6533b86cfe1ef96bd12c817d

RESEARCH PRODUCT

When nominal features are marked on verbs: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study

Chiara FinocchiaroMargherita FrancoliniBrigida FierroGiuseppe GigliaAlfonso CaramazzaAlfonso CaramazzaFilippo Brighina

subject

AdultLinguistics and LanguageCognitive Neurosciencemedicine.medical_treatmentPrefrontal CortexExperimental and Cognitive PsychologyVerbFunctional LateralityLanguage and LinguisticsMagneticsSpeech and HearingCliticNounReaction TimemedicineHumansPrefrontal cortexPsycholinguisticslanguageSyntaxElectric StimulationLinguisticsNoun phraseTranscranial magnetic stimulationItalyTMSLateralitycliticsPsychologyCognitive psychology

description

It has been claimed that verb processing (as opposed to noun processing) is subserved by specific neural circuits in the left prefrontal cortex. In this study, we took advantage of the unusual grammatical characteristics of clitic pronouns in Italian (e.g., lo and la in portalo and portala 'bring it [masculine]/[feminine]', respectively)-the fact that clitics have both nominal and verbal characteristics, to explore the neural correlates of verb and clitic processing. We used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to suppress the excitability of the left prefrontal cortex and to assess its role in producing verb+det+noun and verb+clitic phrases. Results showed an interference effect for both kinds of phrases when stimulation was applied to the left but not to the right prefrontal cortex. However, the interference effect was significantly greater for the verb+clitic than for the verb+det+noun phrases. These findings support the view that clitics increase the morphosyntactic complexity of verbs.

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2006-09-04
10.1016/j.bandl.2007.09.002http://hdl.handle.net/10447/35929