Event Abstract Back to Event Does Semantic Constraint Modulate Combinatorial Processing? an fMRI study in Farsi Mohammad Momenian1*, Parastoo H. Mokhtari2, Hossein Rafipoor3, Brendan S. Weekes1 and William D. Marslen-Wilson4 1 The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR China 2 University of Alberta, Canada 3 Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Iran 4 University of Cambridge, United Kingdom Introduction. Successful comprehension of a linguistic message includes intact and timely combination of sounds, words, phrases, and sentences. However, the distinct contribution of semantic and syntactic systems to this combinatorial process has always been a controversial issue in the field. The goal of this study is to determine whether higher levels of semantic constraint among the constituents of a sentence would make them less combinatorial. For this purpose, we used Farsi Light Verb Constructions (LVC) where the non-verbal and the verbal parts are semantically constrained. Methods. Twenty seven native Farsi speakers were recruited to do a passive listening task in an event-related design. The stimuli consisted of three types of di-transitive sentences. Type 1 were sentences with an LVC (e.g. He gave an order to the students …). Examples are given in English here, but the word order of sentences in Farsi was SOV (He to the audience order gave …). Type 2 sentences included an object and a verb (e.g. He gave an apple to the students …). The difference between Type 1 and Type 2 is that the combination of the nouns and verbs in Type 1 makes an LVC, but nouns and verbs in Type 2 are not at all semantically constrained. This was confirmed using n-gram analysis in our study. We created Type 3 as a baseline where the combination was semantically anomalous but syntactically acceptable (e.g. He gave a sound to the students). We made three equivalent lists of stimuli so that similar sentences would not be presented to the participants for repetition effect purposes. Univariate analysis of the fMRI data was done with SPM12. Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) was done using the method suggested by Nili et.al., (2014). The two competing hypotheses in this study were: 1) that we would see different patterns of activation in Left Inferior Frontal Gyrus as a function of semantic constraint and 2) that semantic constraint wouldn’t make a difference in syntactic parsing. We have tested several hypotheses regarding changes in multivariate response of the brain regions to the aforementioned sentence types using corresponding Representational Dissimilarity Matrices (RDM) and computed their spearman correlation with whole brain search-light RDMs. Results. Univariate analysis revealed differences in left putamen when comparing LVC versus non-LVC conditions at an uncorrected threshold. However, none of the model RDMs were significantly correlated with brain RDMs at the population level using FDR correction for multiple comparison confirming the findings of the univariate analysis. Conclusion. Findings from Constructionist approaches (Allen, Pereira, Botvinick, & Goldberg, 2012) have shown that the neural representation of very similar sentences (e.g. Sally gave the book to Joe vs. Sally gave Joe a book) are different. However, our findings speak to the contrary. We showed that semantic constraint of the constituents in a sentence did not affect syntactic processing, at least using fMRI. The higher activation in putamen in LVCs could be an indication of the involvement of cognitive control regions in setting up the non-canonical argument structure of LVCs. Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge Iran National Brain Mapping Lab for their help during this project. References Allen, K., Pereira, F., Botvinick, M., & Goldberg, A. E. (2012). Distinguishing grammatical constructions with fMRI pattern analysis. Brain and Language, 123(3), 174-182. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2012.08.005 Nili, H., Wingfield, C., Walther, A., Su, L., Marslen-Wilson, W., & Kriegeskorte, N. (2014). A toolbox for representational similarity analysis. PLoS Computational Biology, 10(4), e1003553. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003553 Keywords: Argument sharing, Combinatorial, Farsi (Persian), fMRI, Light verb construction, semantic constraint Conference: Academy of Aphasia 57th Annual Meeting, Macau, Macao, SAR China, 27 Oct - 29 Oct, 2019. Presentation Type: Poster presentation Topic: Not eligible for student award Citation: Momenian M, Mokhtari PH, Rafipoor H, Weekes BS and Marslen-Wilson WD (2019). Does Semantic Constraint Modulate Combinatorial Processing? an fMRI study in Farsi. Front. Hum. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 57th Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2019.01.00069 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 06 May 2019; Published Online: 09 Oct 2019. * Correspondence: Mx. Mohammad Momenian, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, SAR China, momenian21@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Mohammad Momenian Parastoo H Mokhtari Hossein Rafipoor Brendan S Weekes William D Marslen-Wilson Google Mohammad Momenian Parastoo H Mokhtari Hossein Rafipoor Brendan S Weekes William D Marslen-Wilson Google Scholar Mohammad Momenian Parastoo H Mokhtari Hossein Rafipoor Brendan S Weekes William D Marslen-Wilson PubMed Mohammad Momenian Parastoo H Mokhtari Hossein Rafipoor Brendan S Weekes William D Marslen-Wilson Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.