Hierarchical syntactic processing is beyond mere associating: Functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence from a novel artificial grammar

Autor: Angela D. Friederici, Emiliano Zaccarella, Tomás Goucha, Claudia Männel, Luyao Chen
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Male
Computer science
computer.software_genre
0302 clinical medicine
language network
Research Articles
media_common
Brain Mapping
Psycholinguistics
Radiological and Ultrasound Technology
Grammar
medicine.diagnostic_test
fMRI
05 social sciences
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Temporal Lobe
Neurology
Syntactic category
Speech Perception
Female
Grammaticality
Anatomy
Natural language
Natural language processing
Word (group theory)
Research Article
Adult
hierarchical syntactic processing
media_common.quotation_subject
associative processing
050105 experimental psychology
Young Adult
03 medical and health sciences
Rule-based machine translation
medicine
Humans
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Radiology
Nuclear Medicine and imaging
business.industry
artificial grammar
Syntax
Broca Area
syntactic category
Neurology (clinical)
Artificial intelligence
Nerve Net
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
business
computer
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Zdroj: Human Brain Mapping
ISSN: 1097-0193
1065-9471
DOI: 10.1002/hbm.25432
Popis: Grammar is central to any natural language. In the past decades, the artificial grammar of the AnBn type in which a pair of associated elements can be nested in the other pair was considered as a desirable model to mimic human language syntax without semantic interference. However, such a grammar relies on mere associating mechanisms, thus insufficient to reflect the hierarchical nature of human syntax. Here, we test how the brain imposes syntactic hierarchies according to the category relations on linearized sequences by designing a novel artificial “Hierarchical syntactic structure‐building Grammar” (HG), and compare this to the AnBn grammar as a “Nested associating Grammar” (NG) based on multilevel associations. Thirty‐six healthy German native speakers were randomly assigned to one of the two grammars. Both groups performed a grammaticality judgment task on auditorily presented word sequences generated by the corresponding grammar in the scanner after a successful explicit behavioral learning session. Compared to the NG group, we found that the HG group showed a (a) significantly higher involvement of Brodmann area (BA) 44 in Broca's area and the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG); and (b) qualitatively distinct connectivity between the two regions. Thus, the present study demonstrates that the build‐up process of syntactic hierarchies on the basis of category relations critically relies on a distinctive left‐hemispheric syntactic network involving BA 44 and pSTG. This indicates that our novel artificial grammar can constitute a suitable experimental tool to investigate syntax‐specific processes in the human brain.
Hierarchical syntactic processing in language is distinguished from associative processing. A novel artificial grammar is designed to guarantee hierarchical syntactic structure construction on the basis of category relations. Brodmann area (BA) 44 and the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) are specifically involved in hierarchical syntactic structure build‐up. Hierarchical syntactic processing engages a distinctive syntactic network including BA 44 and the pSTG.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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