@article{WittenbergPaczynskiWieseetal.2014,
  author    = {Wittenberg, Eva and Paczynski, Martin and Wiese, Heike and Jackendoff, Ray and Kuperberg, Gina},
  title     = {The difference between "giving a rose" and "giving a kiss": Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction},
  series = {Journal of memory and language},
  volume    = {73},
  journal   = {Journal of memory and language},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {San Diego},
  issn      = {0749-596X},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.jml.2014.02.002},
  pages     = {31 -- 42},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with processing light verb constructions such as "give a kiss". These constructions consist of a semantically underspecified light verb ("give") and an event nominal that contributes most of the meaning and also activates an argument structure of its own ("kiss"). This creates a mismatch between the syntactic constituents and the semantic roles of a sentence. Native speakers read German verb-final sentences that contained light verb constructions (e.g., "Julius gave Anne a kiss"), non-light constructions (e.g., "Julius gave Anne a rose"), and semantically anomalous constructions (e.g., 'Julius gave Anne a conversation"). ERPs were measured at the critical verb, which appeared after all its arguments. Compared to non-light constructions, the light verb constructions evoked a widely distributed, frontally focused, sustained negative-going effect between 500 and 900 ms after verb onset. We interpret this effect as reflecting working memory costs associated with complex semantic processes that establish a shared argument structure in the light verb constructions.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{YueBastiaanseAlter2014,
  author    = {Yue, Jinxing and Bastiaanse, Roelien and Alter, Kai},
  title     = {Cortical plasticity induced by rapid Hebbian learning of novel tonal word-forms: Evidence from mismatch negativity},
  series = {Brain \& language : a journal of the neurobiology of language},
  volume    = {139},
  journal   = {Brain \& language : a journal of the neurobiology of language},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {San Diego},
  issn      = {0093-934X},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.bandl.2014.09.007},
  pages     = {10 -- 22},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Although several experiments reported rapid cortical plasticity induced by passive exposure to novel segmental patterns, few studies have devoted attention to the neural dynamics during the rapid learning of novel tonal word-forms in tonal languages, such as Chinese. In the current study, native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were exposed to acoustically matched real and novel segment-tone patterns. By recording their Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses (an ERP indicator of long-term memory traces for spoken words), we found enhanced MMNs to the novel word-forms over the left-hemispheric region in the late exposure phase relative to the early exposure phase. In contrast, no significant changes were identified in MMN responses to the real word during familiarisation. Our results suggest a rapid Hebbian learning mechanism in the human neocortex which develops long-term memory traces for a novel segment-tone pattern by establishing new associations between the segmental and tonal representations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.},
  language  = {en}
}