کد مقاله | کد نشریه | سال انتشار | مقاله انگلیسی | نسخه تمام متن |
---|---|---|---|---|
6029265 | 1580926 | 2013 | 14 صفحه PDF | دانلود رایگان |
- Derivational views on grammatical agreement assume feature-specific processing.
- MEG here showed feature-specific effects for different agreement mismatches.
- Left anterior temporal and later inferior frontal areas process agreement structures.
- This network integrates dependency-specific processes from further left brain regions.
- These data support a three-stage neurocognitive model of agreement processing.
Grammatical agreement is a widespread language phenomenon that indicates formal syntactic relations between words; however, it also conveys basic lexical (e.g. grammatical gender) or semantic (e.g. numerosity) information about a discourse referent. In this study, we focus on the reading of Spanish noun phrases, violating either number or gender determiner-noun agreement compared to grammatical controls. Magnetoencephalographic activity time-locked to the onset of the noun in both types of violation revealed a left-lateralized brain network involving anterior temporal regions (~Â 220Â ms) and, later in time, ventro-lateral prefrontal regions (>Â 300Â ms). These activations coexist with dependency-specific effects: in an initial step (~Â 170Â ms), occipito-temporal regions are employed for fine-grained analysis of the number marking (in Spanish, presence or absence of the suffix '-s'), while anterior temporal regions show increased activation for gender mismatches compared to grammatical controls. The semantic relevance of number agreement dependencies was mainly reflected by left superior temporal increased activity around 340Â ms. These findings offer a detailed perspective on the multi-level analyses involved in the initial computation of agreement dependencies, and theoretically support a derivational approach to agreement computation.
Journal: NeuroImage - Volume 78, September 2013, Pages 339-352