Processing ergativity in compound light verb constructions: electrophysiological evidence from Hindi.
Overview
- Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, Rupnagar, Punjab, India
- Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany
- Department of Corporate Skills Development, New Delhi Institute of Management, New Delhi, India
- Department of English and Other Languages, GITAM School of Humanities and Social Sciences, GITAM University, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India
Abstract
Introduction: Ergativity marks subject arguments as agents of a transitive event and thereby signals verbal transitivity and influences language comprehension.
Method: We report here on an event-related brain potentials (ERP) study in Hindi, in which we investigated this interconnection to ascertain whether the ergative case as a processing cue and its ERP correlates can be generalized across and within ergative languages. The case marking on the subject argument (ergative or nominative case) in our study either matched or mismatched with the transitivity of the light verb (transitive or intransitive) in compound light verb constructions.
Results: Ergative case violations due to an intransitive light verb evoked an N400 effect, whereas nominative case violations due to a transitive light verb elicited a P600 effect.
Discussion: The results reveal neurophysiological differences in the processing of ergative and nominative case alignment modulated by the transitivity of the light verbs. The findings highlight the need for cross-linguistic research to aim beyond universality and elucidate the mechanism underlying the processing of language-specific structural variations.
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
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Data
Datasets cited
- zenodo:14975073, at Zenodo; found in “Data availability statement”
Data availability statement
The datasets, statistical analysis code, and complete model outputs for all reported analyses, together with the supplementary material, are available as R notebooks here: https://
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
Versions
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Version 1, 30 September 2026: the first record
Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, pages, dates, 5 authors, 7 keywords, 2 funders, 113 references.
Cite
This paper
Mathew, A. M., Muralikrishnan, R., Gulati, M., Bhattamishra, S., & Choudhary, K. K. (2026). Processing ergativity in compound light verb constructions: electrophysiological evidence from Hindi. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 20, 1593289. https://
BibTeX
@article{mathew2026proce
author = {Mathew, Anna Merin and Muralikrishnan, R. and Gulati, Mahima and Bhattamishra, Shikha and Choudhary, Kamal Kumar},
title = {{Processing ergativity in compound light verb constructions: electrophysiological evidence from Hindi}},
journal = {Frontiers in human neuroscience},
year = {2026},
month = mar,
volume = {20},
pages = {1593289},
publisher = {Frontiers Media SA},
issn = {1662-5161},
doi = {10.3389/
url = {https://
pmid = {41959608},
pmcid = {PMC13059885}
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
AU - Mathew, Anna Merin
AU - Muralikrishnan, R.
AU - Gulati, Mahima
AU - Bhattamishra, Shikha
AU - Choudhary, Kamal Kumar
TI - Processing ergativity in compound light verb constructions: electrophysiological evidence from Hindi
T2 - Frontiers in human neuroscience
J2 - Front Hum Neurosci
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/
VL - 20
SP - 1593289
SN - 1662-5161
PB - Frontiers Media SA
DO - 10.3389/
UR - https://
LA - en
ER -
CSL-JSON
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