Processing syntax and morphology : a neurocognitive perspective / Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and Matthias Schlesewsky.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, Ina, 1979-

Contributor:

Schlesewsky, Matthias.

Series:

Oxford linguistics

Oxford surveys in syntax and morphology ; 6.

Oxford surveys in syntax and morphology ; 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Morphology.

Neurolinguistics.

Physical Description:

xvi, 360 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2009.

Summary:

This book reviews interdisciplinary work on the processing of syntax and morphology. Adopting a neurocognitive perspective, it focuses on the fundamental questions at the center of this research, for example which areas of the brain support the processing of syntactic and morphological information and which neurophysiological responses these processes engender; how syntax and morphology interact with other information types during real time language processing; and the degree to which neurolonguistic findings on syntactic and morphological processing are consistent with theoretical conceptions of syntax and morphology. The authors describe results obtained by means of neuroscientific methods (for example, functional magnetic resonance imaging or event-related brain potentials) and provide brief introductions to the methods themselves, with comparisons to findings from behavioral psycholinguistics undertaken where appropriate. They extend basic findings at the word and sentence level by a consideration of how the mental processing of syntax and morphology relates to prosody, discourse, semantics, and plausibility. The work is devided into four parts concerned with word structure, sentence structure, processing syntax and morphology at the interfaces, and a comparison of different models of syntactic and morphological processing in the neurocognitive domain. The book is directed at graduate students and researchers in theoretical linguistics, psycho and neurolinguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and psychology.

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

2 Methodological Prerequisites 3

2.1 Methods with a high temporal resolution 4

2.1.1 Electroencephalography (EEG) 4

2.1.2 Magnetoencephalography (MEG) 13

2.2 Methods with a high spatial resolution 14

2.2.1 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 14

2.2.2 Positron emission tornography (PET) 18

2.2.3 Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) 19

2.3 Correlations in neurocognitive data 20

2.3.1 Correlations between time and space 20

2.3.2 Correlations between neurocognitive patterns and functions: The one-to-one mapping problem 22

2.4 The output: Behavioral methods 24

2.4.1 Judgments 25

2.4.2 Speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) 27

2.4.3 "Online" methods 29

2.5 Summary 34

Part I Syntax and Morphology at the Word Level 37

Overview 39

3 Basic Categories: The Noun-Verb Distinction 41

4 Inflectional Morphology 47

4.1 The neuroanatomical perspective 50

4.2 The electrophysiological perspective 57

5 Derivational Morphology 69

6 Syntax and Morphology at the Word Level: Summary and Critical Evaluation 80

Part II Syntax and Morphology in Sentence Processing 85

Overview 87

7 Mapping Form onto Meaning: The Requirements for a Sentence Processor 89

7.1 The goal: From form to meaning 89

7.2 Sentence comprehension: The major questions 94

7.2.1 Serial vs. parallel processing 95

7.2.2 Modular vs. interactive processing 96

7.2.3 Frequency-based explanations 100

7.2.4 Processing obligatory vs. non-obligatory information 102

7.3 The neurocognitive perspective 103

8 Constituent Structure 107

9 Relational Structure 115

9.1 Relational aspects of verb and verb-argument processing 117

9.1.1 Agreement 117

9.1.2 Verb-argument relations 123

9.2 From case to word order - establishing relations between arguments in verb-final constructions 127

9.2.1 Incremental processing in verb-final structures: First observations and considerations 127

9.2.2 Beyond grammatical functions: Pre-verbal thematic interpretation 134

9.2.3 Argument-argument relations vs. verb-argument relations: A comparison 143

9.2.4 Case marking and word order permutations 145

9.2.5 Summary 159

9.3 From word order to grammatical functions 160

9.3.1 The subject-first preference: Initial observations and theoretical approaches 161

9.3.2 A neurocognitive perspective on subject-object ambiguities 166

9.3.3 The subject-first preference: A "universal" processing strategy? 170

9.3.4 Beyond subjects and objects: Further grammatical function ambiguities 174

10 The Processing of Complex Structures 187

10.1 Processing relative clauses 187

10.1.1 Basic observations 187

10.1.2 Neurophysiological evidence 191

10.1.3 Neuroanatomical evidence 194

10.1.4 Processing relative clauses: Summary 198

10.2 Processing long-distance dependencies 198

II The Processing of Modifiers 209

11.1 Preferences for core over periphery 210

11.2 Attachment ambiguities 214

11.3 Summary 217

12 On the Functional Interpretation of Late Positive ERP Effects in Language Processing 219

12.1 The late positivity as a correlate of syntactic processing? 220

12.2 The late positivity as a correlate of the syntax-semantics interaction? 222

12.3 The late positivity as a correlate of semantic processing? 223

12.4 The late positivity as a domain-general component? 226

12.5 Summary 230

Part III Processing Syntax and Morphology at the Interfaces 233

Overview 235

13 The Influence of Prosody 237

13.1 The neurocognitive correlates of prosodic phrasing 238

13.2 The role of prosodic phrasing within the neurocognitive processing architecture 241

14 Information Structure 247

14.1 Neurocognitive correlates of given vs. new information 247

14.2 The interaction of inter-and intra-sentential information structural requirements 252

14.3 Information structure and word order 260

14.4 Information structure in other domains 265

14.5 Summary 269

Part IV Neurocognitive Models of Syntactic and Morphological Processing 271

Overview 273

15 Neurocognitive Models of Language Comprehension 275

15.1 The declarative/procedural model 275

15.2 The memory, unification, and control (MUC) framework 280

15.3 The neurocognitive model of auditory sentence comprehension 285

15.4 The extended argument dependency model (eADM) 288

16 Future Directions 295.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780199207817

019920781X

0199207828

9780199207824

OCLC:

317473146