| Literature DB >> 20035324 |
Yukika Nishimura1, Koji Sugisaki, Noriko Hattori, Yasushi Inokuchi, Masayuki Komachi, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Mariko Ogawa, Motohiro Okada, Yuji Okazaki, Waro Taki, Tetsuro Yamamoto, Etsuko Yoshida, Seiki Ayano.
Abstract
Japanese is a free word-order language, and allows both subject-object-verb (SOV) and object-subject-verb (OSV) orders. Our previous study using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) imaging revealed that OSV sentences induce more activation in the left frontal lobe than SOV sentences. The present study develops our previous experiment: (1) by adopting an event-related design, and (2) by using sentences involving the adverb naze 'why', which plays a prominent role in recent linguistic studies. The results of our new experiment indicated that the cerebral activation in O why SV sentences was significantly larger than that in S why OV sentences, in the right anterior prefrontal region, which is consistent with the assumption that O why SV order is derived from S why OV order. We speculate that the activation observed in the anterior prefrontal cortex during the processing of the sentences involving 'why' might be due to the processing of higher-order function in the cerebral cortex.Entities:
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Year: 2009 PMID： 20035324 DOI： 10.1007/s00221-009-2113-x
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Exp Brain Res ISSN： 0014-4819 Impact factor: 1.972