The Neural Mechanisms Of Syntactic Merge

According to the Generative Grammar,Merge is a basic syntactic operation for sentence derivation,which constructs two syntactic objects from different grammatical categories into a new syntactic objects,such as phrases and sentences.With the development of experimental techniques,Linguists research the processing mechanism of Merge from the angle of Neurolinguistics and try to explore its psychological reality.However,recent studies mainly start with the complex structures and some studies have focused on simple structures,but those results still have some disputes.We summarize previous researches,use fMRI(functional magnetic resonance imaging)technology,research in the simple structures of Chinese(sentence,phrase and word lists),and provide new evidence from different languages to support the neuro mechanisms of Merge.At the same time,we attempt to explore the reasons of previous controversial results.The conclusions of this research are as follows:Firstly,when comparing sentences with word lists or phrases,we find increased activity in the left middle and posterior inferior frontal gyrus(IFG)and posterior superior temporal gyrus(pSTG)for both natural and jabberwocky conditions.Our results are most consistent with the previous results,that is the increased activities in the left middle and posterior portion of IFG and the posterior portion of STG reflects the syntactic Merge.Secondly,when comparing phrases with word lists,we did not observe increased activity in above regions for both natural and jabberwocky conditions.This result cannot speak against hypothesis that Merge did not have the psychological reality.After analysis,we find that the emergence of Merge effect is influenced by some factors,such as the experimental designs and tasks.We think the prediction of syntactic structure offered by tasks/designs plays an important role in this process.Lastly,we conclude that Merge has its psychological reality and can be influenced by inflection.The morphological differences between Western languages and Chinese may affect the emergence of Merge.We need to pay attention to these variables when we explore the Merge for further study in the future.This may contribute to the development of theories and empirical researches.