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Alan Beretta’s
Homepage |
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Professor Department of Linguistics Email: beretta@msu.edu Address: Dept Linguistics, A-628 Wells Hall, Office Hours, Fall 2004: TTh,
2.15—3.15 p.m. |
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Research
My research is in the field of neurolinguistics, which seeks ultimately to unify what we know about brains and what we know about language. Current inquiry in this field can be broken down into two basic questions: First, what can neurolinguistic inquiry tell us about the neural bases of language? Second, what can neurolinguistic inquiry offer to our understanding of the nature of language? One line of research in recent years, using electrophysiological tools now available, has focused on establishing certain neural markers and trying to fully specify precisely what they do and do not index. In EEG work, the best known markers are the N400 and the P600, while in MEG (magnetoencephalography), neurolinguistic work has centered around the M100, the M350, and an anterior midline activation. My current efforts are directed toward further contributing to our understanding of the M350, to the identification of further markers that index theoretically interesting aspects of language, and to using such markers as a means of addressing questions in linguistics that traditional methods have yet to settle. In addition, I have begun to use fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to get at issues of neural location of language function. Earlier, my research dealt primarily with aphasic subjects suffering a selective loss of language. Their pattern of sparing and loss was successfully characterized in terms of current linguistic theory, that is, impaired brains were seen to break down precisely along the divisions provided for in an independently motivated theory of language.
Selected Publications
Beretta, A. In Press. Agrammatism II: Linguistic models. Encyclopedia of Linguistics and Languages. Elsevier.
Beretta, A., Fiorentino, R., & Poeppel, D. In Press. The effects of homonymy and polysemy on lexical access: an MEG study. Cognitive Brain Research.
Beretta, A.,
Beretta, A., Carr, T.H., Huang, J., & Cao, Y. 2003. The brain is not single-minded about inflectional morphology: A response to the commentaries. Brain and Language 85, 531-534.
Beretta, A.,
Beretta, A., Schmitt, C., Halliwell, J., & Munn, A., Cuetos, F., & Kim, S. 2001. The effects of scrambling on Spanish and Korean agrammatic interpretation: Why linear models fail and structural models survive. Brain and Language 79, 407-425.
Beretta, A. 2001. Linear and structural accounts of theta-role assignment in agrammatic aphasia. Aphasiology 15, (6), 515-531.
Beretta, A., Halliwell, J., Munn, A., & Schmitt, C. 2001. Syntactic dependencies versus trace deletion: evidence from Korean and Spanish. NELS 31, Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society, Vol.1., pp.33-42.
Beretta, A., & Campbell, C. 2001. Psychological verbs and the double-dependency hypothesis. Brain and Cognition 46, (1/2), 42-46.
Beretta, A. 2000. Why the TDH fails to contribute to a neurology of syntax. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23, (1), 23.
Beretta, A., Piņango, M., Patterson, J., & Harford, C.1999. Recruiting comparative crosslinguistic evidence to address competing accounts of agrammatic aphasia. Brain and Language 67, 149-168.
Beretta, A., & Munn, A. 1998. Double-Agents and trace-deletion in agrammatism. Brain and Language 65, 404-421.
Beretta,
A., & Munn, A. 1998. Single dependency object extraction in agrammatism. Brain and Language 65, 39-41.
Beretta, A., & Munn, A. 1997. A test of the default strategy of the Trace-Deletion Hypothesis. Brain and Language 60, 72-75.
Beretta, A., Harford, C., Patterson, J., & Piņango, M. 1996. The derivation of postverbal subjects: evidence from agrammatic aphasia. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14, (4), 725-748.