Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2010 Oct;22(10):2306-15. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2009.21371.
Unaccusative verbs like fall are special in that their sole argument is syntactically generated at the object position of the verb rather than at the subject position. Unaccusative verbs are derived by a lexical operation that reduces the agent from transitive verbs. Their insertion into a sentence often involves a syntactic movement from the object to the subject position. To explore the neurological reality of the distinction between different verb types and to identify the cortical activations associated with the lexical and syntactic operations, we compared unaccusative verbs with verbs that do not undergo such operations--unergatives (verbs with one argument, an agent) and transitives (verbs with two arguments). The observed pattern of activation revealed that the brain distinguishes between unaccusative and unergative verbs, lending neurological support for the linguistic distinction. A conjunction analysis between the comparisons between unaccusatives and the other verb types revealed activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus. These, together with previous neuroimaging results, suggest that the inferior frontal gyrus may be involved with the execution of the syntactic operation, whereas the middle temporal gyrus may be responsible for the lexical operation that derives unaccusative verbs.
非宾格动词（unaccusative verbs），如 fall，是很特别的，它们唯一的论元在句法上是在动词的宾语位置生成的，而不是在主语位置。非宾格动词是通过一种词汇操作从及物动词中派生出来的，这种操作将施事者降格为非宾格。它们被插入句子中通常涉及从宾语到主语位置的句法移动。为了探索不同动词类型之间的区别的神经学现实，并确定与词汇和句法操作相关的皮质激活，我们比较了非宾格动词与不经历这种操作的动词——非作格动词（unergatives，有一个论元，即施事者）和及物动词（transitives，有两个论元）。观察到的激活模式表明，大脑区分了非宾格动词和非作格动词，为语言上的区别提供了神经学支持。非宾格动词与其他动词类型之间的比较的联合分析显示，左额下回和左后颞中回有激活。这些结果与之前的神经影像学结果一起表明，额下回可能参与句法操作的执行，而颞中回可能负责派生非宾格动词的词汇操作。
