Anand Geet Govind, Barhwal Kalpana K, Goyal Manish, Rao Bodepudi Narasimha
Central Command Hospital, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Department of Physiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.
Ann Neurosci. 2023 Jul;30(3):169-176. doi: 10.1177/09727531221146825. Epub 2023 Jan 16.
The typology of word order in Hindi (Subject-Object-Verb, SOV) differs from that of English (Subject-Verb-Object, SVO). Bilinguals whose two languages have conflicting word order provide a unique opportunity to understand how word order affects language processing. Earlier behavioural and event-related brain potential (ERP) studies with Spanish-Basque bilinguals showed longer reading times and more errors in the comprehension of OSV sentences than SOV sentences in Basque language, indicating that non-canonical word orders (OSV) were difficult to process than canonical word order (SOV).
This study was designed to explore how the difference in word order in Hindi and English languages affects N400 parameters in proficient Hindi-English bilinguals, using semantic congruity paradigm.
Twenty-five proficient Hindi-English bilingual subjects were asked to silently read the congruent and incongruent sentences presented in one word at a time in both the languages. ERPs were recorded from midline frontal, central and parietal sites.
The mean amplitude of the N400 effect at the parietal sites in Hindi-English proficient bilinguals was larger for English than for Hindi but there was no significant difference in the N400 latencies.
Hindi-English bilingual subjects processed SOV and SVO sentences with equal ease as evidenced by the N400 latencies. Higher amplitude of the N400 effect with English sentences indicate that placing 'Object' as the final word makes sentences more predictable than verb as the final word. Understanding the word order difference might help to unravel the neurophysiological mechanisms of language comprehension and may offer some insights in terms of functional advantage of a particular word order in bilinguals.
印地语的词序类型（主宾谓，SOV）与英语（主谓宾，SVO）不同。两种语言词序相互冲突的双语者为理解词序如何影响语言处理提供了独特的机会。早期针对西班牙语 - 巴斯克语双语者的行为学和事件相关脑电位（ERP）研究表明，与巴斯克语中的主宾谓（SOV）句子相比，理解主宾谓倒置（OSV）句子时阅读时间更长且错误更多，这表明非标准词序（OSV）比标准词序（SOV）更难处理。
本研究旨在使用语义一致性范式，探讨印地语和英语词序差异如何影响熟练的印地语 - 英语双语者的N400参数。
25名熟练的印地语 - 英语双语受试者被要求一次逐词默读两种语言中呈现的语义一致和不一致的句子。从额中线、中央和顶叶部位记录ERP。
在熟练的印地语 - 英语双语者中，顶叶部位的N400效应平均波幅在英语中比在印地语中更大，但N400潜伏期没有显著差异。
N400潜伏期表明，印地语 - 英语双语受试者处理主宾谓（SOV）和主谓宾（SVO）句子的难易程度相同。英语句子的N400效应波幅更高，这表明将“宾语”作为最后一个词使句子比将动词作为最后一个词更具可预测性。理解词序差异可能有助于揭示语言理解的神经生理机制，并可能为双语者中特定词序的功能优势提供一些见解。
