TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wittenberg, Eva
A1  - Paczynski, Martin
A1  - Wiese, Heike
A1  - Jackendoff, Ray
A1  - Kuperberg, Gina
T1  - The difference between "giving a rose" and "giving a kiss": Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction
JF  - Journal of memory and language
N2  - 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.
KW  - Event-related potential
KW  - Sentence processing
KW  - Light verb constructions
KW  - Argument structure
KW  - Syntax-semantics interface
KW  - Sustained negativity
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2014.02.002
SN  - 0749-596X
SN  - 1096-0821
VL  - 73
SP  - 31
EP  - 42
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - San Diego
ER  -