OS order). However, both sentences induce the same propositional representation. selleck screening library In isolation, the OS order (cf. example 1b) is assumed to be harder to process compared to SO (e.g., Schlesewsky, Fanselow, Kliegl, & Krems, 2000), but interestingly, context information (e.g., a preceding sentence or question) has been found to ease the processing of OS sentences (e.g., Meng, Bader, & Bayer, 1999) (see Section 1.3 for the effect of information structure on the processing of word order variation in German). Thus, in German main clauses, subjects as well as objects can appear in the sentence-initial position before the finite verb (so called prefield).

Similarly, if the verb is not in the second but in final sentence position, buy Sotrastaurin either the subject or object can follow the complementizer (so called middlefield) 1 (see e.g., Pittner & Berman, 2008, for an overview of the topological classification of German sentences). As commonly assumed, the OS order is derived from the basic order of SO; but, depending

on the theoretical framework, different movement operations are assumed to underlie word order variation in the German pre- and middlefield (e.g., Haider and Rosengren, 1998, Lenerz, 2000 and Müller, 1999; see Diedrichsen, 2008, for an alternative, movement-independent account of the German sentence topology). Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and colleagues substantiate the distinction of word order variation in the pre- and middlefield from the neuroanatomical perspective ( Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Grewe, & Schlesewsky, 2012): Whereas numerous studies reported an increased activation for OS opposed to SO within the left inferior frontal gyrus (lIFG), aboutness-based sequencing (prefield) activated anterior subregions of the lIFG, but

prominence-based sequencing (middlefield) activated superior subregions of the lIFG (for a review, see Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky, 2012). Several semantic and discourse-related factors have been proposed to affect the linear order of sentential constituents (e.g., concerning the thematic role, actors should precede non-actors; for a review about incremental argument interpretation during processing of transitive sentences, see Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky, BCKDHA 2009a). Numerous studies proposed factors that crucially affect word order in the German middlefield (e.g., Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and Schlesewsky, 2009b, Choi, 1996, Lenerz, 1977, Müller, 1999 and Siewierska, 1993). For the purposes of our study, the most important are findings concerning the German prefield: As attested in written corpora, SO and OS sentences predominately occur with an accusative object (Bader & Häussler, 2010). SO sentences tend to contain active verbs, whereas OS order frequently occurs with verbs lacking an agent argument (i.e., passivized ditransitive and unaccusative verbs).