Hagiwara Hiroko, Soshi Takahiro, Ishihara Masami, Imanaka Kuniyasu
Department of Language Sciences, Graduate School of Humanities, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Minami Osawa, Hachioji, Tokyo, 192-0397, Japan.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2007 Feb;19(2):175-93. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2007.19.2.175.
One of the most fundamental and universal properties of human language is a phenomenon called displacement. In the present study, we used multichannel event-related potentials (ERPs) to identify the nature of this phenomenon with Japanese, a subject-object-verb (SOV) language of relatively free word order. The ERPs of sentences of canonical word order (CC) were compared with those of non-canonical word order in two types of Japanese complex sentences; namely, in those which can be described as being in a middle-scrambled condition (MSC) and in those in a long-scrambled condition (LSC). The sustained anterior negativity (SAN) and the P600 in the pregap position were observed in the LSC, compared to the CC, and they are consistent with previous findings. The SAN, exhibiting a tripartite nature in morphology and scalp distribution, mainly reflected a storage cost of scrambled elements in sentence comprehension. The subsequent P600 had a left fronto-temporal maximum, distinguished from a posterior P600, taken as a reflector of the thematic role assignment in previous related studies. It is argued that the P600 in the present study reflects a cost of structural integration intensively depending on the case marker information. A compositional interpretation of sentence meanings was also observed, reflected in an anterior negativity at the postgap verbal position, which cannot be differentiated at the pregap verbal position in the languages of subject-verb-object (SVO) word order.
人类语言最基本和普遍的特性之一是一种称为移位的现象。在本研究中，我们使用多通道事件相关电位（ERP）来确定这种现象的本质，研究对象是日语，一种词序相对自由的主宾谓（SOV）语言。在两种类型的日语复合句中，我们将正常词序（CC）句子的ERP与非正常词序句子的ERP进行了比较；也就是说，在那些可描述为处于中间打乱状态（MSC）的句子和处于长打乱状态（LSC）的句子中进行比较。与CC相比，在LSC中观察到了前间隙位置的持续前负波（SAN）和P600，这与先前的研究结果一致。SAN在形态和头皮分布上呈现出三重性质，主要反映了句子理解中打乱成分的存储成本。随后的P600在左额颞部有最大值，与后部P600不同，在先前相关研究中后部P600被视为主题角色分配的反映。有人认为，本研究中的P600反映了强烈依赖格标记信息的结构整合成本。还观察到了句子意义的成分性解释，表现为间隙后动词位置的前负波，这在主谓宾（SVO）词序语言的间隙前动词位置无法区分。
