New insights into the question of the nature and universality of the categories NOUN and VERB

What is it about?

In this paper we intend to provide a unified picture of the organization of knowledge about nouns and verbs in the mind emerging from the results of recent foundational studies that use a variety of different experimental techniques and research methods ranging from processing experiments, language acquisition and aphasia studies to more advanced neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies.

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Why is it important?

In recent years, a number of studies have been carried out in order to determine the ways knowledge about nouns and verbs is organized in the brain. Even though these studies have applied different experimental methodology (such as analyses of properties of language acquisition and language loss (aphasia), processing experiments, as well as advanced neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies), the conclusion that they commonly arrive at is that the distinction between nouns and verbs is due to the workings taking place at either the conceptual-semantic, the lexical or the morphological level. We challenge this assumption on the basis of their examination of neurological research related to the processing of nouns and verbs in the brain. In our view, the knowledge about nouns and verbs originates in a network of specialized functions where a number of processes related to recognition of nouns and verbs as categories occur in a parallel way but in different areas of the brain.