We present a new dorsal-ventral stream framework for language comprehension which unifies basic neurobiological assumptions (Rauschecker & Scott, 2009) with a cross-linguistic neurocognitive sentence comprehension model (eADM; Bornkessel & Schlesewsky, 2006). The dissociation between (time-dependent) syntactic structure-building and…

This paper demonstrates systematic cross-linguistic differences in the electrophysiological correlates of conflicts between form and meaning ("semantic reversal anomalies"). These engender P600 effects in English and Dutch (e.g. [Kolk et al., 2003] and [Kuperberg et al., 2003]), but a biphasic N400--late positivity pattern in German (Schlesewsky…

Verbs contain multifaceted information about both the semantics of an action, and potential argument structures. Linguistic theory classifies verbs according to whether the denoted action has an inherent (telic) end-point ("fall," "awaken"), or whether it is considered homogenous, or atelic ("read," "worship"). The aim of our study was to examine…

It has been known that lesions in the left inferior frontal gyrus (L. IFG) do not always cause Broca's aphasia, casting doubt upon the specificity of this region. We have previously devised a picture-sentence matching task for a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, and observed that both pars triangularis (L. F3t) of L. IFG…

We present two ERP studies on the processing of word order variations in Japanese, a language that is suited to shedding further light on the implications of word order freedom for neurocognitive approaches to sentence comprehension. Experiment 1 used auditory presentation and revealed that initial accusative objects elicit increased processing…

A number of recent electrophysiological studies of sentence processing have shown that a subclass of syntactic violations elicits very rapid ERP responses, occurring within around 200 ms of the onset of the violation. Such findings raise the question of how it is possible to diagnose violations so quickly. This paper suggests that very rapid…

In the present study we use event related potentials (ERPs) to explore the time course of identification and resolution of verb gaps. ERPs were recorded while participants read sentences that contained a verb gap like "Ron took/sanded the planks, and Bill O the hammer"... Plausibility of the critical words ("hammer") that followed the verb gap was…

We tested the core prediction of the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH) of agrammatic Broca's aphasia, which contends that such patients' comprehension performance is normal for active reversible sentences but at chance level for passive reversible sentences. We analyzed the comprehension performance of 38 Italian Broca's aphasics with verified…

This study investigates effects of verb movement in nine Dutch-speaking agrammatic aphasics. According to linguistic theory, in verb second languages such as Dutch and German, the verb remains in its clause-final base position in embedded clauses, whereas it moves to second position in main clauses. In recent linguistic accounts of agrammatic…

The present investigation focussed on the neural substrates underlying linguistic distinctions that are signalled by prosodic cues. A production experiment was conducted to examine the ability of left- (LHD) and right- (RHD) hemisphere-damaged patients and normal controls to use temporal and fundamental frequency cues to disambiguate sentences…

This study presents results from sentence-completion and grammaticality-judgement tasks with seven German-speaking agrammatic aphasics and seven age-matched control subjects examining verb finiteness marking and verb-second (V2) placement. The patients were found to be selectively impaired in tense marking in the face of preserved mood and…

This paper offers evidence for the Isomorphic Mapping Hypothesis, which holds that individuals with agrammatic aphasia tend to have difficulty comprehending sentences in which the order of NPs is not aligned with the structure of the corresponding event. We begin by identifying a set of constructions in English and Korean for which the IMH makes…

Three French-speaking agrammatic aphasics and three French-speaking Conduction aphasics were tested for comprehension of Active, Passive, Cleft-Subject, Cleft-Object, and Cleft-Object sentences with Stylistic Inversion using an object manipulation test. The agrammatic patients consistently reversed thematic roles in the latter sentence type, and…

Two types of experiments investigate the visual on-line and off-line processing of German ver-verbs (e.g., verbittern "to embitte"). In Experiments 1 and 2 (morphological priming), latency patterns revealed the existence of facilitation effects for the morphological conditions (BITTER-VERBITTERN and BITTERN-VERBITTERN) as compared to the neutral…

Sentence comprehension is a complex task that involves both language-specific processing components and general cognitive resources. Comprehension can be made more difficult by increasing the syntactic complexity or the presentation rate of a sentence, but it is unclear whether the same neural mechanism underlies both of these effects. In the…