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Abstract:
Abstract: Current linguistic theories almost unanimously
assume the presence of invisible hierarchical structures behind
observable linear sequences of words. Little is, however, known
about whether any use is actually made, in language processing, of
pieces of information incorporated into hierarchical structures,
such as the bottom-up piling of projections, the distinction
between lexical and functional projections, and local or non-local
domains for linguistic dependencies. Event-related brain potentials
are a useful instrument for exploring these issues. The ERP effects
of four types of dependencies in Japanese are investigated (58
scalp electrodes): the SR type, the Negation type, the Tense type,
and the Wh-Q type. Our data show that only the dependencies in a
lexical projection (the SR type) elicit the N400-like component.
The local syntactic dependencies (the Negation and the Tense
types), but not the non-local syntactic one (the Wh-Q type) and the
semantic one (the SR type), invoke left temporal negativities (LTN)
rather than left anterior negativities (LAN), whereas only the
non-local syntactic dependencies elicit the P600 component. In
addition, our data exhibit a correlation between the hierarchical
positions of the projections and the latency peaks of the ERP
components, suggesting that the syntactic dependencies in distinct
functional projections are temporally processed in a bottom-up
manner. (Supported by COE08CE1001)
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