A non-invasive test for diagnosing cognition in three SOV languages: Japanese, Korean and Bodo
Description: This project investigated how younger and elder speakers of SOV languages process sentence types. The three languages, Japanese, Korean and Nuosu Yi share grammatical features, such as relatively free word order, the presence of nominal particles and possibility of dropping arguments. We investigated simple transitive sentences (subject-object versus object-subject), sentences with instrumentals (instrumental-object versus object-instrumental) and comparative sentences (target - standard versus standard-target).In all three constructions, participants of the three languages display comparable results. Compared to younger speakers, elderly speakers tend to show lower accuracy in addition to slower response time, which suggests that the word order variation adds cognitive loads that burden elderly participants more than younger participants. These outcomes suggest that the presence of nominal particles may not be sufficient when speakers process scrambled sentences.
Amount: ¥4,420,000
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Start date: 2018-04-01
End date: 2023-03-31
Investigator: Tomoyuki YOSHIDA
Institution: International Christian University
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Funded outputs count: 0
Funder award ID: 18K00546
OpenAlex ID: G907920241