Gross M, Say T, Kleingers M, Clahsen H, Münte T F
Department of Neurology, Medizinische Hochschule, Hannover, Germany.
Neurosci Lett. 1998 Jan 30;241(2-3):83-6. doi: 10.1016/s0304-3940(97)00971-3.
Event-related brain potentials were recorded while 12 Italian-speaking subjects read correctly and incorrectly inflected verb forms. Participle forms of three types of verbs were investigated: 1st conjugation verbs (parlato 'spoken'), 3rd conjugation verbs (dormito 'slept'), and irregular 2nd conjugation verbs (preso 'taken'). We compared correct and incorrect participle forms; the latter had stem formation errors and/or incorrect participle endings. Event-related potentials (ERP) showed different responses to incorrect regular and incorrect irregular participle forms: incorrect irregulars (*prendato instead of preso) elicited a widespread negativity, whereas incorrect regulars (*parlito, *dormato) produced no effect. This difference replicates previous results on German inflection and supports the linguistic distinction between lexically-based and rule-based inflection.
