Structure Influences Case Processing: Electrophysiological Insights from Hindi Light Verb Constructions

Background: Case marking serves as a crucial cue in sentence processing, enabling the prediction of upcoming arguments, thematic roles, and event structure. Cross-linguistic studies have revealed language-specific variations in case processing, with differences observed between nominative–accusative and ergative languages, albeit with limited data from the latter. Objective: To this end, we investigated case processing in Hindi compound light verb constructions, leveraging its split-ergative system. Methods: An ERP study was conducted with twenty-four native Hindi speakers, wherein the subject case (ergative or nominative) either matched or mismatched with the aspect marking on the light verb (perfective or imperfective). Results: The results revealed distinct ERP effects depending upon the subject case: a P600 effect for ergative case violations at the imperfective light verb and a biphasic N400-P600 effect for nominative case violations at the perfective light verb. Conclusions: These findings suggest underlying neurophysiological differences in the processing of ergative versus nominative case alignment within light verb structures. Moving forward, a closer examination of structure-specific neurophysiological variation can help bridge the gap between typological distributions and their neural underpinnings.