Decomposing animacy reversals between agents and experiencers: An ERP study |
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Authors: | Bourguignon Nicolas Drury John E Valois Daniel Steinhauer Karsten |
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Institution: | a Department of Linguistics, University of Montreal, Canada b Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, Montreal, Canada c Department of Linguistics, Stony Brook University, USA d School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, Canada |
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Abstract: | The present study aimed to refine current hypotheses regarding thematic reversal anomalies, which have been found to elicit either N400 or - more frequently - “semantic-P600” (sP600) effects. Our goal was to investigate whether distinct ERP profiles reflect aspectual-thematic differences between Agent-Subject Verbs (ASVs; e.g., ‘to eat’) and Experiencer-Subject Verbs (ESVs; e.g., ‘to love’) in English. Inanimate subject noun phrases created reversal anomalies on both ASV and ESV. Animacy-based prominence effects and semantic association were controlled to minimize their contribution to any ERP effects. An N400 was elicited by the target verb in the ESV but not the ASV anomalies, supporting the hypothesis of a distinctive aspectual-thematic structure between ESV and ASV. Moreover, the N400 finding for English ESV shows that, in contrast to previous claims, the presence versus absence of N400s for this kind of anomaly cannot be exclusively explained in terms of typological differences across languages. |
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Keywords: | ERP Semantic P600 N400 Language processing Verbal aspect Thematic roles Cross-linguistic differences Psych-verbs Animacy |
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