Processing of Person and Number features in Turkish: An Event Related Potentials Study

Mehmet Aygüneş

doi:10.18492/dad.779572

EN TR

Processing of Person and Number features in Turkish: An Event Related Potentials Study

Abstract

Agreement is one of the most important as well as the most studied linguistic features in the field of language processing. There are two views regarding the processing of Person and Number features. According to the first view, Person and Number features are defined as distinct probes in derivation, while the latter view suggests that these features are bundle features. The current study investigated whether there is any difference in the processing of Person and Number features in Turkish via ERP. The findings indicated that the N400 + P600 pattern was obtained in the processing of both Person and Number features, but a greater N400 amplitude was elicited in Person feature than in the Number feature. The findings are in line with the views suggesting that there are differences in the processing of Person and Number features.

Keywords

Türkçede Kişi ve Sayı özelliklerinin işlemlenmesi: Olaya İlişkin Beyin Potansiyelleri Çalışması

Öz

Uyum, dil işlemleme çalışmalarında en önemli konulardan biri olmakla birlikte en çok çalışılan konulardandır. Kişi ve sayı özelliklerinin işlemlenmesi ile ilgili iki temel görüş bulunmaktadır. Kişi ve Sayı özelliklerinin türetime ayrık sondalar olarak girdiğini öne süren birinci görüşün karşında ikinci görüş bu özelliklerin demet özellikler olduğunu iler sürmektedir. Bu çalışmada Türkçede kişi ve sayı özelliklerinin işlemlenmesi sürecinde bir farklılığın olup olmadığı OİP ile incelenmiştir. Çalışma sonucunda gerek Kişi özelliklerinin gerekse Sayı özelliklerinin işlemlenmesinde N400+P600 bileşeni oluştuğu ancak Kişi özelliğinin N400’ün genliğinin Sayı özelliğine göre daha büyük olduğu ve iki özelliğin farklılaştığı belirlenmiştir. Elde edilen bulgular Kişi ve Sayı özelliklerinin işlemlenmesinde farklılık olduğunu öne süren görüşlerle uyumludur.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Destekleyen Kurum

Tübitak

Proje Numarası

111K230

Teşekkür

I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Özgür Aydın and Prof. Dr. Tamer Demiralp for their valuable criticisms and suggestions. All errors belong to authors.

Kaynakça

Angrilli, A., Penolazzi, B., Vespignani, F., De Vincenzi, M., Job, R., Ciccarelli, L., Palomba, D., Stegagno, L.(2002). Cortical brain responses to semantic incongruity and syntactic violation in Italian language: An event-related potential study. Neuroscience Letters, 322(1), 5-8.
Baker, M. C. (2008). The syntax of agreement and concord. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baker, M. C. (2011). When agreement is for number and gender but not person. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 29(4), 875-915.
Barber, H., & Carreiras, M. (2003). Integrating gender and number information in Spanish word pairs: An ERP study. Cortex, 39, 465-482.
Barber, H. A. & Carreiras, M. (2005). Grammatical gender and number agreement in Spanish: An ERP comparison. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17(1), 137-153.
Béjar, S. (2000a). Structural markedness in formal features: Deriving interpretability. Revue québecoise de linguistique 2, 47-72.
Béjar, S. (2000b). Locality, cyclicity and markedness in Georgian verbal morphology. GLOW 23, Vitoria, Spain.
Béjar, S. & Rezác, M. (2003). Person licensing and the derivation of PCC effects. Ana-Teresa Pérez-Leroux & Yves Roberge (Ed.), Romance linguistics: Theory and acquisition (pp. 49-61) In. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Bianchi, V. (2006). On the syntax of personal arguments. Lingua,116 (12), 2023-2067.
Bornkessel, I., Mcelree, B., Schlesewsky, M. & Friederici, A.D. (2004). Multidimensional contribution to garden-path strength: Dissociating phrase structure fromcase marking. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 495–522.
Burkhardt, P., Fanselow, G. & Schlesewsky, M. (2007). Effects of (in)transitivity on structure building. Brain Research 1163, 100-110.
Carreiras, M., Salillas, E., & Barber, H. A. (2004). Event-related potentials elicited during parsing of ambiguous relative clauses in Spanish. Cognitive Brain Research, 20(1), 98-105.
Carminati, M.N. (2005). Processing reflexes of hierarchy (person>number>gender) and implications for linguistic theory. Lingua,115, 259–285.
Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (2000). Minimalist inquiries: The framework. Roger Martin, David Michaels, & Juan Uriagereka(Ed.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, (pp. 89-155) In. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (2004). Beyond explanatory adequacy. A. Belletti (Ed.), Structures and beyond, (pp.104-131) In. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Choudhary, K., Schlesewsky, M., Roehm, D., & Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I. (2009). The N400 as a correlate of interpretively-relevant linguistic rules: Evidence from Hindi. Neuropsychologia, 47, 3012-3022.
Coulson, S., King, J. W., & Kutas, M. (1998). Expect the unexpected: Event-related brain response to morphosyntactic violations. Language and Cognitive Processes, 13, 21–58.
De Vincenzi, M., Job, R., Di Matteo, R., Angrilli, A., Penolazzi, B., Ciccarelli, L.(2003). Differences in the perception and time course of syntactic and semantic violations. Brain and Language, 85(2), 280-296.
Díaz, B., Sebastián-Gallés, N., Erdocia, K., Mueller, J. & Laka, I. (2011). On the cross- linguistic validity of electrophysiological correlates of morphosyntactic processing: A study of case and agreement violations in Basque. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 24,357–373.
Friederici, A. D., & Mecklinger, A. (1996). Syntactic parsing as revealed by brain processes:First-pass and second-pass parsing processes. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 25, 157-176.
Friederici, A. D., Hahne, A., & Saddy, D. (2002). Distinct neurophysiological patterns reflecting aspects of syntactic complexity and syntactic repair. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 31, 45-63.
Frisch, S., & Schlesewsky, M. (2001). The N400 indicates problems of thematic hierarchizing. Neuroreport, 12, 3391–3394.
Greenberg, J.H. (1963). Some universal of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. J. H. Greenberg, (Ed.), The universals of language, (pp.73-113) In. MIT Press,Cambridge, MA.
Hagoort, P., Brown, C. M., & Groothusen, J. (1993). The syntactic positive shift (SPS) as an ERP measure of syntactic processing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 439-483.
Hagoort, P., Brown, C.M. (1999). Gender electrified: ERP evidence on the syntactic nature of gender processing. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 6, 715–728.
Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. (2000a). ERP effects of listening to speech: Semantic ERP effects. Neuropsychologia, 38, 1518-1530.
Hagoort, P., & Brown, C. (2000b). ERP effects of listening to speech compared to reading: The P600/SPS to syntactic violations in spoken sentence and rapid serial visual presentation. Neuropsychologia, 38, 1531–1549.
Hagoort, P., Wassenaar, M., ve Brown, C. (2003). Real-time semantic compensation in patients with agrammatic comprehension: Electrophysiological evidence for multiple-route plasticity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100,(7), 4340–4345.
Harley, H. & Ritter, E. (2002). Person and number in pronouns: A feature-geometric analysis, Language, 78,(3), 482-526.
Kaan, E., Harris, A., Gibson, E., & Holcomb, P.J. (2000). The P600 as an index of syntactic integration difficulty. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15,(2), 159-201.
Kaan, E., Swaab, T.Y., (2003). Repair, revision, and complexity in syntactic analysis: An electrophysiological differentiation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 15, 98-110.
Kluender, R., & Kutas, M. (1993a). Bridging the gap: Evidence from ERPs on the processing of unbounded dependencies. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 5, 196–214.
Kluender, R., & Kutas, M. (1993b). Subjacency as a processing phenomenon. Language and Cognitive Processes, 8, 573–633.
Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. (1980a). Reading senseless sentences: Brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science, 207, 203–205.
Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. (1983). Event-related brain potentials to grammatical errors and semantic anomalies. Memory and Cognition, 11(5), 539-550.
Kutas, M., & Hillyard, S. A. (1980b). Reading between the lines: Event-related brain potentials during natural speech processing. Brain and Language, 11, 354–273.
Kutas, M., Van Petten, C., Besson, M. (1988). Event-related potential asymmetries during the reading of sentences. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 69, 218–233.
Linn, M.S., Rosen, S. (2003). The functional projections of subject splits. W.E. Griffin (Ed.), The Role of Agreement in Natural Language: TLS 5 Proceedings (pp. 135-146) In. Texas Linguistic Forum, 53.
Lück, M., Hahne, A., & Clahsen, H. (2006). Brain potentials to morphologically complex words during listening. Brain Research, 1077 (1), 144-52.
Mancini, S., Molinaro, N., Rizzi, L. & Carreiras, M. (2011a). A person is not a number: Discourse involvement in subject–verb agreement computation. Brain Research, 1412 (2), 64-76.
Mancini, S., Molinaro, N., Rizzi, L. & Carreiras, M. (2011b). When persons disagree: An ERP study of unagreement in Spanish. Psychophysiology, 48 (10),1361-1371.
Mancini, S., Postiglione, F., Laudanna, A. & Rizzi, L. (2014). On the person-number distinction: Subject-verb agreement processing in Italian. Lingua, 146, 28-38.
Mecklinger, A., Schriefers, H., Steinhauer, K., &Friederici, A. D., (1995). Processing relative clauses varying on syntactic and semantic dimensions: An analysis with event-related potentials. Memory & Cognition, 23, 477-494.
Molinaro, N., Barber, H. A. & Carreiras, M. (2011). Grammatical agreement processing in reading: ERP findings and future directions. Cortex, 47 (8), 908-930.
Molinaro, N., Vespignani, F., & Job, R. (2008a). A deeper reanalysis of a superficial feature: An ERP study on agreement violations. Brain Research, 1228, 161-176.
Molinaro, N., Kim, A., Vespignani, F., & Job, R. (2008b). Anaphoric agreement violation: An ERP analysis of its interpretation. Cognition, 106 (2), 963-974.
Münte, T. F., Heinze, H. J., Matzke, M., Wieringa, B. M., & Johannes, S. (1998). Brain potentials and syntactic violations revisited: no evidence for specificity of the syntactic positive shift. Neuropsychologia, 36 (3), 217-26.
Münte, T. F., Matzke, M., & Johannes S. (1997). Brain activity associated with syntactic incongruencies in words and pseudo-words. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9 (3), 300-311.
Neville, H. J., Nicol, J. L., Barss, A., Forster, K. I., & Garrett, M. F. (1991). Syntactically based sentence processing classes: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 3, 151-165.
Nevins, A. (2011). Multiple agree with clitics: Person complementarity vs. omnivorous number. Natural Language ve Linguistic Theory, 29, 939-971.
Nevins, A., Dillon, B., Malhotra, S., & Phillips, C. (2007). The role of feature-number and feature-type in processing Hindi verb agreement violations. Brain Research, 1164, 81-94.
Osterhout, L. & Mobley, L. A., (1995). Event-related brain potentials elicited by failure to agree. Journal of Memory and Language 34, 739–773.
Osterhout, L., Holcomb, P.J. & Swinney, D.A. (1994). Brain potentials elicited by gardenpath sentences: Evidence of the application of verb information during parsing. Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition, 20, 786-803.
Osterhout, L., Holcomb, P. J. (1992). Event-related brain potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 785–806.
Palolahti, M., Leinob, S., Jokelab, M., Koprab, K., & Paavilainen, P. (2005). Event-related potentials suggest early interaction between syntax and semantics during on-line sentence comprehension. Neuroscience Letters, 384 (3), 222-227.
Preminger, Omer. 2011. Asymmetries between person and number in syntax: a commentary on Baker’s SCOPA. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29:917–937.
Roehm, D., Bornkessel, I., Haider, H. & Schlesewsky, M. (2005). When case meets agreement: Event-related potential effects for morphology-based conflict resolution in human language comprehension. NeuroReport, 16 (8), 875-878.
Rezác, M. (2003). The fine structure of cyclic Agree. Syntax 6.156–82.
Shlonsky, U. (1989). The hierarchical representation of subject-verb agreement. Haifa: University of Haifa. Sigurðsson, H. A. (2004). The syntax of person, tense and speech features. Italian Journal of Linguistics, 16, 219-251.
Silva-Pereyra, J. F. & Carreiras, M. (2007). An ERP study of agreement features in Spanish. Brain Research, 1185 (14), 201-211.
Silverstein, M. (1985). Hierarchy of features and ergativity. Muysken, P., van Riemsdijk, H. (Ed.), Features and Projections, (pp.163-232) In. Foris, Dordrecht.
Zawiszewski, A. & Friederici, A.D. (2009). Processing canonical and non-canonical sentences in Basque: the case of object-verb agreement as revealed by event- related brain potentials. Brain Research, 1284,161–179.
Zawiszewski, A., Santesteban, M. & Laka, I. (2015). Phi-features reloaded: An ERP study on person and number agreement processing. Applied Psycholinguistics.

Ayrıntılar

Birincil Dil

İngilizce

Konular

-

Bölüm

Araştırma Makalesi

Yazarlar

Mehmet Aygüneş ^*
0000-0002-0327-6905
Türkiye

Yayımlanma Tarihi

30 Haziran 2021

Gönderilme Tarihi

12 Ağustos 2020

Kabul Tarihi

18 Mayıs 2021

Yayımlandığı Sayı

Yıl 2021 Cilt: 32 Sayı: 1

DOI

https://doi.org/10.18492/dad.779572

IZ

https://izlik.org/JA68BT69FE

Kaynak Göster

RIS / Bibtex

APA

Aygüneş, M. (2021). Processing of Person and Number features in Turkish: An Event Related Potentials Study. Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi, 32(1), 31-52. https://doi.org/10.18492/dad.779572

Cited By

Özne yüklem uyumunun altında yatan nöral dinamikler: Delta ve teta salınımlarının ayrıştırıcı rolleri

RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi

https://doi.org/10.29000/rumelide.1379194

The Processing of Phi-features in Sentences with Third-person Pronoun: An ERP Study in Turkish

Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi

https://doi.org/10.18492/dad.1217864