@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}
}