Representation of the verb's argument-structure in the human brain

Ramin Assadollahi,Brigitte S Rockstroh

doi:10.1186/1471-2202-9-69

Abstract

BackgroundA verb's argument structure defines the number and relationships of participants needed for a complete event. One-argument (intransitive) verbs require only a subject to make a complete sentence, while two- and three-argument verbs (transitives and ditransitives) normally take direct and indirect objects. Cortical responses to verbs embedded into sentences (correct or with syntactic violations) indicate the processing of the verb's argument structure in the human brain. The two experiments of the present study examined whether and how this processing is reflected in distinct spatio-temporal cortical response patterns to isolated verbs and/or verbs presented in minimal context.ResultsThe magnetoencephalogram was recorded while 22 native German-speaking adults saw 130 German verbs, presented one at a time for 150 ms each in experiment 1. Verb-evoked electromagnetic responses at 250 – 300 ms after stimulus onset, analyzed in source space, were higher in the left middle temporal gyrus for verbs that take only one argument, relative to two- and three-argument verbs. In experiment 2, the same verbs (presented in different order) were preceded by a proper name specifying the subject of the verb. This produced additional activation between 350 and 450 ms in or near the left inferior frontal gyrus, activity being larger and peaking earlier for one-argument verbs that required no further arguments to form a complete sentence.ConclusionLocalization of sources of activity suggests that the activation in temporal and frontal regions varies with the degree by which representations of an event as a part of the verbs' semantics are completed during parsing.

Highlights

A verb's argument structure defines the number and relationships of participants needed for a complete event
Retrieval of the argument structure from the verb itself has been suggested by behavioral studies, which reported faster responses to two-compared to three-argument verbs [13]
This, too, is supported by faster responses to verbs related to nouns relative to unrelated verbs [14], by faster responses whenever two-compared to three-argument verbs had to be integrated into sentences (Ahrens, 2003), and by faster responses to words following verbs with one compared to three participant roles [15,16]

Summary

Introduction

A verb's argument structure defines the number and relationships of participants needed for a complete event. Cortical responses to verbs embedded into sentences (correct or with syntactic violations) indicate the processing of the verb's argument structure in the human brain. The two experiments of the present study examined whether and how this processing is reflected in distinct spatio-temporal cortical response patterns to isolated verbs and/or verbs presented in minimal context. The verb's argument structure defines the number and relationships of participants needed for a complete event. The cortical processing of argument structures has been investigated mostly in designs employing entire sentences, wh-questions (that is questions starting with 'what', 'which', who' or else), or sentences including syntactic or semantic violations [3,4,5,6,2].

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Conclusion