1. Investigating syntactic movement in the brain UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience Dr Zarinah Agnew Dr Hans van de Koot Professor Sophie Scott

2. Background: syntactic movement When a phrase appears in a displaced position in a sentence, so that its position does not coincide with the position in which it is interpreted e.g. THAT vase, you should not break THAT vase THE vase e.g. The vase was broken Passive: e.g. The vase broke Unaccusative: e.g. John slept Unergative :

3. Experimental Setup 4 sec stimuli 3 sec scan 2 sec ISI 30 events, 5 conditions, 10sec TR: 25 minutes Want to capture this 1 to 2 seconds 1 sec - transitive verbs (e.g. the thief abandoned the car after the crash) - unaccusative verbs (e.g. The colours faded the day after the wash) - auditory baseline - silent rest 5 conditions - passive listening to: 123456789 - unergative verbs (e.g. one athlete hesitated a moment into his jump) External argument Internal argument Both

4. What do we expect to find: Conjunction: Unaccusative VS Unergatives and Unaccusatives Vs Transitives: Left IFG and left MTG Shetreet, Friedmann & Hadar, 2009 Key difference: In Hebrew some unaccusatives have a morphological marking. This is not the case in English