ERIC Number: EJ943270
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Dec
Pages: 10
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0093-934X
EISSN: N/A
Neural Correlates of Metonymy Resolution
Rapp, Alexander M.; Erb, Michael; Grodd, Wolfgang; Bartels, Mathias; Markert, Katja
Brain and Language, v119 n3 p196-205 Dec 2011
Metonymies are exemplary models for complex semantic association processes at the sentence level. We investigated processing of metonymies using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). During an 1.5 Tesla fMRI scan, 14 healthy subjects (12 female) read 124 short German sentences with either literal (like "Africa is arid"), metonymic ("Africa is hungry"), or nonsense ("Africa is woollen") content. Sentences were constructed so that they obey certain grammatical, semantic, and plausibility conditions and were matched for word frequency, semantic association, length and syntactic structure. We concentrated on metonymies that were not yet fossilised; we also examined a wide variety of metonymic readings. Reading metonymies relative to literal sentences revealed signal changes in a predominantly left-lateralised fronto-temporal network with maxima in the left and right inferior frontal as well as left middle temporal gyri. Left inferior frontal activation may reflect both inference processes and access to world knowledge during metonymy resolution. (Contains 5 tables, 2 figure and 1 supplementary data.)
Descriptors: Sentences, Semantics, Syntax, Cognitive Processes, Word Frequency, Correlation, Brain Hemisphere Functions, Diagnostic Tests, Associative Learning, Language Processing, German
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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