Grammaticality judgments on sentences with and without movement of phrasal constituents—an event-related fMRI study

Abstract

One of the leading neurolinguistic theories of syntactic comprehension disorders in agrammatic aphasic subjects—the Trace Deletion Hypothesis—postulates a specific impairment in processing syntactic chains, and that this function is mediated by Broca's area. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the specific involvement of Broca's area in processing syntactic traces can be verified using functional brain imaging. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while healthy subjects were asked to judge the grammaticality of visually presented sentences with and without movement of phrasal constituents. During both kinds of sentences, fMRI showed activation in language-related brain regions. Comparing both kinds of sentences did not result in differential brain activation of left frontal or temporal regions. In particular, Broca's area was similarly activated in processing both moved and nonmoved sentences. Thus, Broca's area seems to be involved in general syntactic processing as required by grammaticality judgments rather than having a specific function in transmitting syntactic relations.