu (D. Trotter), thb70@hi.is (Þ.G. Beck), ande1472@msu.edu (C. Anderson), maling@brandeis.edu (J. Maling), durvasul@msu.edu (K. Durvasula), beretta@msu.edu (A. Beretta). Brain & Language 136 (2014) 44–57 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Brain & Language journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l