Hebrew Brain vs. English Brain: Language Modulates the Way It Is Processed

Abstract

Is language processing universal? How do the specific properties of each language influence the way it is processed? In this study we compare the neural correlates of morphological processing in Hebrew – a Semitic language with a rich and systematic morphology, to those revealed in English – an Indo-European language with a linear morphology. Using fMRI we show that while in the bilingual brain both languages involve a common neural circuitry in processing morphological structure, this activation is significantly modulated by the different aspects of language. Whereas in Hebrew morphological processing is independent of semantics, in English morphological activation is clearly modulated by semantic overlap. These findings suggest that the processes involved in reading words are not universal, and therefore impose important constraints on current models of visual word recognition.

Contributions of linguistic typology to psycholinguistics

“…The Semitic language processor has been said to be primarily "morphological" in nature, designed to extract a complex word's root and word pattern structure irrespective of its meaning or surface form, effectively employing full morphological parsing ("down-to-the-root") as the dominant processing mechanism. By contrast, the system for processing complex words in English, for example, is thought to be less purely morphologically driven and instead more affected by nonmorphological factors such as the semantic transparency and the orthographic and phonological surface form of a complex word as a whole (Bick et al 2011). To take an example from morphological priming studies, semantically opaque and/or phonologically altered forms (e.g., kept -keep, business -busy) typically do not produce facilitation effects in (overt) morphological priming experiments in English (e.g., MarslenWilson et al 1994), but in Hebrew and Arabic they do (Frost et al 2000).…”

“…To take an example from morphological priming studies, semantically opaque and/or phonologically altered forms (e.g., kept -keep, business -busy) typically do not produce facilitation effects in (overt) morphological priming experiments in English (e.g., MarslenWilson et al 1994), but in Hebrew and Arabic they do (Frost et al 2000). According to Bick et al (2011), this is due to the prevalence of phonological and semantic opaqueness of morphologically complex words in English and other Indo-European languages, unlike in Semitic languages in which straightforward root-and-pattern extraction is possible for almost all words. It is true that Semitic languages have nonconcatenative morphology.…”

“…The contrast obtained between the Pa'al and Pi'el classes provides support for the dual-morphology account according to which closed-class forms (in the present case, Pa'al stems) are stored as wholes while productive forms are computed by rule-like mechanisms, in the present case through a stem-formation rule that generates Pi'el forms from consonantal roots. At a more general level, Farhy et al's results suggest that there is no "Hebrew brain" or "English brain" (Bick et al 2011(Bick et al : 2280 but that in both languages, the processing system for morphologically complex words makes use of the same mechanisms.…”

Neuroscience in Intercultural Contexts

“…With a growing interest in script differences, fMRI studies of language processing discovered larger effects of script and writing system on language organization in the brain (e.g., Bick, Goelman, & Frost, 2011 ;Bolger, Perfetti, & Schneider, 2005 ;Coderre, Filippi, Newhouse, & Dumas, 2008 ;Nelson, Liu, Fiez, & Perfetti, 2009 ;Perfetti et al, 2007 ;Sakurai et al, 2000 ;Tan, Spinks, Eden, Perfetti, & Siok, 2005 ;Tan et al, 2001 ). As more research with logographic languages such as Chinese and Japanese kanji was performed, researchers discovered that the patterns of language organization differed signifi cantly from the previously reported literature on alphabetic languages.…”

“…As discussed in Section 4.1 , script-specifi c lexical factors can affect processes of phonological access (e.g., Perfetti et al, 2005 ;Saalbach & Stern, 2004 ), orthographic recognition (e.g., Bar-Kochva, 2011 ;, language production speed (Bates et al, 2003 ), and the neural representations of languages in the brain (e.g., Bick et al, 2011 ;Bolger et al, 2005 ;Tan et al, 2005 ). It is therefore also possible that the magnitude of the L1 and/or L2 delay in lexical processing is modulated by language-specifi c differences.…”