Language and Brain Lab, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel.
Neuroimage. 2012 Apr 15;60(3):1800-6. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.01.081. Epub 2012 Jan 25.
This study used fMRI to inform a debate between two theories concerning the representation of reflexive verbs. Reflexives are verbs that denote an action that the subject applies on herself (e.g., The woman stretched). These verbs are derived by a lexical operation that creates a reflexive from its transitive counterpart. Theories differ with respect to which thematic role is reduced by the lexical operation: the agent or the theme, and, consequently, whether the construction of sentences with reflexives in subject-verb order includes movement of the object to the subject position. To test this, we compared reflexive verbs with unaccusative verbs (e.g., The woman fell), and with unergative verbs (e.g., The woman jumped). Unaccusatives are derived by reduction of the role of the agent, and thus SV sentences with unaccusatives include movement to subject position. Unergatives do not undergo lexical operations and do not involve movement in SV sentences. The reflexives behaved like unergatives, and differently from unaccusatives: the activation pattern of unaccusatives compared with reflexives showed similar cortical pattern to that of unaccusatives compared with unergatives, with activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG). Comparing reflexives and unergatives revealed activation in the right MTG. These results indicate that reflexives differ from unaccusatives in their derivation. That is, reflexives do not involve the reduction of the agent of the parallel transitive, and hence no syntactic movement is involved in sentences in which the subject precedes the reflexive verb.
本研究使用 fMRI 来探讨两个关于反身动词表示的理论之间的争议。反身动词表示主语对自身施加的动作（例如，The woman stretched）。这些动词是通过一个词汇操作从其及物对应词中派生出来的。这些理论在词汇操作所减少的主题角色方面存在分歧：是施事者还是主题，因此，反身动词在主谓顺序的句子中的结构是否包括将宾语移到主语位置。为了检验这一点，我们比较了反身动词与非宾格动词（例如，The woman fell）和非作格动词（例如，The woman jumped）。非宾格动词是通过施事者角色的减少派生而来的，因此 SV 句子中包含非宾格动词的句子包括主语位置的移动。非作格动词不经历词汇操作，并且在 SV 句子中不涉及移动。反身动词的行为与非作格动词相似，而与非宾格动词不同：非宾格动词与反身动词的激活模式与非宾格动词与非作格动词的激活模式相似，在左额下回和左颞中回（MTG）有激活。比较反身动词和非作格动词时，在右 MTG 中发现了激活。这些结果表明，反身动词与非宾格动词在其派生方面存在差异。也就是说，反身动词不涉及平行及物动词的施事者的减少，因此在主语在反身动词之前的句子中不涉及句法移动。
