Abstract
The present fMRI study tested predictions of the evolution-of-syntax framework which analyzes certain structures as remnants (“fossils”) of a non-hierarchical (non-recursive) proto-syntactic stage in the evolution of language (Progovac, 2015, 2016). We hypothesized that processing of these structures, in comparison to more modern hierarchical structures, will show less activation in the brain regions that are part of the syntactic network, including Broca’s area (BA 44 and 45) and the basal ganglia, i.e., the network bolstered in the line of descent of humans through genetic mutations that contributed to present-day dense neuronal connectivity among these regions. Fourteen healthy native English-speaking adults viewed written stimuli consisting of: (1) full sentences (FullS; e.g., The case is closed); (2) Small Clauses (SC; e.g., Case closed); (3) Complex hierarchical compounds (e.g., joy-killer); and (4) Simple flat compounds (e.g., kill-joy). SC (compared to FullS) resulted in reduced activation in the left BA 44 and right basal ganglia. Simple (relative to complex) compounds resulted in increased activation in the inferior temporal gyrus and the fusiform gyrus (BA 37/19), areas implicated in visual and semantic processing. We discuss our findings in the context of current theories regarding the co-evolution of language and the brain.
Highlights
It has been suggested that the study of how syntactic structures are represented and processed in the brain has reached an impasse, failing to achieve cross-fertilization between the fields of Linguistics and Neuroscience (e.g., Poeppel and Embick, 2005; Fedorenko and Kanwisher, 2009)
Brain regions in the occipital and temporal lobe, left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 44, Broca’s area) and right putamen showed less activation to Small Clauses (SC) compared to full sentences (FullS) (Table 1A)
Activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 44, Broca’s area), right putamen, and in regions in the right temporal and occipital lobes were lower for SC condition compared to both FullS and 2WordS conditions (Table 1C and Figure 2A)
Summary
It has been suggested that the study of how syntactic structures are represented and processed in the brain has reached an impasse, failing to achieve cross-fertilization between the fields of Linguistics and Neuroscience (e.g., Poeppel and Embick, 2005; Fedorenko and Kanwisher, 2009). Arbib (2012, 2016) argued that language emerged as a result of biological and cultural co-evolution, originating from the brain structures and functions allowing for imitation and pantomime (mirror neurons), as well as social and cognitive capacities (intention reading and symbolic thinking). Under this hypothesis, protolanguage was a system of protosign, holophrastic in nature. “compositional” view, protolanguage (in the species predating Homo Sapiens) consisted of words that could be combined without syntactic structure, which evolved into language by adding syntax (Bickerton, 1995)
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