| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 2007: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
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| Research Abstract |
We have employed the so-called Dual Mechanism Model as our working hypothesis, which claims that two different mental/neurological mechanisms of memory and computation are involved in the processing of words, and conducted an ERP (Event-Related Potentials) experiment to investigate the processing of Japanese complex predicates at the neurological level. Our findings are as follows.
We used two types of causative constructions, lexical causative (LC) and sase-causative (SC), and observed the ERP responses to unacceptable sentences (ULC:^*kansei-o narab-e-ru 'arrange shouts of joy', USC:^*ryoori-o narab-ase-ru 'make dishes line up') in comparison to the acceptable counterparts (ALC: ryoori-o narab-e-ru 'arrange dishes', ASC: senshu-o narab-ase-ru 'make players line up'). The ULC sentences elicited a typical N400, which we interpret to reflect the semantic selectional violations. In contrast, the USC sentences elicited an AN (anterior negativity) followed by an N400. The AN can be taken to reflect the computational process involved in detecting the ill-formedness of the USC sentences, while the following N400 is a reflection of the semantic violation. In addition, when the two acceptable sentence types (ALC and ASC) were compared, it was observed that the ASC elicited a P600, which we interpret to reflect the cost of syntactic computation involved in processing the bi-clausal structure of SC sentences. Thus our results basically support the Dual Mechanism approach to causative constructions, LC involving memory-based processing while SC being processed by syntactic computation.
We have conducted another experiment, in the hope of accumulating basic ERP data on language processing in Japanese, exploring what ERP components are observed in case violations. We observed N400 for the violation of lexically specified case array of verbs (^*kodomo-ni shikaru 'scold a child', ^*hito-o butsukaru 'hit a person').
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