Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings

that are generalized agent-like and patient-like thematic roles, respectably. The linking
algorithm is defined by the macrorole hierarchy (see Figure 7).
Figure 7. The macrorole hierarchy (Van Valin, LaPolla, 1997: 146)
The macrorole hierarchy specifies the actor and the undergoer arguments of the verb on
the basis of the position in the logical structure (roughly, whether it is the 1 st argument of
do’ or the 2 nd argument of predicate’). This way in an active English (or Croatian)
sentence the first argument of the verb (traditionally called ‘the subject’) is linked to the
actor macrorole while the second argument is linked to the undergoer argument (‘the
object’). Languages differ in the linking pattern: ergative languages take the opposite
linking pattern. But whatever the linking pattern be, the fact that it is somehow fixed
(defined by the macrorole hierarchy) in fact makes sentence comprehension possible.
1.3.2. RRG as a sentence-processing model
The structure of RRG with syntactic representation on one side, semantic representation
on the other side and a syntax-to-semantics interface between them allows for taking
linguistic theory as a model of language processing (Van Valin, 2003a). Language
production, as described in RRG, is actually parallel to the Levelt’s blueprint of the
speaker (Levelt, 1989). As Van Valin (2003a) notes, the Levelt’s model is based upon
vast psycholinguistic evidence, while the RRG linking algorithm is based upon
grammatical evidence from a large number of typologically diverse languages. Yet each
45