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ALERIA CAVALCANTE LAGE * MIRIAM LEMLE * MAURÍCIO CAGY ** ANTONIO FERNANDO CATELLI INFANTOSI ***

First Biolinguistic Investigations February 23-25th, 2007 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. GRANULATING THE BOTTOM-UP COURSE OF SYNTACTIC DERIVATION: AN EVENT-RELATED BRAIN POTENCIAL (ERP) STUDY. ALERIA CAVALCANTE LAGE * MIRIAM LEMLE * MAURÍCIO CAGY **

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ALERIA CAVALCANTE LAGE * MIRIAM LEMLE * MAURÍCIO CAGY ** ANTONIO FERNANDO CATELLI INFANTOSI ***

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  1. First Biolinguistic Investigations February 23-25th, 2007 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic GRANULATING THE BOTTOM-UP COURSEOF SYNTACTIC DERIVATION:AN EVENT-RELATED BRAIN POTENCIAL (ERP) STUDY ALERIA CAVALCANTE LAGE* MIRIAM LEMLE* MAURÍCIO CAGY** ANTONIO FERNANDO CATELLI INFANTOSI*** * Linguistics Department and Program in Linguistics/UFRJ-Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil **Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department/ UFF- Federal Fluminense University, Brazil ***Biomedical Engineering Program, COPPE/ UFRJ-Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  2. NEUROLINGUISTICS is tested in the brain What we already know about the Language Faculty through Linguistic Theory Hemodynamic techniques through Electromagnetic techniques Electroencephalography (EEG) ERP extraction 2

  3. THE SETTING OF ERP EXPERIMENTS 3

  4. França, 2002 The boy ate a sandwich The boy ate a sandal ROBUST FINDINGS SINCE THE 80’S 4

  5. v [Root] v Heavy verbs 5

  6. p v [Root] v prep n Heavy verbs kick Ø 5

  7. p v [Root] v prep n Heavy verbs kick Ø with ball 5

  8. p v [Root] v prep n Heavy verbs kick Ø with ball 5 light verb have a ball

  9. T vP T Agr v pp withi p tj the planets tj moon This Study’s Goals • First, investigate the neurophysiology of light verbs. Test the neurophysiology of the integration between light verb ‘have’ and a • complement; that is, an integration that poses no semantic restrictions. An • incongruous reading is only possible when the semantics of the subject is • compatible with that of the complement:  The planets have a moon The dogs have a moon  6

  10. TP T’ vP the boyi v the chairi [ed] DP ti Root v kick  nP n’ the Root n ball  • Second, test the neurophysiology of the subject- vP integration in case of heavy verb. This poses an interesting question to any linguistic model that supports that the course of the derivation is bottom-up: incongruous subjects would be visible neurophysiologically later than the wave related to the verb-complement merge  The boy kicked the ball  The chair kicked the ball 7

  11. Technique: Event-related Brain Potential – ERP extraction • 29 healthy adults • 40 congruous SVO sentences with heavy verbs • 40 incongruous SVO sentences with heavy verbs • 40 congruous SVO sentences with light verb have • 40 incongruous SVO sentences with light verb have • 160 fillers The First Experiment trigger  neurophysiological answer neurophysiological answer 8

  12. FP2 FP1 Findings: light verb ter (have) statisticaly significant interval: 760-800 Thin line – O menino tinha uma bola (The boy had a ball) Thick line – O menino tinha uma lua (The boy had a moon) 9

  13. Discussing the findings 1. Overlapping negative ERPs around 200 ms can be related to an initial semantic access to the subject or related to the verb agreement. 2. Overlapping N400s (around 500 ms): object merge. The verb ter (have) as light verb is a verb with little semantic content, working only as a connector of possession. Ter (have) depends on the subject to complete its meaning. Around 500 ms, there is no subject integration yet, thus no semantic incongruence, what explains the overlapping waves. (Tem uma lua / has a moon is congruous: It becomes incongruous depending on the semantics of the subject.) 3. Negative ERPs around 700 ms: correspond to subject merge. The ERP related to the incongruous sentences has a larger amplitude, if compared to the ERP related to congruous sentences. At this moment (around 700 ms), the speaker computes the incongruence of the sentence, as he already knows the semantics of the subject in relation to the vP. 10

  14. WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW NEUROPHISIOLOGICALY QUESTIONS 1. What are the characteristics of the merge between the light verb ter (have) and its object? 2. What are the characteristics of the merge between a vP with a heavy verb and its subject?  11

  15. Experiment 2: subject merge with vP with a heavy verb trigger  neurophysiological answer neurophysiological answer 12

  16. FP2 FP1 Findings of Experiment 2: subject + vP with heavy verb statisticaly significant interval: 220-330 statisticaly significant interval: 440-600 statisticaly significant interval: 700-760 Thin line – A cadeira chutou a bola (The chair kicked the ball) Thick line – O menino chutou a bola (The boy kicked the ball) 13

  17. Discussing findings of Experiment 2 1. Negative ERPs around 200 ms: initial semantic access to the subject. The ERP around 200 ms related to sentences with incongrous subject has a larger amplitude, if compared to the one related to sentences with congruous subject. These ERPs cannot be related to verb agreement. The semantics of the subject was the only manipulated element. So, these ERPs are related to some semantic access to the subject: access to basic semantic features of the subject like [animated] and [human]. 2. N400s (450 ms) of different amplitudes: object merge. When there is a semantic anomaly of the object related to the verb (João comeu sandália – John ate sandal), the N400 has a larger amplitude, if compared to the amplitude of the N400 related to congruous sentences. In this experiment there is no semantic incongruence in the object in relation to the verb. The semantic incongruence is in the subject in relation to the verb. Thus, the object merge in sentences with a subject that does not combine with the verb is weak. There is little cognitive effort, because at this moment semantic features of the subject, which is incongrous, have already been accessed, eliminating the expectancy of assigning meaning to the sentence. For this reason, the N400 (verb-complement merge) from sentences with subject that does not combine with the verb has a smaller amplitude than the N400 from congrous sentence. 3. Negative ERPs around 700 ms: subject merge. The derivation course is bottom-up. The ERP around 700 ms and related to sentences with incongrous subject has a larger amplitude, if compared to the one related to congrous sentences. There is more difficulty in the cognitive task of integrating the subject when it is not congruous. 14

  18. Conclusion ERPs of Experiment 2 (Cz) 15

  19. References: • CHOMSKY, N. (1995) The minimalist program. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 420 p. • FRANÇA, A. I.; LEMLE, M.; CAGY, M.; INFANTOSI, A. F. C. (2007) Conexões conceptuais: um estudo de ERPs sobre a inescapável sintaxe na semântica. Revista Letras, Curitiba, Paraná. (In press) • HAGOORT, P; HALD, L.; BASTIAANSEN, M.; PETERSSON, K. M. (2004) Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension. Science, v. 304, p. 439-441, April 16. • HALLE, M; MARANTZ, A. (1993) Distributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection. In: HALE, K.; KEYSER, S. J. (Eds.) The view from building 20: essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. p. 111-176. (Current Studies in Linguistics, 24) • HARLEY, H; NOYER, R. (1998) Licensing in the non-lexicalist lexicon: nominalizations, vocabulary items, and the Encyclopedia. In: HARLEY, H. (Ed.) Papers from the Upenn/MIT roundtable on argument structure and aspect. Cambrigde, Massachusetts: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. p. 119-137. (MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 32) • KUTAS, M.; HILLYARD, S. A. (1980) Reading senseless: brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science, Washington, v. 207, n. 4427, p. 203-205, January 11. • LAGE, A. C. (2005) Aspectosneurofisiológicos de concatenação e idiomaticidade em português do Brasil: um estudo de potenciais bioelétricos relacionados a eventos lingüísticos (ERPs). Tese de Doutorado em Lingüística, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Faculdade de Letras, Departamento de Lingüística. In: FINGER, I.; MATZENAUER, C. L. B. Orgs. (2006) TEP: Textos em Psicolingüística. Publicação eletrônica do GT de Psicolingüística da ANPOLL. Pelotas: EDUCAT - Editora da Universidade Católica de Pelotas. • MARANTZ, A. (2001) Words. Handout of a talk at the XX West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, University of Southern California. 29 p. Disponível em: http://web.mit.edu/~marantz/Public/WCCFL.doc • ______. (1997) No escape from syntax: Don’t try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (PWPL), Pennsylvania, v. 4, n. 2, Proceedings of the 21st Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, p. 201-225. • ______. (1996) “Cat” as a phrasal idiom: consequences of late insertion in Distributed Morphology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT, ms. 24 p.

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