Systematicity and Variation in Word Structure Processing Across Languages: a Neuro-Typology approach (SAVANT)

跨语言词结构处理的系统性和变化：神经类型学方法（SAVANT）

• 批准号: ES/V000012/1
• 负责人: Linnaea Stockall
• 金额: $ 94.87万
• 依托单位: Queen Mary University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FV000012%2F1
• 关键词: Systematicity; Variation; Word; Structure; Processing

In general, research on how the human brain processes language has mostly focused on a very small set of familiar, related European languages like English, Dutch, German, Spanish and French. We know almost nothing about how the brains of speakers of most of the world's languages respond to even simple tasks like processing a single word. Not only does this limit our scientific knowledge, it also has the effect of making only a few languages seem worthy of scientific study. Speakers of languages know many things about their language that they have never been taught, and probably do not even know that they know. For example, speakers of English know that the prefix re- attaches to verbs (eg. refill, repaint). Attaching re- to nouns creates impossible words: reidea, resofa. Speakers of English also know that re- can only attach to specific kinds of verbs like 'fill' and 'open' that describe an event which causes a change of state (fill = cause to become filled). If we attach re- to verbs which do not have the right meaning, the result is not a possible word of English: reknow, resmile. Every human language has rules like this which place limits on the way pieces of the language can be combined to make new words. A combination that is impossible in English, like relaugh, is perfectly fine in French (resourir) or Greek (xanagelo). We can test people's unconscious knowledge of these kinds of restrictions with a very simple experiment, in which we show speakers real English words, and impossible words like reknow, one word at a time, and ask them to say judge how good a word it is. As people are doing this experiment, we use neuroimaging equipment to record their brain activity to find out how their brains process these impossible words. We have found that both English and Greek speakers' brains produce the same patterns of activity. When speakers of these two languages read a word that combines a prefix or suffix with a stem of the wrong category (eg. reidea), their brains produce more activity in a region in the left temporal lobe about 200ms after they first see the word. But Greek and English speakers produce a different response when they read a word that combines a prefix or suffix with a stem that is the right category, but has the wrong semantics (eg. reknow): in this case, their brains produce more activity about 450ms after they first see the word, and the response comes from the frontal lobe. Just from these two languages, it seems that human brains have the same kinds of responses in the same locations, and at the same times, to similar kinds of linguistic information across different languages. But Greek and English are only two of thousands of languages. Our project will test speakers from a wider range of different languages, which have a range of different word formation rules and processes. These languages will include other Indo-European languages like Slovenian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, in which verbs usually have four or five separate pieces (morphemes), to mark things like tense, aspect, and the person, number and gender of the subject; and Bangla, a language in which verbs often change their pronunciation to mark grammatical features (like English sing~sang or write~written). We will also include Arabic, in which words are made by combining a 3 consonant root like KTB with different vowel 'melodies' (eg. kitab = book, kaatib = writer, katab = 'to read'), and Tagalog, a language in which words can be made by doubling part of the word (eg. 'halo' = 'a mix', 'hahalo' = 'to mix'), or by inserting an affix into the middle of the word (eg. 'h-in-alo' = 'it was mixed'). We'll use the same simple experiment to show speakers of these languages words which break either a category rule (reidea) or a semantic rule (unsmile) to see whether the brain responses we observed for English and Greek are truly universal, and how different word-formation processes might use the same basic language network in different ways.

一般来说，关于人类大脑如何处理语言的研究主要集中在一小部分熟悉的相关欧洲语言，如英语，荷兰语，德语，西班牙语和法语。我们对世界上大多数语言使用者的大脑如何应对甚至是处理一个单词这样的简单任务几乎一无所知。这不仅限制了我们的科学知识，而且还使少数几种语言似乎值得科学研究。语言的使用者知道许多关于他们的语言的事情，他们从来没有被教导过，甚至可能不知道他们知道。例如，说英语的人都知道，前缀重新连接到动词（如.重新填充、重新涂漆）。把re-附加到名词上会产生不可能的词：reidea，resofa。说英语的人也知道，re-只能附加到特定类型的动词上，比如“fill”和“open”，它们描述了一个导致状态改变的事件（fill =导致被填充）。如果我们把re-附加到没有正确意义的动词上，结果就不是一个可能的英语单词：reknow，resmile。每一种人类语言都有这样的规则，这些规则限制了语言片段组合成新词的方式。一个在英语中不可能的组合，比如relaugh，在法语（resourir）或希腊语（xanagelo）中却非常好。我们可以通过一个非常简单的实验来测试人们对这些限制的潜意识知识，在这个实验中，我们向说话者展示真实的英语单词，以及像reknow这样不可能的单词，一次一个单词，然后让他们说判断这个单词有多好。当人们在做这个实验时，我们使用神经成像设备记录他们的大脑活动，以了解他们的大脑如何处理这些不可能的单词。我们发现说英语和说希腊语的人的大脑产生相同的活动模式。当这两种语言的使用者读到一个前缀或后缀与错误类别的词干相结合的单词时（例如。reidea），他们的大脑在第一次看到这个词后大约200毫秒左右，左颞叶的一个区域产生了更多的活动。但是，当希腊语和英语使用者读到一个前缀或后缀与词干相结合的词时，他们会产生不同的反应，而词干是正确的类别，但语义却错误（例如：reknow）：在这种情况下，他们的大脑在第一次看到这个词后约450 ms产生更多活动，并且反应来自额叶。仅仅从这两种语言来看，人类大脑似乎在相同的时间，在相同的地点，对不同语言中类似的语言信息有着相同的反应。但希腊语和英语只是数千种语言中的两种。我们的项目将测试来自更广泛的不同语言的说话者，这些语言有一系列不同的构词规则和过程。这些语言将包括其他印欧语言，如斯洛文尼亚语和波斯尼亚语/克罗地亚语/塞尔维亚语，其中动词通常有四个或五个独立的部分（语素），以标记时态，体，以及主语的人，数和性别;孟加拉语，一种动词经常改变发音以标记语法特征的语言（如英语sing~sang或write~written）。我们还将包括阿拉伯语，其中的单词是由一个3辅音根，如KTB与不同的元音“旋律”（如。kitab =书，kaatib =作家，katab = '阅读'），和Tagaboo，一种语言，其中单词可以通过加倍单词的一部分（例如，'halo' = 'a mix'，'hahalo' = 'to mix'），或者在单词中间插入词缀（例如。'h-in-alo' = '它是混合的'）。我们将使用同样的简单实验，向这些语言的说话者展示打破类别规则（reidea）或语义规则（unsmile）的单词，以了解我们观察到的英语和希腊语的大脑反应是否真正具有普遍性，以及不同的构词过程如何以不同的方式使用相同的基本语言网络。

项目成果

Early Form-Based Morphological Decomposition in Tagalog: MEG Evidence from Reduplication, Infixation, and Circumfixation.

基于形式的早期形态分解在他加禄语中：重复，递减和绕组的MEG证据。

• DOI: 10.1162/nol_a_00062
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: NEUROBIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
• 影响因子: 3.2
• 作者: Wray, Samantha;Stockall, Linnaea;Marantz, Alec
• 通讯作者: Marantz, Alec

Does linear position matter for morphological processing? Evidence from a Tagalog masked priming experiment

• DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2023.2216813
• 发表时间: 2023-06-07
• 期刊: LANGUAGE COGNITION AND NEUROSCIENCE
• 影响因子: 2.3
• 作者: Cayado，Dave Kenneth Tayao;Wray，Samantha;Stockall，Linnaea
• 通讯作者: Stockall，Linnaea