Word Classes in Neurolinguistics

Abstract

Abstract This chapter reviews recent neurolinguistic research on word classes. Although a variety of phenomena involving word classes have been investigated from a neurolinguistic perspective, the vast majority of studies have focused on the noun–verb distinction. In fact, the cortical underpinnings of this distinction have been explored in countless studies employing all of the major brain-mapping methods. The chapter covers the following specific issues, all of which are prominent in the neurolinguistic literature: the universal semantic prototypes of nouns and verbs; differential impairments affecting either just nouns or just verbs in either just oral output or just written output; efforts to overcome confounds between conceptual and grammatical factors when searching for the neural basis of the noun–verb distinction; and the role of inflection in this distinction. The chapter also briefly considers two subtypes of nouns (i.e. proper and common), two subtypes of verbs (i.e. transitive and intransitive), and a few word classes beyond the noun–verb distinction.