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De Resende, N. C. A., Mota, M. B., & Seuren, P. A. M. (2019). The processing of grammatical gender agreement in Brazilian Portuguese: ERP evidence in favor of a single route. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 48(1), 181-198. doi:10.1007/s10936-018-9598-z.
Abstract
The present study used event-related potentials to investigate whether the processing of grammatical gender agreement involving gender regular and irregular forms recruit the same or distinct neurocognitive mechanisms and whether different grammatical gender agreement conditions elicit the same or diverse ERP signals. Native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese read sentences containing congruent and incongruent grammatical gender agreement between a determiner and a regular or an irregular form (condition 1) and between a regular or an irregular form and an adjective (condition 2). However, in condition 2, trials with incongruent regular forms elicited more positive ongoing waveforms than trial with incongruent irregular forms. We found a biphasic LAN/P600 effect for gender agreement violation involving regular and irregular forms in both conditions. Our findings suggest that gender agreement between determiner and nouns recruits the same neurocognitive mechanisms regardless of the nouns’ form and that, depending on the grammatical class of the words involved in gender agreement, differences in ERP signals can emerge -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2013). From Whorf to Montague: Explorations in the theory of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Seuren, P. A. M. (2013). The logico-philosophical tradition. In K. Allan (
Ed. ), The Oxford handbook of the history of linguistics (pp. 537-554). Oxford: Oxford University Press. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (2008). Apollonius Dyscolus en de semantische syntaxis. In J. van Driel, & T. Janssen (
Eds. ), Ontheven aan de tijd: Linguistisch-historische studies voor Jan Noordegraaf bij zijn zestigste verjaardag (pp. 15-24). Amsterdam: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU Amsterdam.Abstract
This article places the debate between Chomskyan autonomous syntax and Generative Semantics in the context of the first beginnings of syntactic theory set out in Perì suntáxeõs ('On syntax') by Apollonius Dyscolus (second century CE). It shows that, theoretically speaking, the Apollonian concept of syntax implied an algorithmically organized system of composition rules with lexico-semantic, not a sound-based, input, unlike Apollonius's strictly sound-based postulated rule systems for the composition of phonemes into syllables and of syllables into words. This meaning-based notion of syntax persisted essentially unchanged (though refined by Sanctius during the sixteenth century) until the 1930s, when structuralism began to take the notion of algorithmically organized rule systems for the generation of sentences seriously. This meant a break with the Apollonian meaning-based approach to syntax. The Generative Semantics movement, which arose during the 1960s but was nipped in the bud, implied a return to the tradition, though with much improved formal underpinnings.
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