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The human language processing mechanism assigns a structure to the incoming materials as they unfold. There is evidence that the parser prefers some attachment types over others; however, theories of sentence processing are still in dispute over the stage at which each source of information contributes to the parsing system. The present study aims to identify the nature of initial parsing decisions during sentence processing through manipulating attachment type and verbs' argument structure. To this end, we designed a self-paced reading task using globally ambiguous constructions in Dutch. The structures included double locative prepositional phrases (PPs) where the first PP could attach both to the verb (high attachment) and the noun preceding it (low attachment). To disambiguate the structures, we presented a visual context in the form of short animation clips prior to each reading task. Furthermore, we manipulated the argument structure of the sentences using 2- and 3-argument verbs. The results showed that parsing decisions were influenced by contextual cues depending on the argument structure of the verb. That is, the visual context overcame the preference for high attachment only in the case of 2-argument verbs, while this preference persisted in structures including 3-argument verbs as represented by longer reading times for the low attachment interpretations. These findings can be taken as evidence that our language processing system actively integrates information from linguistic and non-linguistic sources from the initial stages of analysis to build up meaning. We discuss our findings in light of serial and parallel models of sentence processing.
The present study aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the impact of discourse-linking deficits on the performance of individuals with aphasia by providing new data from a set of rarely investigated constructions: sentences in which a clitic pronoun coexists alongside with the full DP it agrees with. To do so, we use data of individuals with non-fluent aphasias who need to overcome the difficulties in direct object (accusative) clitic production. This results in overproduction of non-target clitic right dislocations (RDs) and clitic doubling (CD). Data from 15 individual’s native speakers of Spanish and Catalan are discussed. Data complement the results of previous investigations on discourse-linking effects in these languages, allowing the interpretation of results across constructions.
Agrammatic speakers of languages with overt grammatical case show impaired use of the morphological cues to establish theta-role relations in sentences presented in non-canonical word orders. We analysed the effect of word order on the sentence comprehension of aphasic speakers of Basque, an ergative, free word order and head-final (SOV) language. Ergative languages such as Basque establish a one-to-one mapping of the thematic role and the case marker. We collected behavioural and gaze-fixation data while agrammatic speakers performed a picture-matching task with auditorily presented sentences with different word orders. We found that people with aphasia (PWA) had difficulties in assigning theta-roles in Theme-Agent order. This result is in line with processing accounts. Contrary to previous findings, our data do not suggest a systematic delay in the integration of morphological information in the PWA group, but strong reliance on the ergative case morphology and difficulties assigning thematic roles into the determiner phrases.
An auditory habituation design was used to investigate whether lexical-level phonological representations in the brain can be rapidly accessed after the onset of a spoken word. We studied the N1 component of the auditory event-related electrical potential, and measured the amplitude decrements of N1 associated with the repetition of a monosyllabic tone word and an acoustically similar pseudo-word in Mandarin Chinese. Effects related to the contrastive onset consonants were controlled for by introducing two control words. We show that repeated pseudo-words consistently elicit greater amplitude decrements in N1 than real words. Furthermore, this lexicality effect is free from sensory fatigue or rapid learning of the pseudo-word. These results suggest that a lexical-level phonological representation of a spoken word can be accessed as early as 110ms after the onset of the word-form.
Background: The distribution of pronouns varies cross-linguistically. This distribution has led to conflicting results in studies that investigated pronoun resolution in agrammatic indviduals. In the investigation of pronominal resolution, the linguistic phenomenon of "resumption" is understudied in agrammatism. The construction of pronominal resolution in Akan presents the opportunity to thoroughly examine resumption. Aims: To start, the present study examines the production of (pronominal) resumption in Akan focus constructions (who-questions and focused declaratives). Second, we explore the effect of grammatical tone on the processing of pronominal (resumption) since Akan is a tonal language. Methods & Procedures: First, we tested the ability to distinguish linguistic and non-linguistic tone in Akan agrammatic speakers. Then, we administered an elicitation task to five Akan agrammatic individuals, controlling for the structural variations in the realization of resumption: focused who-questions and declaratives with (i) only a resumptive pronoun, (ii) only a clause determiner, (iii) a resumptive pronoun and a clause determiner co-occurring, and (iv) neither a resumptive pronoun nor a clause determiner. Outcomes & Results: Tone discrimination .both for pitch and for lexical tone was unimpaired. The production task demonstrated that the production of resumptive pronouns and clause determiners was intact. However, the production of declarative sentences in derived word order was impaired; wh-object questions were relatively well-preserved. Conclusions: We argue that the problems with sentence production are highly selective: linguistic tones and resumption are intact but word order is impaired in non-canonical declarative sentences.
Processing grammatical evidentiality and time reference in Turkish heritage and monolingual speakers
(2017)
This study investigates the characteristics of narrative-speech production and the use of verbs in Turkish agrammatic speakers (n = 10) compared to non-brain-damaged controls (n = 10). To elicit narrative-speech samples, personal interviews and storytelling tasks were conducted. Turkish has a large and regular verb inflection paradigm where verbs are inflected for evidentiality (i.e. direct versus indirect evidence available to the speaker). Particularly, we explored the general characteristics of the speech samples (e.g. utterance length) and the uses of lexical, finite and non-finite verbs and direct and indirect evidentials. The results show that speech rate is slow, verbs per utterance are lower than normal and the verb diversity is reduced in the agrammatic speakers. Verb inflection is relatively intact; however, a trade-off pattern between inflection for direct evidentials and verb diversity is found. The implications of the data are discussed in connection with narrative-speech production studies on other languages.
Background: Comprehension of reversible sentences that have derived word order has often been reported as impaired in agrammatic aphasia. Most accounts of this phenomenon refer to the syntactic differences between derived and base word order of the arguments. However, it has been demonstrated that in agrammatic spontaneous speech in standard Indonesian (SI) passives are produced at a rate that is proportional to that of healthy speakers. The main difference between passives in SI and in other languages is the frequency with which passives are used: passives in SI are highly frequent. The high frequency can be explained by the fact that passives are used for politeness reasons, saliency of the passive morphology, earlier acquisition, and formal simplicity of the passive structure.
Aims: The purpose of the current study is to investigate comprehension of the passive as a derived structure in SI and the influence of frequency.
Methods & Procedures: A sentence-to-picture matching task was developed to test four reversible sentence types (active, passive, subject cleft and object cleft). There are three variables that are of interest, that is, word order, embedding and relative frequency of structures. Eleven agrammatic speakers classified as suffering from Broca’s aphasia were tested.
Outcomes & Results: The passive sentences were comprehended equally well as the active sentences. Embedding had limited effects: subject clefts were understood as well as actives and passives. Object clefts, however, were understood poorly and significantly worse than the three other sentence types.
Conclusions: The sentence comprehension deficit pattern shown in SI individuals with Broca’s aphasia introduces frequency of a syntactic structure as an additional factor to consider. Whether frequency or pragmatic constraints protects against erosion of the passive in Broca’s aphasia in SI remains an open question.
Background: Word retrieval in aphasia involves different levels of processinglemma retrieval, grammatical encoding, lexeme retrieval, and phonological encodingbefore articulation can be programmed and executed. Several grammatical, semantic, lexical, and phonological characteristics, such as word class, age of acquisition, imageability, and word frequency influence the degree of success in word retrieval. It is, however, not yet clear how these factors interact. The current study focuses on the retrieval of nouns and verbs in isolation and in sentence context and evaluates the impact of the mentioned factors on the performance of a group of 54 aphasic speakers.Aims: The main aim is to measure the effect of word frequency on the retrieval of nouns and verb by disentangling the influence of word class, age of acquisition, imageability, and lemma and lexeme frequencies on word retrieval in aphasia.Methods & Procedures: Four tests for retrieval of nouns, verbs in isolation, and infinitives and finite verbs were administered to 54 aphasic speakers. The influence of lemma and lexeme frequency, Age of Acquisition on the word retrieval abilities was analysed.Outcomes and Results: Word class, age of acquisition, and imageability play a significant role in the retrieval of nouns and verbs: nouns are easier than verbs; the earlier a word has been learned and the more concrete it is, the easier it is to retrieve. When performance is controlled for these factors, lemma frequency turns out to play a minor role: only in object naming does it affect word retrieval: the higher the lemma frequency of a noun, the easier it is to access. Such an effect does not exist for verbs, neither on an action-naming test, nor when verbs have to be retrieved in sentence context. Lexeme frequency was not found to be a better predictor than lemma frequency in predicting word retrieval in aphasia.Conclusions: Word retrieval in aphasia is influenced by grammatical, semantic, and lexical factors. Word frequency only plays a minor role: it affects the retrieval of nouns, but not of verbs.
Background: In a previous study, we demonstrated that narratives containing direct speech constructions were easier to comprehend than narratives with indirect speech constructions for Dutch listeners with and without aphasia. There were two possible explanations for this finding: either that direct speech has increased liveliness compared to indirect speech or that direct speech is less grammatically complex.
Aims: This study aimed to provide further insight into the mechanisms underlying the differences between direct and indirect speech constructions on discourse comprehension in Dutch. More specifically, it aimed to examine the role that the grammatical characteristics of direct and indirect speech play in discourse comprehension success by comparing English- and Dutch-speaking individuals with and without aphasia.
Methods & Procedures: An English version of the Dutch iPad-based Direct Speech Comprehension (DISCO) test was developed. Twenty individuals with aphasia and 19 neurologically healthy control participants were presented with spoken narratives that contained either direct or indirect speech constructions. Their performance was compared to that of the participants of the Dutch DISCO study. To assess the effect of language on performance, we conducted a single analysis in which we contrasted the English data with the Dutch data.
Outcomes & Results: Control participants performed better than participants with aphasia; English-speaking participants performed worse than Dutch participants, and narratives containing direct speech were easier to comprehend than narratives with indirect speech constructions. However, a subsequent analysis including only individuals with aphasia showed that the Dutch group differed from the English-speaking group: direct speech was only beneficial for the Dutch participants with aphasia.
Conclusions: This study expanded on the findings of a previous study, in which a facilitating effect of direct over indirect speech constructions for audiovisual discourse comprehension was found. The differential effects of direct speech on comprehension in Dutch and English showed that rather than one or other explanation being "correct", both liveliness and grammatical characteristics play a role in discourse comprehension success. Grammatically less complex constructions (direct speech) are not necessarily always easier to comprehend than grammatically more complex constructions (indirect speech) for individuals with aphasia. In our study grammatically simple constructions introduced grammatical ambiguity and therefore possible interpretation difficulties for the English-speaking participants with aphasia.