Regel Stefanie, Opitz Andreas, Müller Gereon, Friederici Angela D
Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
University of Leipzig.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2015 Sep;27(9):1870-85. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00818. Epub 2015 Apr 22.
Neuropsychological research investigating mental grammar and lexicon has largely been based on the processing of regular and irregular inflection. Past tense inflection of regular verbs is assumed to be generated by a syntactic rule (e.g., show-ed), whereas irregular verbs consist of rather unsystematic alternations (e.g., caught) represented as lexical entries. Recent morphological accounts, however, hold that irregular inflection is not entirely rule-free but relies on morphological principles. These subregularities are computed by the syntactic system. We tested this latter hypothesis by examining alternations of irregular German verbs as well as pseudowords using ERPs. Participants read series of irregular verb inflection including present tense, past participle, and past tense forms embedded in minimal syntactic contexts. The critical past tense form was correct (e.g., er sang [he sang]) or incorrect by being either partially consistent (e.g., *er sung [*he sung]) or inconsistent (e.g., *er sing [*he sing]) with the proposed morphological principles. Correspondingly, in a second experimental block, pseudowords (e.g., tang/*tung/*ting) were presented. ERPs for real words revealed a biphasic ERP pattern consisting of a negativity and P600 for both incorrect forms in comparison to the correct equivalents. Most interestingly, the P600 amplitude for the incorrect forms was gradually modulated by the type of anomaly with medium amplitude for consistent past tense forms and largest amplitude for inconsistent past tense forms. ERPs for pseudoword past tense forms showed a similar gradual modulation of N400. The findings support the assumption that irregular verbs are processed by rule-based mechanisms because of subregularities of their past tense inflection.
研究心理语法和词汇的神经心理学研究很大程度上基于规则和不规则词形变化的处理。规则动词的过去式词形变化被认为是由句法规则生成的（例如，show - ed），而不规则动词则由相当不系统的交替形式组成（例如，caught），这些交替形式被表示为词汇项。然而，最近的形态学观点认为，不规则词形变化并非完全无规则，而是依赖于形态学原则。这些次规则性由句法系统计算得出。我们通过使用事件相关电位（ERP）研究不规则德语动词以及假词的交替形式来检验后一种假设。参与者阅读一系列不规则动词的词形变化，包括现在时、过去分词和过去式形式，这些形式嵌入在最小的句法语境中。关键的过去式形式要么是正确的（例如，er sang [他唱歌]），要么是不正确的，即与所提出的形态学原则部分一致（例如，*er sung [*他唱歌]）或不一致（例如，*er sing [*他唱歌]）。相应地，在第二个实验块中，呈现了假词（例如，tang/*tung/*ting）。真实词的ERP显示出一种双相ERP模式，与正确形式相比，两种不正确形式都由一个负波和P600组成。最有趣的是，不正确形式的P600波幅随着异常类型逐渐调节，与过去式形式一致的波幅中等，与过去式形式不一致的波幅最大。假词过去式形式的ERP显示出N400的类似逐渐调节。这些发现支持了这样一种假设，即不规则动词由于其过去式词形变化的次规则性而通过基于规则的机制进行处理。
