Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology
نویسندگان
چکیده
A major issue in cognitive science concerns how phonological, lexical and conceptual knowledge about words is represented in the human brain. Clues for the relevant linguistic categories have been sought in patients with brain lesions and in processing differences for various word categories using positron emission tomography (PET) and electrical brain activity. One useful tool in the physiology of language comprehension including the processing of word categories is analysis of event-related brain potentials (ERPs).1 In the present study we compared the comprehension of different lexical subclasses occurring as first words in naturally spoken sentences. From a linguistic point of view one might expect differential processing even within a single grammatical category like nouns, e.g. common nouns vs proper names. The class of nomina has been divided into common nouns (nomina appellativa) like handkerchief, table or desk and proper names (nomina propria), like Peter, Baxter or Rocky Mountains. This classification has found support from findings in linguistics2 and philosophy of language.3 The grammatical analysis of proper names, which can be traced to Plato’s Cratylus, started with the Stoic grammarians who introduced a distinct linguistic category for proper names: ‘Onoma’, which subsequently was differentiated by Dionysius into three – ‘name’, ‘noun’ and ‘subject’. This linguistic classification remained unchanged for almost 2000 years.4 Within the past few decades the special characteristics of proper names and their potentially unique role in cognition have been well articulated by the discipline of onomastics.5 Findings from neuropsychology and biology also support a distinction between proper names (PN) and common nouns (CN). For example, there are reports of various patients with specific brain damage (aphasics) who are selectively impaired in their ability to use either PNs6,7 or CNs, respectively or in some cases even very specific categories of nouns such as tools or fruits relative to other categories which are relatively intact.8 Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether there exists a biological basis for this distinction between PNs and CNs. It was to that end, we compared brain processes with spoken sentences starting either with people’s first names or a CN.
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