The Research On ERP Differences Of Production Of Nouns And Verbs In Mandarin Chinese

Nouns and verbs are the two most basic word classes in human languages. How do people differentiate nouns and verbs becomes a concerned question. In recent years, with the development of brain imaging techniques (PET, ERP and fMRI), the neurological differences between nouns and verbs are gradually disclosed. Neurobiological theory of language representation predicts that the noun and verb differences will mainly appear on motor cortex and visual cortex or the area nearby. The main purpose of the present study is to compare the ERP elicited by the production of nouns and the production of verbs. Another purpose is to test the prediction on the cortical distribution of nouns and verbs by neurobiological theory of language representation through comparing the cortical distribution of the ERP elicited by the production of nouns and the production of verbs. In the present study, 120 single Chinese character nouns and 120 single Chinese character verbs were used as priming words. Subjects produced a semantically related noun when the priming word was a noun and produced a semantically related verb when the priming word was a verb. Results show that within -150-300ms, and 300-1400ms time window, the production of verbs elicited more positive ERP than the production of nouns on both the two hemispheres. The ERP differences are primarily on frontal-central area which is where the motor area is located. But on the visual cortex, no ERP difference between the production of nouns and the production of verbs is found. The result partly supports the neurobiological theory of language representation.