The possibility to combine smaller units of meaning (e.g., words) to create new and more complex meanings (e.g., phrases and sentences) is a fundamental feature of human language. In the present project, we investigated how the brain supports the semantic and syntactic composition of two-word adjective-noun phrases in Dutch, using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The present investigation followed up on previous studies reporting a composition effect in the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) when comparing neural activity at nouns combined with adjectives, as opposed to nouns in a non-compositional context. The first aim of the present study was to investigate whether this effect, as well as its modulation by noun specificity and adjective class, can also be observed in Dutch. A second aim was to investigate to what extent these effects may be driven by syntactic composition rather than primarily by semantic composition as was previously proposed. To this end, a novel condition was administered in which participants saw nouns combined with pseudowords lacking meaning but agreeing with the nouns in terms of grammatical gender, as real adjectives would. We failed to observe a composition effect or its modulation in both a confirmatory analysis (focused on the cortical region and time-window where it has previously been reported) and in exploratory analyses (where we tested multiple regions and an extended potential time-window of the effect). A syntactically driven composition effect was also not observed in our data. We do, however, successfully observe an independent, previously reported effect on single word processing in our data, confirming that our MEG data processing pipeline does meaningfully capture language processing activity by the brain. The failure to observe the composition effect in LATL is surprising given that it has been previously reported in multiple studies. Reviewing all previous studies investigating this effect, we propose that materials and a task involving imagery might be necessary for this effect to be observed. In addition, we identified substantial variability in the regions of interest analyzed in previous studies, which warrants additional checks of robustness of the effect. Further research should identify limits and conditions under which this effect can be observed. The failure to observe specifically a syntactic composition effect in such minimal phrases is less surprising given that it has not been previously reported in MEG data.

组合较小的含义单位（例如单词）以创建新的和更复杂的含义（例如短语和句子）的可能性是人类语言的基本特征。在本项目中，我们使用磁脑电图（MEG）研究了大脑如何支持荷兰语中两个单词的形容词-名词短语的语义和句法组成。本研究是对先前研究的后续报道，该研究报告了在名词与形容词相结合而不是非成分语境中的名词比较神经活动时左前颞叶（LATL）的合成作用。本研究的第一个目的是研究这种效果，以及其是否受到名词特异性和形容词类的调节，也可以在荷兰语中观察到。第二个目的是研究这些影响在多大程度上可以由句法构成而不是先前提出的语义构成驱动。为此，管理了一种新的条件，即与真实形容词一样，参与者看到名词与伪造词组合在一起时缺乏意义，但在语法性别方面与名词一致。在验证性分析（侧重于先前报道的皮质区域和时间窗口）和探索性分析（测试多个区域和扩展的潜在时间窗口）中，我们均未观察到成分效应或其调制。效果）。在我们的数据中也没有观察到句法驱动的构图效果。但是，我们确实成功地观察到一个独立的，先前报道了对我们数据中单个单词处理的影响，证实了我们的MEG数据处理管道确实有意义地捕获了大脑的语言处理活动。鉴于先前已在多项研究中进行了报道，因此未能在LATL中观察到组成效应是令人惊讶的。回顾所有研究此效应的先前研究，我们建议观察该效应可能需要涉及图像的材料和任务。此外，我们在先前的研究中确定了感兴趣区域中的显着变异性，因此有必要对效应的稳健性进行其他检查。进一步的研究应该确定可以观察到这种影响的极限和条件。