Semantic memory refers to knowledge about people, objects, actions, relations, self, and culture acquired through experience. The neural systems that store and retrieve this information have been studied for many years, but a consensus regarding their identity has not been reached. Using strict inclusion criteria, we analyzed 120 functional neuroimaging studies focusing on semantic processing. Reliable areas of activation in these studies were identified using the activation likelihood estimate (ALE) technique. These activations formed a distinct, left-lateralized network comprised of 7 regions: posterior inferior parietal lobe, middle temporal gyrus, fusiform and parahippocampal gyri, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and posterior cingulate gyrus. Secondary analyses showed specific subregions of this network associated with knowledge of actions, manipulable artifacts, abstract concepts, and concrete concepts. The cortical regions involved in semantic processing can be grouped into 3 broad categories: posterior multimodal and heteromodal association cortex, heteromodal prefrontal cortex, and medial limbic regions. The expansion of these regions in the human relative to the nonhuman primate brain may explain uniquely human capacities to use language productively, plan, solve problems, and create cultural and technological artifacts, all of which depend on the fluid and efficient retrieval and manipulation of semantic knowledge.

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Where Is the Semantic System? A Critical Review and Meta-Analysis of 120 Functional Neuroimaging Studies

In this rich reference work, Beth Levin classifies over 3,000 English verbs according to shared meaning and behavior Levin starts with the hypothesis that a verb's meaning influences its syntactic behavior and develops it into a powerful tool for studying the English verb lexicon She shows how identifying verbs with similar syntactic behavior provides an effective means of distinguishing semantically coherent verb classes, and isolates these classes by examining verb behavior with respect to a wide range of syntactic alternations that reflect verb meaning The first part of the book sets out alternate ways in which verbs can express their arguments The second presents classes of verbs that share a kernel of meaning and explores in detail the behavior of each class, drawing on the alternations in the first part Levin's discussion of each class and alternation includes lists of relevant verbs, illustrative examples, comments on noteworthy properties, and bibliographic references The result is an original, systematic picture of the organization of the verb inventory Easy to use, "English Verb Classes and Alternations" sets the stage for further explorations of the interface between lexical semantics and syntax It will prove indispensable for theoretical and computational linguists, psycholinguists, cognitive scientists, lexicographers, and teachers of English as a second language Beth Levin is associate professor of linguistics at Northwestern University

English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation

As a novel attack on the perennially vexing questions of the theoretical status of thematic roles and the inventory of possible roles, this paper defends a strategy of basing accounts of roles on more unified domains of linguistic data than have been used in the past to motivate roles, addressing in particular the problem of ARGUMENT SELECTION (principles determining which roles are associated with which grammatical relations). It is concluded that the best theory for describing this domain is not a traditional system of discrete roles (Agent, Patient, Source, etc.) but a theory in which the only roles are two cluster-concepts called PROTO-AGENT and PROTO-PATIENT, each characterized by a set of verbal entailments: an argument of a verb may bear either of the two proto-roles (or both) to varying degrees, according to the number of entailments of each kind the verb gives it. Both fine-grained and coarse-grained classes of verbal arguments (corresponding to traditional thematic roles and other classes as well) follow automatically, as do desired 'role hierarchies'. By examining occurrences of the 'same' verb with different argument configurations—e.g. two forms of psych predicates and object-oblique alternations as in the familiar spray/load class—it can also be argued that proto-roles act as defaults in the learning of lexical meanings. Are proto-role categories manifested elsewhere in language or as cognitive categories? If so, they might be a means of making grammar acquisition easier for the child, they might explain certain other typological and acquisitional observations, and they may lead to an account of contrasts between unaccusative and unergative intransitive verbs that does not rely on deriving unaccusatives from underlying direct objects.

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Thematic proto-roles and argument selection

The Theory of Matrices. By F R. Gantmacher. Two volumes, pp. 374 and 276. 1959. (Translated from the Russian by K. A. Hirsch; Chelsea Publishing Company, New York)

The mismatch negativity (MMN) in basic research of central auditory processing: a review.

Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection

So Lexicalism claims that the syntax manipulates internally complex words, not unanalyzable atomic units. The leading idea of Lexicalism might be summarized as follows: Everyone agrees that there has to be a list of sound/meaning connections for the atomic building blocks of language (=the “morphemes”). There also has to be a list of idiosyncratic properties associated with the building blocks. Perhaps the storage house of sound/meaning connections for building blocks and the storage house of idiosyncratic information associated with building blocks is the same house. Perhaps the distinction between this unified storage house and the computational system of syntax could be used to correlate and localize various other crucial distinctions: non-syntax vs. syntax, "lexical" phonological rules vs. phrasal and everywhere phonological rules, unpredictable composition vs. predictable composition ... Syntax is for the ruly, the lexicon for the unruly (see, e.g., DiSciullo and Williams 1987). The Lexicalist view of the computational lexicon may be pictured as in (3), where both the Lexicon and the Syntax connect sound and meaning by relating the sound and meaning of complex constituents systematically to the sounds and meanings of their constitutive parts.

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No escape from syntax: Don't try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1981.

On the nature of grammatical relations

Some key features of distributed morphology

It is fairly well understood that noun phrases (or DPs) occupy argument positions in sentences (or bear grammatical relations or functions) by virtue of the semantic roles they bear with respect to predicates. Current Principles and Parameters theories, following Chomsky (1981), add an additional condition on licensing NP (DP) arguments: they must also be assigned (abstract) Case. Recent investigations of languages with rich morphological case and agreement systems strongly indicate that the relationship between abstract Case and morphological case and agreement is indirect, at best. In this paper, I argue that the proper treatment of morphological case necessitates a complete break between abstract Case and morphological case. I show that the facts covered by "Burzio's generalization" (Burzio 1986) split into two sets explained by independently motivated principles. One set is covered by the "Extended Projection Principle" (see, e.g., Chomsky 1986: 4), in particular the requirement that sentences have subjects. The remainder is handled by the correct universal characterization of "accusative" and "ergative" morphological case, a characterization that also successfully explains a peculiar fact about the distribution of ergative case. Giving content to the theory of morphological case allows for the elimination of abstract Case theory from the theory of syntax. The mapping between semantic roles and argument positions, augmented by the subject requirement of the Extended Projection Principle, is sufficient to license NPs in argument positions.

Alec Marantz

Papers

Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection

No escape from syntax: Don't try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon

On the nature of grammatical relations

Some key features of distributed morphology

Case and licensing