The Neuronal Correlates of Indeterminate Sentence Comprehension: An fMRI Study

• Published in: Frontiers in human neuroscience Vol. 10; p. 614
• Main Authors: de Almeida, Roberto G., Riven, Levi, Manouilidou, Christina, Lungu, Ovidiu, Dwivedi, Veena D., Jarema, Gonia, Gillon, Brendan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 20.12.2016; Frontiers Media S.A
• Subjects: Cognitive ability; Cortex (cingulate); Cortex (frontal); Cortex (temporal); Eye movements; Frontal gyrus; Functional anatomy; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Handbooks; Hemispheric laterality; Linguistics; Nervous system; Neuroscience; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Reading; Semantics; Superior temporal gyrus; Temporal gyrus; Theory; Canada; Montreal Quebec Canada; fMRI; indeterminate sentences; inferior frontal gyrus; compositionality; pragmatics; semantic coercion; anterior cingulate cortex; superior temporal gyrus
• ISSN: 1662-5161; 1662-5161
• DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00614

Sentences such as are indeterminate because they do not make explicit what the subject ( ) started doing with the object ( ). In principle, indeterminate sentences allow for an infinite number of interpretations. One theory, however, assumes that these sentences are resolved by , a linguistic process that forces the noun to be interpreted as an (e.g., ) or by a process that interpolates this activity information in the resulting enriched semantic composition. An alternative theory, , assumes classical semantic composition, whereby meaning arises from the denotation of words and how they are combined syntactically, with enrichment obtained via pragmatic inferences beyond linguistic-semantic processes. Cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the neuroanatomical and functional correlates of indeterminate sentences have shown activations either at the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (vmPFC) or at the left inferior frontal gyrus (L-IFG). These studies have supported the semantic coercion theory assuming that one of these regions is where enriched semantic composition takes place. Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that indeterminate sentences activate bilaterally the superior temporal gyrus (STG), the right inferior frontal gyrus (R-IFG), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), more so than control sentences ( ). Activation of indeterminate sentences exceeded that of anomalous sentences (… ) and engaged more left- and right-hemisphere areas than other sentence types. We suggest that the widespread activations for indeterminate sentences represent the deployment of pragmatic-inferential processes, which seek to enrich sentence content without necessarily resorting to semantic coercion.