日本語かな文節解析に関わる神経資源(<特集>音声科学の最前線 : C/Dモデルその音声学・音形論への衝撃)

抄録

Morpheme segmentation is a core function in cognitive neural processing of spoken as well as written sentences. This study investigated if morpheme parsing for Japanese Kana phrases, in which multiple morphemes are continuously aligned without any separating blank space, is triggered automatically. To avoid conscious attention on phrase meanings, a short term memory task was performed by 28 healthy volunteers, in which each participant judged if a specified character existed or not in a previously-displayed phrase of 500ms. The brain activities were measured by fMRI while participants were performing the tasks. The results suggest morpheme parsing is automatically activated in the left frontotemporal language network for native Japanese when viewing Japanese multi-morpheme Kana phrases.