Cognitive Processing of Verb Morphology and Its Implications for Organization of Language Faculty

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To investigate into the neurocognitive basis for the processing of verb morphology, we conducted (1)psycholinguistic, (2)neuroscientific, (3)quantitative linguistic, (4)theoretical linguistic, (5)connectionist modeling researches. A behavioral psycholinguistic experiment was conducted using a cross-modal priming paradigm. The results indicated that derived words with regular morphological relationship (verbs with a potential suffix) showed stronger priming effects compared to semantically related words with irregular morphological relationship (transitive/intransitive verbs). A neuroimaging study was conducted using fMRI as a joint research with Hiroshima Prefectural Rehabilitation Center. So-called Broca region in the inferior frontal gylus and temporal pole were activated when Japanese native speakers processed sentences with complex verb morphology. Event-related potential response was measured by electro-encepharography while Japanese native speakers were processing verb conjugation patterns. An ERP component called P600, a component associated with syntactic violations, was observed in expressions with morphological violation. A corpus study was conducted as to the distinction between so-called ‘syntactic compound verbs' and ‘lexical compound verbs'. The results of quantitative research supported the dichotomy of syntactic vs. lexical compound verbs assumed in theoretical linguistics. Theoretical linguistic studies on Japanese complex predicates, a connectionist modeling of acquisition of verb forms were conducted. International seminars were organized every year with leading researchers in the field of cognitive neuroscience of language, including Dr.Colin Phillips (University of Maryland, USA,2002), Dr.Liina Pylkkanen (New York University, USA,2003), and Dr.Matt Davis (Medical Research Council, UK,2004).