title: An ER-fMRI study of Russian inflectional morphology.
abstract: The generation of regular and irregular past tense verbs has long been a testing ground for different models of inflection in the mental lexicon. Behavioral studies examined a variety of languages, but neuroimaging studies rely almost exclusively on English and German data. In our fMRI experiment, participants inflected Russian verbs and nouns of different types and corresponding nonce stimuli. Irregular real and nonce verbs activated inferior frontal and inferior parietal regions more than regular verbs did, while no areas were more activated in the opposite comparison. We explain this activation pattern by increasing processing load: a parametric contrast revealed that these regions are also more activated for nonce stimuli compared to real stimuli. A very similar pattern is found for nouns. Unlike most previously obtained results, our findings are more readily compatible with the single-system approach to inflection, which does not postulate a categorical difference between regular and irregular forms.
authors.affiliation: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Trans 10, Utrecht 3512JK, The Netherlands; Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University, Galernaya Street 58/60, St. Petersburg 190000, Russia. Electronic address: slioussar@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Natalia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Slioussar
authors.affiliation: N.P. Bechtereva Institute of the Human Brain, Russian Academy of Sciences, Akademika Pavlova Street 9, St. Petersburg 197376, Russia. Electronic address: max@ihb.spb.ru.
authors.forename: Maxim V
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Kireev
authors.affiliation: Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University, Galernaya Street 58/60, St. Petersburg 190000, Russia. Electronic address: tatiana.chernigovskaya@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Tatiana V
authors.initials: TV
authors.lastname: Chernigovskaya
authors.affiliation: N.P. Bechtereva Institute of the Human Brain, Russian Academy of Sciences, Akademika Pavlova Street 9, St. Petersburg 197376, Russia. Electronic address: kataeva@ihb.spb.ru.
authors.forename: Galina V
authors.initials: GV
authors.lastname: Kataeva
authors.affiliation: N.P. Bechtereva Institute of the Human Brain, Russian Academy of Sciences, Akademika Pavlova Street 9, St. Petersburg 197376, Russia. Electronic address: korotkov@ihb.spb.ru.
authors.forename: Alexander D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Korotkov
authors.affiliation: N.P. Bechtereva Institute of the Human Brain, Russian Academy of Sciences, Akademika Pavlova Street 9, St. Petersburg 197376, Russia. Electronic address: medvedev@ihb.spb.ru.
authors.forename: Svyatoslav V
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Medvedev
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000502:physiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Dual-system theories; Mental lexicon; Morphology; Processing load; Russian; Single-system theories; fMRI