Can the brain help [answer] old linguistic questions?

Friedemann Pulvermuller (1, 2) , Yury Shtyrov (1) , Bert Cappelle (3)

1 MRC CBU - Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit
2 HCTLab - Human Computer Technology Laboratory
3 STL - Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163

Linguistic questions need to be answered with linguistic tools, based on observations of humans who use and understand language. However, assuming there is a mechanism underlying language use and the working of this mechanism can be observed directly, by brain imaging, it might be possible to obtain clues about language by looking directly at the the brain. In this talk, I will highlight brain research addressing linguistic questions.

Mots clés: compositionality; abstract meaning; distributed words; verb-particle combinations; syntax; lexicon; neurolinguistics; mismatch negativity (MMN)

Domaines: Linguistique; Neurobiologie

Friedemann Pulvermuller, Yury Shtyrov, Bert Cappelle. Can the brain help [answer] old linguistic questions?: On distributed words, semantic compositionality and abstract meaning. 44th annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2011), Sep 2011, Logroño, Spain. ⟨halshs-00669117⟩