Meltzer-Asscher Aya, Mack Jennifer E, Barbieri Elena, Thompson Cynthia K
Linguistics Department, Tel Aviv University, Israel; Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, United States.
Brain Lang. 2015 Mar;142:65-75. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2014.12.005. Epub 2015 Feb 4.
Verbs are central to sentence processing, as they encode argument structure (AS) information, i.e., information about the syntax and interpretation of the phrases accompanying them. The behavioral and neural correlates of AS processing have primarily been investigated in sentence-level tasks, requiring both verb processing and verb-argument integration. In the current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated AS processing using a lexical decision task requiring only verb processing. We examined three aspects of AS complexity: number of thematic roles, number of thematic options, and mapping (non)canonicity (unaccusative vs. unergative and transitive verbs). Increased number of thematic roles elicited greater activation in the left posterior perisylvian regions claimed to support access to stored AS representations. However, the number of thematic options had no neural effects. Further, unaccusative verbs elicited longer response times and increased activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus, reflecting the processing cost of unaccusative verbs and, more generally, supporting the role of the IFG in noncanonical argument mapping.
动词在句子处理中至关重要，因为它们编码论元结构（AS）信息，即关于伴随它们的短语的句法和解释的信息。AS处理的行为和神经关联主要在句子层面任务中进行研究，这类任务既需要动词处理，也需要动词 - 论元整合。在当前的功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究中，我们使用仅需要动词处理的词汇判断任务来研究AS处理。我们考察了AS复杂性的三个方面：题元角色数量、题元选项数量以及映射（非）规范性（非宾格动词与非作格动词和及物动词）。题元角色数量增加会在左后颞周区域引发更大激活，该区域被认为支持对存储的AS表征的访问。然而，题元选项数量没有神经效应。此外，非宾格动词引发更长的反应时间，并增加了左额下回的激活，这反映了非宾格动词的处理成本，更普遍地说，支持了额下回在非规范论元映射中的作用。
