@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{BurmesterSpalekWartenburger2014, author = {Burmester, Juliane and Spalek, Katharina and Wartenburger, Isabell}, title = {Context updating during sentence comprehension: The effect of aboutness topic}, series = {Brain \& language : a journal of the neurobiology of language}, volume = {137}, journal = {Brain \& language : a journal of the neurobiology of language}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0093-934X}, doi = {10.1016/j.bandl.2014.08.001}, pages = {62 -- 76}, year = {2014}, language = {en} }