Processing ergativity in compound light verb constructions: electrophysiological evidence from Hindi

Introduction Ergativity marks subject arguments as agents of a transitive event and thereby signals verbal transitivity and influences language comprehension. Method We report here on an event-related brain potentials (ERP) study in Hindi, in which we investigated this interconnection to ascertain whether the ergative case as a processing cue and its ERP correlates can be generalized across and within ergative languages. The case marking on the subject argument (ergative or nominative case) in our study either matched or mismatched with the transitivity of the light verb (transitive or intransitive) in compound light verb constructions. Results Ergative case violations due to an intransitive light verb evoked an N400 effect, whereas nominative case violations due to a transitive light verb elicited a P600 effect. Discussion The results reveal neurophysiological differences in the processing of ergative and nominative case alignment modulated by the transitivity of the light verbs. The findings highlight the need for cross-linguistic research to aim beyond universality and elucidate the mechanism underlying the processing of language-specific structural variations.