Data_Sheet_1_Online Processing of Temporal Agreement in a Grammatical Tone Language: An ERP Study.ZIP

Previous electrophysiological studies that have examined temporal agreement violations in (Indo-European) languages that use grammatical affixes to mark time reference, have found a Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) and/or P600 ERP components, reflecting morpho-syntactic and syntactic processing, respectively. The current study investigates the electrophysiological processing of temporal relations in an African language (Akan) that uses grammatical tone, rather than morphological inflection, for time reference. Twenty-four native speakers of Akan listened to sentences with time reference violations. Our results demonstrate that a violation of a present context by a past verb yields a P600 time-locked to the verb. There was no such effect when a past context was violated by a present verb. In conclusion, while there are similarities in both Akan and Indo-European languages, as far as the modulation of the P600 effect is concerned, the nature of this effect seems to be different for these languages.

过往针对印欧语系（Indo-European）语言的电生理学研究已考察了以语法词缀（grammatical affixes）标记时间参照（time reference）的语句的时间一致性违规现象，发现左前负波（Left Anterior Negativity，LAN）和/或P600事件相关电位（Event-Related Potential，ERP）成分，二者分别对应形态句法加工与句法加工过程。本研究针对以语法声调（grammatical tone）替代形态屈折（morphological inflection）标记时间参照的非洲语言阿肯语（Akan），考察其时间关系的电生理加工过程。本研究招募24名阿肯语母语者，让其聆听存在时间参照违规的语句。结果显示，当过去时动词违反现在时语境时，会出现与该动词时间锁定的P600成分；而当现在时动词违反过去时语境时，则未观测到此类效应。综上，尽管阿肯语与印欧语系语言在P600效应的调控层面存在相似性，但两类语言中该效应的本质似乎存在差异。