Neural correlates of processing case in adults and children

Abstract

Sentence-initial arguments with role-specific case markers (e.g., accusatives) have been reported to be processed slower than arguments with default case markers (e.g., nominatives), both in adults and children. However, the evidence for this comes from studies that conflate word order and case, comparing initial arguments with default case and fronted (scrambled) arguments with role-specific case. Here, we disentangle these effects by studying the parsing of Basque sentences, where both role-specific (ergative) and default (absolutiv Show more