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Abstract:
Nouns and verbs convey different aspects of the world and
play different roles in language. Neuropsychological and imaging
data also suggest neurobiological differences in how nouns and
verbs are represented and/or processed. However, most studies have
examined isolated words and have not addressed the fact that, in
some languages, the same word can be a noun or verb depending on
the context. This raises the question of whether differences arise
from how nouns and verbs are represented, are used, or both. We
employed electrophysiological measures (ERPs) to examine
unambiguous nouns (e.g., "beer"), unambiguous verbs ("eat"), and
ambiguous words ("drink") during reading. Each target type appeared
in two, minimally-contrastive contexts: noun-predicting (e.g.,
"John wanted THE [target] but ...") and verb-predicting ("John
wanted TO [target] but..."). Around 400 ms, Nouns elicit more
fronto-central negativity than Verbs. Similarly, ambiguous NVs are
more negative in noun than in verb contexts, although they are
overall more negative than unambiguous words in appropriate
contexts. Nouns and Verbs in inappropriate contexts elicit a large
negativity (N400) and a late positivity. Appropriately used Verbs,
but not ambiguous NVs used as verbs, elicit a left, anterior
positivity around 200 ms. Overall, the results suggest that
noun/verb difference are driven by an interaction of lexical and
processing factors.
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