Neural correlates of comprehension and production of nouns and verbs in Chinese

► Converging evidence across tasks for word class effects in a language with little inflectional morphology, i.e. Chinese. ► Evidence for lexico-semantic processing in left posterior superior and middle temporal gyri. ► Verb-specific activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG), the left insula, and the posterior temporal region in making semantic judgments, and the left supramarginal gyrus and the posterior temporal cortex in semantic associate production. This paper reports a conjunction analysis between semantic relatedness judgment and semantic associate generation of Chinese nouns and verbs with concrete or abstract meanings. The results revealed a verb-specific task-independent region in LpSTG&MTG, and task-dependent activation in a left frontal region in semantic judgment and the left SMG in semantic associate production. The observation of word class effects converged on Yu, Law, Han, Zhu, and Bi (2011), but contrasted with null findings in previous reports using a lexical decision task. While word class effects in the left posterior temporal cortices have been described in previous studies of languages with rich inflectional morphology, the significance of this study lies in its demonstration of the effects in these regions in a language known to have little inflectional morphology. In other words, differential neural responses to nouns and verbs can be observed without confounding from morphosyntactic operations or contrasts between actions and objects.