It has been well documented that different types of nouns and action verbs are associated with behavioral and neural differences. In contrast, abstract verbs (e.g., think, dissolve) are often treated as a homogeneous category. We compared event-related potentials recorded during a syntactic classification task of four verb types; 1) abstract mental, 2) abstract emotional, 3) abstract nonbodily, and 4) concrete. Abstract nonbodily state verbs showed a sustained negativity at frontocentral electrodes and sustained positivity at parietal and occipital electrodes beginning 400 ms post-stimulus onset relative to abstract mental state and concrete verbs. Discrete source localization revealed a right inferior parietal source for all verbs and a distributed source estimation localized sources that distinguished between abstract mental state and abstract nonbodily state verbs to bilateral parietal cortex, left temporal cortex and right ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest that different types of abstract verbs are associated with representational differences.

中文翻译：

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抽象动词的异质性：一项 ERP 研究

已有大量文献证明，不同类型的名词和动作动词与行为和神经差异有关。相比之下，抽象动词（例如，思考，溶解）通常被视为同质类别。我们比较了在四种动词类型的句法分类任务中记录的事件相关电位；1）抽象的心理，2）抽象的情感，3）抽象的非身体，4）具体的。相对于抽象精神状态和具体动词，抽象非身体状态动词在刺激后 400 ms 开始在额中枢电极处显示出持续的消极性，而在顶叶和枕骨电极处显示出持续的积极性。离散源定位揭示了所有动词的右下顶叶源和分布式源估计定位源，区分抽象精神状态和抽象非身体状态动词到双侧顶叶皮层、左颞叶皮层和右腹内侧前额叶皮层。这些发现表明，不同类型的抽象动词与表征差异有关。