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Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics
Unifying Comprehension And Competence Through Merge: A New Linking Hypothesis Connecting Electrophysiological Data To Linguistic Intuitions, Kevin Patrck Guzzo
Unifying Comprehension And Competence Through Merge: A New Linking Hypothesis Connecting Electrophysiological Data To Linguistic Intuitions, Kevin Patrck Guzzo
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation integrates neuroscience and linguistics to investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying syntactic processing. To do this, we focus on Early Syntactic Negativities (ESNs) which are rapid negative electrophysiological responses known to be elicited by phrase structure violations due to an unexpected lexical category. We examine ESNs elicited in two previously undocumented elliptical constructions, sluicing and swiping, employing event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral acceptability judgments. Our investigation builds upon Collins and Stabler’s (2016) formalization of minimalist syntax, proposing a novel Merge Hypothesis of ESNs. This hypothesis posits a direct link between ESNs and violations of the Merge operation, a fundamental …
Functional Differentiation In The Language Network Revealed By Lesion-Dymptom Mapping, William Matchin, Alexandra Basilakos, Dirk B. Den Ouden, Brielle C. Stark, Gregory Hickok, Julius Fridriksson
Functional Differentiation In The Language Network Revealed By Lesion-Dymptom Mapping, William Matchin, Alexandra Basilakos, Dirk B. Den Ouden, Brielle C. Stark, Gregory Hickok, Julius Fridriksson
Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research
Theories of language organization in the brain commonly posit that different regions underlie distinct linguistic mechanisms. However, such theories have been criticized on the grounds that many neuroimaging studies of language processing find similar effects across regions. Moreover, condition by region interaction effects, which provide the strongest evidence of functional differentiation between regions, have rarely been offered in support of these theories. Here we address this by using lesion-symptom mapping in three large, partially-overlapping groups of aphasia patients with left hemisphere brain damage due to stroke (N = 121, N = 92, N = 218). We identified multiple measure by …
Investigating The Relationship Between Individual Differences And Island Sensitivity, Catherine Pham, Lauren Covey, Alison Gabriele, Saad Aldosari, Robert Fiorentino
Investigating The Relationship Between Individual Differences And Island Sensitivity, Catherine Pham, Lauren Covey, Alison Gabriele, Saad Aldosari, Robert Fiorentino
Department of Linguistics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
It is well-attested that native speakers tend to give low acceptability ratings to sentences that involve movement from within islands, yet the source of island effects remains an active debate. The grammatical account posits that island effects result from syntactic constraints on wh-movement, whereas the resource-limitation view posits that low ratings emerge due to processing-related constraints on the parser, such that islands themselves present processing bottlenecks. The current study addresses this debate by investigating the relationship between island sensitivity and individual differences in cognitive abilities, as it has been argued that the two views make distinct predictions regarding whether a …
Native Language Adaptation To Novel Verb Argument Structures By Spanish-English Bilinguals: An Electrophysiological Investigation, Eve Higby
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Bilinguals have to learn two different grammatical systems. Some aspects of these grammars may be similar across the two languages (for example, the active-passive alternation) while others may exist in only one of the two grammars (for example, the distinction between recent and distant past). This dissertation investigates the degree to which grammar information specific to only one language is available when processing the other language. In particular, the current study focuses on the application of grammatical structures from the bilinguals’ second-learned language to their first-learned language, a direction of language transfer not often investigated. Based on a Shared Syntax …