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Qualitative and Comparative Cortical Activity Data Analyses from a Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Experiment Applying Block Design
Published on: December 3, 2020
A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study on the basic word order in Japanese
Yukika Nishimura1, Koji Sugisaki, Noriko Hattori
1Department of Psychiatry, Division of Neuroscience, Graduate School of Medicine, Mie University, Japan.
Neuroreport
|June 4, 2008
Summary
This study used near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate Japanese sentence structure. Results suggest that both subject-naze-object-verb and naze-subject-object-verb orders are basic in Japanese.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Understanding basic word order is crucial for deciphering language structure.
- Japanese is considered a free word-order language, presenting challenges in determining its fundamental syntactic structure.
- Previous research has explored various linguistic theories on Japanese word order, but neurolinguistic evidence remains limited.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the basic word order of the Japanese language.
- To explore the neurolinguistic correlates of processing different Japanese sentence structures.
- To provide empirical evidence for determining the fundamental word order in Japanese.
Main Methods:
- Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) was employed to measure oxyhemoglobin concentration changes in the frontal lobe.
- Thirty-two healthy adult males participated in the study.
- Participants processed four types of Japanese sentences: Subject-Object-Verb (SOV), Object-Subject-Verb (OSV), Subject-naze-Object-Verb (SwhyOV), and naze-Subject-Object-Verb (whySOV).
Main Results:
- Significantly larger oxyhemoglobin changes were observed in the left frontal lobe during the processing of Object-Subject-Verb (OSV) sentences compared to Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) sentences.
- No significant differences in oxyhemoglobin changes were found between Subject-naze-Object-Verb (SwhyOV) and naze-Subject-Object-Verb (whySOV) sentences.
- The findings suggest differential neural processing for OSV versus SOV structures, while SwhyOV and whySOV structures elicit similar neural responses.
Conclusions:
- The similar neural processing patterns for SwhyOV and whySOV sentences support the view that both are basic word orders in Japanese.
- Neurolinguistic evidence, particularly from hemodynamic responses, can offer a robust basis for determining word order in free word-order languages like Japanese.
- This study contributes to the understanding of syntactic processing and language typology through neuroimaging techniques.
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