Human brain potentials to violations in morphologically complex Italian words.
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.
Gross
M
M
Department of Neurology, Medizinische Hochschule, Hannover, Germany.
Say
T
T
Kleingers
M
M
Clahsen
H
H
Münte
T F
TF
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*