The difference between 鈥済iving a rose鈥?and 鈥済iving a kiss鈥? Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction

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• 作者：Eva Wittenberg^a ; ^b ; ^{eva.wittenberg@tufts.edu" class="auth_mail} ; Martin Paczynski^a ; Heike Wiese^b ; Ray Jackendoff^a ; Gina Kuperberg^a ; ^c
• 关键词：Event-related potential ; Sentence processing ; Light verb constructions ; Argument structure ; Syntax-semantics interface ; Sustained negativity
• 刊名：Journal of Memory and Language
• 出版年：May, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：73
• 期：Complete
• 页码：31-42
• 全文大小：899 K

文摘

We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with processing light verb constructions such as 鈥済ive a kiss鈥? These constructions consist of a semantically underspecified light verb (鈥済ive鈥? and an event nominal that contributes most of the meaning and also activates an argument structure of its own (鈥渒iss鈥?. This creates a mismatch between the syntactic constituents and the semantic roles of a sentence. Native speakers read German verb-final sentences that contained light verb constructions (e.g., 鈥淛ulius gave Anne a kiss鈥?, non-light constructions (e.g., 鈥淛ulius gave Anne a rose鈥?, and semantically anomalous constructions (e.g., *鈥淛ulius gave Anne a conversation鈥?. ERPs were measured at the critical verb, which appeared after all its arguments. Compared to non-light constructions, the light verb constructions evoked a widely distributed, frontally focused, sustained negative-going effect between 500 and 900 ms after verb onset. We interpret this effect as reflecting working memory costs associated with complex semantic processes that establish a shared argument structure in the light verb constructions.