Neural & Predictive Effects of Verb Argument Structure

This project seeks to consider new ways in which neuroscience and language can inform each other. This project uses language as a recognized high-order cognitive function that can be manipulated to test neuronal mechanisms. The hypothesis here is that the predictive ability of online language processing is sensitive to the syntactic requirements of verbs. For example, things that modify the meaning of a verb phrase but are not a required a syntactic component required by the verb, such as adverbs, are impossible to predict by listeners, since there are no linguistic ques that necessitate their appearance. The idea then is that they must rely on more self-driven processing because of this lack of external ques that can strictly dictate their purpose. If they are more internally driven in processing then they should also be more susceptible to the effects the spontaneous brain activity.