muralir@cbs.mpg.de Discussion Conclusion Introduction Results The present study I would if I could but I can't: Different types of non-prototypical Actor arguments are processed in a qualitatively similar manner R. Muralikrishnan1, Matthias Schlesewsky2, Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky1,3 1Research Group Neurotypology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany 2Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany 3Department of Germanic Linguistics, University of Marburg, Germany Language is a uniquely human ability and also one of the most complex human cognitive skills. It thus appears plausible to assume that there is an intimate relationship between the structure of human language(s) and basic characteristics of human neurobiology / neurocognition. One possible way of shedding further light on this relationship is to draw conclusions about possible "universals" of language by identifying cross-linguistically recurring patterns of lan- guage processing. These universals can be con- sidered potential candidates for links between language and cognition / neurobiology. A potential universal of language processing that has been identified in this way is the en- deavour towards unambiguous identification of the "actor", i.e. the participant primarily responsible for the state of affairs described (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky, 2009). The aim of the present study was to provide a more fine-grained characterisation of linguistic actorhood and its neurocognitive ramifications by examining the role of "volitionality" as a key feature of prototypical actors. Actorhood and Volitionality: A Cross-linguistic View In English, states of affairs such as (1) and (2) are encoded in a grammatically identical manner. Prima facie, this appears to suggest that linguistic structure is primarily attuned to encoding causality or the "starting point" of an event (MacWhinney, 1977): the protagonist, the old man, is treated identically whether he voli- tionally causes the event (example 1) or experi- ences it (example 2). In many other languages, by contrast, non-volitionality of an actor can be grammatically encoded, for example via dative case marking as in example (3) from Tamil: Similar structures occur in a range of other lan- guages, e.g. Hindi, Japanese, Icelandic, and Russian. This recurring pattern suggests that volitionality may be a key feature in the defini- tion of linguistic actors, since non-volitional actors are consistently flagged with additional morphological marking. Previous Neurocognitive Findings Previous studies examining the processing of non-volitional actors have focused on inanimate actors. In this regard, it has been demonstrated for several languages (including German, English, Chinese and Tamil) that inanimate actors engender an N400 effect in terms of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and that this effect can be reduced neither to lexical differences between animates and inanimates nor to the infrequency of inanimate Actors (for an overview, see Bornkessel-Schlesewsky & Schlesewsky, 2009). However, inanimate actors are not only non- volitional but also lack other prototypical actor properties such as sentience and the capability for autonomous movement (Primus, 1999). Previous findings on inanimate actors are thus not suited to isolating the individual actor characteristic(s) that are particularly important for the cognitive definition of a prototypical actor. The aim of the present study was to isolate the neurophysiological response to non-volitional actors and to compare it to that for inanimate actors. To this end, we examined the processing of "dative subject" constructions in Tamil (cf. example 3). Participants listened to question-answer pairs such as those in Table 1. The context questions ensured that dative arguments would be inter- preted as actors rather than as indirect objects. All sentence types were also presented in a neu- tral c