Distinguishing grammatical constructions with fMRI pattern analysis

Allen, Kachina; Pereira, Francisco; Botvinick, Matthew; Goldberg, Adele Ε.

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2012.08.005

Cited by 81 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Moreover, the studies reported by Tettamanti are coarse grain, inadequate to tease apart the specifics of different languages. By contrast, Allen et al (2012) used multi-voxel pattern analysis with fMRI to distinguish neural correlates of closely related grammatical constructions such as the dative (e.g. Sally gave a book to Joe) and the ditransitive (e.g.…”

Section: Action Hierarchy and Meaningmentioning

confidence: 96%

Complex imitation and the language-ready brain

Arbib

2013

Lang. cogn.

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The present article responds to commentaries from experts in anthropology, apraxia, archeology, linguistics, neuroanatomy, neuroimaging, neurophysiology, neuropsychology, primatology, sign language emergence and sign language neurolinguistics on the book How the brain got language: The mirror system hypothesis (Arbib 2012). The role of complex imitation is discussed, and the distinction between protolanguage and language is emphasized. Issues debated include the role of protosign in scaffolding protospeech, the interplay between biological evolution of the brain and cultural evolution of the social interactions within groups, the relations brain mechanisms for action and language, and the question of when language first emerged.

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Section: Action Hierarchy and Meaningmentioning

confidence: 96%

Complex imitation and the language-ready brain

Arbib

2013

Lang. cogn.

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“…In another recent experiment using Multi Voxel Pattern Analysis, we have found neural evidence that the ditransitive and caused motion constructions can be distinguished in areas of the brain known to be involved in semantic combination, particularly BA 47 and anterior BA 22, even when propositional content, open class words, complexity and frequency are controlled for (Allen et al ., ). A separate sorting study has also found that people judge argument structure constructions to be just as important to overall sentence meaning as the morphological form of the main verb (Bencini and Goldberg, ).…”

Section: Argument Structure Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Argument Structure Constructions versus Lexical Rules or Derivational Verb Templates

Goldberg

2013

Mind & Language

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The idea that correspondences relating grammatical relations and semantics (argument structure constructions) are needed to account for simple sentence types is reviewed, clarified, updated and compared with two lexicalist alternatives. Traditional lexical rules take one verb as 'input' and create (or relate) a different verb as 'output'. More recently, invisible derivational verb templates have been proposed, which treat argument structure patterns as zero derivational affixes that combine with a root verb to yield a new verb. While the derivational template perspective can address several problems that arise for traditional lexical rules, it still faces problems in accounting for idioms, which often contain specifications that are not appropriately assigned to individual verbs or derivational affixes (regarding adjuncts, modification, and inflection). At the same time, it is clear that verbs play a central role in determining their distribution. The balance between verbs and phrasal argument structure constructions is addressed via the Principles of Semantic Coherence and Correspondence together with a usage-based hierarchy of constructions that contains entries which can include particular verbs and other lexical material.

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“…For example, an N400 increase was sometimes used as an argument for combinatorial (de)composition, although it is well-known that this brain response also distinguishes whole-form-stored words from novel and therefore not stored pseudo-words, so that it is not a unique indicator of either storage or combination (Kutas and Federmeier, 2011). Other questionable heuristics concern the brain loci activated: left inferior frontal activity was sometimes used as an argument for decomposition, although single word and construction processing engage this locus too (Pulvermüller et al, 2009; Allen et al, 2012; Bozic et al, 2013a). For these reasons, it is desirable to investigate the brain basis of derivationally complex words (i) using spoken language as the primary and native modality of language; and (ii) using a theoretically founded neuromechanistic rational for interpreting brain responses to language.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurophysiological evidence for whole form retrieval of complex derived words: a mismatch negativity study

Hanna

Pulvermüller

2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Complex words can be seen as combinations of elementary units, decomposable into stems and affixes according to morphological rules. Alternatively, complex forms may be stored as single lexical entries and accessed as whole forms. This study uses an event-related potential brain response capable of indexing both whole-form retrieval and combinatorial processing, the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), to investigate early brain activity elicited by morphologically complex derived words in German. We presented complex words consisting of stems “sicher” (secure), or “sauber” (clean) combined with abstract nominalizing derivational affixes -heit or -keit, to form either congruent derived words: “Sicherheit” (security) and “Sauberkeit” (cleanliness), or incongruent derived pseudowords: *“Sicherkeit”, and *“Sauberheit”. Using this orthogonal design, it was possible to record brain responses for -heit and -keit in both congruent and incongruent contexts, therefore balancing acoustic variance. Previous research has shown that incongruent combinations of symbols elicit a stronger MMN than congruent combinations, but that single words or constructions stored as whole forms elicit a stronger MMN than pseudowords or non-existent constructions. We found that congruent derived words elicited a stronger MMN than incongruent derived words, beginning about 150 ms after perception of the critical morpheme. This pattern of results is consistent with whole-form storage of morphologically complex derived words as lexical units, or mini-constructions. Using distributed source localization methods, the MMN enhancement for well-formed derivationally complex words appeared to be most prominent in the left inferior anterior-temporal, bilateral superior parietal and bilateral post-central, supra-marginal areas. In addition, neurophysiological results reflected the frequency of derived forms, thus providing further converging evidence for whole form storage and against a combinatorial mechanism.

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Distinguishing grammatical constructions with fMRI pattern analysis

Cited by 81 publications

References 54 publications

Complex imitation and the language-ready brain

Complex imitation and the language-ready brain

Argument Structure Constructions versus Lexical Rules or Derivational Verb Templates

Neurophysiological evidence for whole form retrieval of complex derived words: a mismatch negativity study

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