Wittenberg Eva, Paczynski Martin, Wiese Heike, Jackendoff Ray, Kuperberg Gina
Tufts University, United States ; Potsdam University, Germany.
Tufts University, United States.
J Mem Lang. 2014 May;73:31-42. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2014.02.002.
We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with processing light verb constructions such as "give a kiss". These constructions consist of a semantically underspecified light verb ("give") and an event nominal that contributes most of the meaning and also activates an argument structure of its own ("kiss"). This creates a mismatch between the syntactic constituents and the semantic roles of a sentence. Native speakers read German verb-final sentences that contained light verb constructions (e.g., "Julius gave Anne a kiss"), non-light constructions (e.g., "Julius gave Anne a rose"), and semantically anomalous constructions (e.g., *"Julius gave Anne a conversation"). ERPs were measured at the critical verb, which appeared after all its arguments. Compared to non-light constructions, the light verb constructions evoked a widely distributed, frontally focused, sustained negative-going effect between 500 and 900 ms after verb onset. We interpret this effect as reflecting working memory costs associated with complex semantic processes that establish a shared argument structure in the light verb constructions.
我们使用事件相关电位（ERP）来研究与处理诸如“give a kiss”这类轻动词结构相关的神经认知机制。这些结构由一个语义欠明确的轻动词（“give”）和一个贡献了大部分意义且自身还激活了一个论元结构的事件名词（“kiss”）组成。这就造成了句子的句法成分和语义角色之间的不匹配。以德语为母语的人阅读包含轻动词结构（例如，“Julius gave Anne a kiss”）、非轻动词结构（例如，“Julius gave Anne a rose”）和语义异常结构（例如，*“Julius gave Anne a conversation”）的德语动词后置句。ERP在关键动词处进行测量，该动词出现在其所有论元之后。与非轻动词结构相比，轻动词结构在动词出现后500至900毫秒之间引发了一种广泛分布、以额叶为中心、持续的负向效应。我们将这种效应解释为反映了与复杂语义过程相关的工作记忆成本这些复杂语义过程在轻动词结构中建立了共享论元结构。
