Abstract
In Japanese sentence comprehension, a noun and a case particle are chunked into phrase with case marker, and then the sentence is parsed into phrase structure. This study investigated the mechanisms for processing cases by comparing the brain regions activated during processing of sentences in canonical word order (SOV) with in non-canonical word order (OSV). The sentences were separated into three phrases. Native Japanese participants were presented with a phrase at a time and then with a picture corresponding to the sentence. They judged whether the sentence matches the picture. The comparison in OSV compared with SOV showed no difference in activation at first phrase, but significant activations in the left medial BA 6/8 at second phrase, and the left BA 44/45 at third phrase. The results suggest that these activations are related to cognitive processes such as imagery, working memory, and syntactic analysis, which are influenced by the non-canonicality of OSV in Japanese.
