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2018, Articolo in rivista, ENG

From meaning to categorization: The hierarchical recruitment of brain circuits selective for action verbs

Dalla Volta R.; Avanzini P.; De Marco D.; Gentilucci M.; Fabbri-Destro M.

Sensorimotor and affective brain systems are known to be involved in language processing. However, to date it is still debated whether this involvement is a crucial step of semantic processing or, on the contrary, it is dependent on the specific context or strategy adopted to solve a task at hand. The present electroencephalographic (EEG) study is aimed at investigating which brain circuits are engaged when processing written verbs. By aligning event-related potentials (ERPs) both to the verb onset and to the motor response indexing the accomplishment of a semantic task of categorization, we were able to dissociate the relative stimulus-related and response-related cognitive components at play, respectively. EEG signal source reconstruction showed that while the recruitment of sensorimotor fronto-parietal circuits was time-locked with action verb onset, a left temporal-parietal circuit was time-locked to the task accomplishment. Crucially, by comparing the time course of both these bottom-up and top-down cognitive components, it appears that the frontal motor involvement precedes the task-related temporal-parietal activity. The present findings suggest that the recruitment of fronto-parietal sensorimotor circuits is independent of the specific strategy adopted to solve a semantic task and, given its temporal hierarchy, it may provide crucial information to brain circuits involved in the categorization task. Eventually, a discussion on how the present results may contribute to the clinical literature on patients affected by disorders specifically impairing the motor system is provided.

Cortex (Online) 100, pp. 95–110

DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.09.012

2014, Contributo in atti di convegno, ENG

Translating action verbs using a dictionary of images: the IMAGACT ontology.

Alessandro Panunzi, Irene De Felice, Lorenzo Gregori, Stefano Jacoviello, Monica Monachini, Massimo Moneglia, Valeria Quochi, Irene Russo

Action verbs have many meanings, covering actions in different ontological types. Moreover, each language categorizes action in its own way. One verb can refer to many different actions and one action can be identified by more than one verb. The range of variations within and across languages is largely unknown, causing trouble in all translation tasks. IMAGACT is a corpus-based ontology of action concepts, derived from English and Italian spontaneous speech corpora, which makes use of the universal language of images to identify the different action types extended by verbs referring to action in English, Italian, Chinese and Spanish. This paper presents the IMAGACT search interface and the various kinds of linguistic information the user can derive from it. IMAGACT makes explicit the variation of meaning of action verbs within one language and allows comparisons of verb variations within and across languages. Because the action concepts are represented with videos, extension into new languages beyond those presently implemented in IMAGACT is done using competence-based judgments by mother-tongue informants, without intense lexicographic work involving underdetermined semantic descriptions.

XVI EURALEX International Congress: The User in Focus, Bolzano, 15-19/07/2014

DOI: 10.13140/2.1.3719.2320

2012, Contributo in atti di convegno, ENG

The IMAGACT Cross-linguistic Ontology of Action. A new infrastructure for natural language disambiguation

Moneglia, Massimo [1]; Monachini, Monica [2]; Calabrese, Omar [3]; Panunzi, Alessandro [1]; Frontini, Francesca [2]; Gagliardi, Gloria [1]; Russo, Irene [2]

Action verbs, which are highly frequent in speech, cause disambiguation problems that are relevant to Language Technologies. This is a consequence of the peculiar way each natural language categorizes Action i.e. it is a consequence of semantic factors. Action verbs are frequently "general", since they extend productively to actions belonging to different ontological types. Moreover, each language categorizes action in its own way and therefore the cross-linguistic reference to everyday activities is puzzling. This paper briefly sketches the IMAGACT project, which aims at setting up a cross-linguistic Ontology of Action for grounding disambiguation tasks in this crucial area of the lexicon. The project derives information on the actual variation of action verbs in English and Italian from spontaneous speech corpora, where references to action are high in frequency. Crucially it makes use of the universal language of images to identify action types, avoiding the underdeterminacy of semantic definitions. Action concept entries are implemented as prototypic scenes; this will make it easier to extend the Ontology to other languages.

The Eight International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'12), Istanbul, Turkey, 23-25 may 2012
InstituteSelected 0/2
    ILC, Istituto di linguistica computazionale "Antonio Zampolli" (2)
    IN, Istituto di neuroscienze (1)
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    Monachini Monica (2)
    Russo Irene (2)
    Avanzini Pietro (1)
    De Felice Irene (1)
    Fabbri Destro Maddalena (1)
    Frontini Francesca (1)
    Quochi Valeria (1)
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    Contributo in atti di convegno (2)
    Articolo in rivista (1)
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    IC.P02.005.001, Risorse e Tecnologie Linguistiche: modelli, metodi di sviluppo, applicazioni, disegno di strategie internazionali (2)
    IC.P02.005.002, Infrastrutture per l'interoperabilità e l'integrazione di Risorse e Tecnologie Linguistiche (1)
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    2012 (1)
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    Inglese (3)
Keyword

Action verbs

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