Lamers Monique J, Jansma Bernadette M, Hammer Anke, Münte Thomas F
Department of Linguistics, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
BMC Neurosci. 2008 Jun 27;9:55. doi: 10.1186/1471-2202-9-55.
The present study examines the involvement of syntactic and semantic/conceptual processes in the comprehension of pronouns in Dutch using the technique of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) replicating and extending an earlier study in German. Dutch and German are closely related and share the same logic in referring to non-diminutive and diminutive NPs (i.e. adding an affix which changes the syntactic gender into neutral). Both languages separate male (hij/er (he)) and female pronouns (zij/sie (she)), as well as a pronoun that refers to an entity of neutral gender, (het/es (it)). However, the neutral pronoun het in Dutch is not only a pronoun, it also is the article of a neutral noun. To investigate the influence of this word class ambiguity on pronoun resolution, as well as to establish the generality of the finding of the German study we manipulated syntactic and biological gender congruency between a personal pronoun and its antecedent in Dutch.
In Dutch, sentences with the word-class (pronoun/article) ambiguous pronoun het elicited an early negative shift (150-280 ms) which continued in the time frame of the N400. For sentences with a syntactically and biologically incongruent pronoun a P600 (in absence of an N400) was obtained, which was independent of the morphological form of the referent.
The neurophysiological pattern found for Dutch stimuli was clearly different from the German study, indicating that the processing of pronouns in these two languages differs. This can be explained in terms of language specific characteristics concerning the word class ambiguous neutral pronoun het. Moreover, in contrast to the findings in the German study, there was no clear effect caused by the morphological form of the referent. Additionally, in Dutch, the pronoun resolution in sentences with a non-diminutive antecedent seems to reflect processes of revision (P600 in absence of an N400), whereas for German evidence was found for clear involvement of conceptual/semantic processes as well as structure building processes (N400/P600 complex).
本研究运用事件相关脑电位（ERP）技术，通过重复并拓展一项早期针对德语的研究，来探究句法和语义/概念加工过程在荷兰语代词理解中的作用。荷兰语和德语关系密切，在指代非小称和小称名词短语时遵循相同逻辑（即添加一个词缀，将句法性属变为中性）。两种语言都区分男性代词（hij/er（他））和女性代词（zij/sie（她）），以及指代中性实体的代词（het/es（它））。然而，荷兰语中的中性代词het不仅是一个代词，它还是中性名词的冠词。为了研究这种词类歧义对代词消解的影响，并验证德语研究结果的普遍性，我们在荷兰语中操纵了人称代词与其先行词之间的句法和生物性属一致性。
在荷兰语中，带有词类（代词/冠词）歧义代词het的句子引发了早期负向偏移（150 - 280毫秒），并在N400时间范围内持续。对于句法和生物性属不一致的代词的句子，获得了一个P600（在没有N400的情况下），这与所指对象的形态形式无关。
荷兰语刺激所发现的神经生理模式与德语研究明显不同，表明这两种语言中代词的加工方式存在差异。这可以从与词类歧义中性代词het相关的语言特定特征方面来解释。此外，与德语研究结果相反，所指对象的形态形式没有产生明显影响。另外，在荷兰语中，具有非小称先行词的句子中的代词消解似乎反映了修正过程（在没有N400的情况下出现P600），而对于德语，有证据表明概念/语义过程以及结构构建过程（N400/P600复合体）有明显参与。
