title: Human brain potentials to violations in morphologically complex Italian words.
abstract: Event-related brain potentials were recorded while 12 Italian-speaking subjects read correctly and incorrectly inflected verb forms. Participle forms of three types of verbs were investigated: 1st conjugation verbs (parlato 'spoken'), 3rd conjugation verbs (dormito 'slept'), and irregular 2nd conjugation verbs (preso 'taken'). We compared correct and incorrect participle forms; the latter had stem formation errors and/or incorrect participle endings. Event-related potentials (ERP) showed different responses to incorrect regular and incorrect irregular participle forms: incorrect irregulars (*prendato instead of preso) elicited a widespread negativity, whereas incorrect regulars (*parlito, *dormato) produced no effect. This difference replicates previous results on German inflection and supports the linguistic distinction between lexically-based and rule-based inflection.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Medizinische Hochschule, Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gross
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Say
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kleingers
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Clahsen
authors.forename: T F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Münte
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*