| Summary: | Background: Verbal communication comprises the retrieval of semantic
and syntactic information elicited by various kinds of words (i.e., parts of
speech) in a sentence. Content words, such as nouns and verbs, convey essential
information about the overall meaning (semantics) of a sentence, whereas function
words, such as prepositions and pronouns, carry less meaning and support the
syntax of the sentence. Methods: This study aimed to identify neural
correlates of the differential information retrieval processes for several parts
of speech (i.e., content and function words, nouns and verbs, and objects and
subjects) via electroencephalography performed during English spoken-sentence
comprehension in thirteen participants with normal hearing. Recently,
phoneme-related information has become a potential acoustic feature to
investigate human speech processing. Therefore, in this study, we examined the
importance of various parts of speech over sentence processing using information
about the onset time of phonemes. Results: The distinction in
the strength of cortical responses in language-related brain regions provides the
neurological evidence that content words, nouns, and objects are dominant
compared to function words, verbs, and subjects in spoken sentences,
respectively. Conclusions: The findings of this study may
provide insights into the different contributions of certain types of words over
others to the overall process of sentence understanding.
|
|---|