A dedicated neural mechanism for vowel selection: A case of relative vowel deficit sparing the number lexicon

Words and number words transcoding: A retrospective study on 57 aphasic subjects

“…individual number words are the building blocks of complex numerals'' (p. 1058), whose phonemic or orthographic sequence is retrieved as distinct units, with segmental information already spelled out. This concept was recently reinforced by the report of a Wernicke's patient described by Semenza et al (2007), who showed a selective deficit in production of spoken word (naming and mostly reading) affecting vowels more than consonants, while production of number words was free form phonological errors. Marangolo, Piras, and Fias (2005) described the case of an anomic patient who showed a selective deficit in the spoken production of numbers, while number writing and comprehension were spared, suggesting the existence of different modality-specific output lexicons for the written and spoken production of numerals.…”

Phonological simplifications, apraxia of speech and the interaction between phonological and phonetic processing

“…Previous studies have reported a high concentration of consonant vs. vowel substitutions in patients with AoS, but a more balanced distribution in patients with PhI (e.g., Burns and Canter, 1977;Monoi et al, 1983;Romani et al, 2011a with an overlapping smaller patient sample 3 ), so that a concentration of errors on consonants is considered by some a defining characteristic of AoS (Darley et al, 1975). Finally, error patterns where more errors are made on vowels, have been reported, but in tasks not involving articulation, such as spelling (e.g., Cotelli et al, 2003;Cubelli, 1991), or in patients with fluent speech (three single cases described, respectively, by Caramazza et al, 2000, Romani et al, 1996and Semenza et al, 2007. This suggests that difficulties of phonological selection can target either type of segment, but that, in apraxic patients, difficulties of articulation produce more sound errors on consonants.…”

Are Number Words Fundamentally Different? A Qualitative Analysis of Aphasic Errors in Word and Number Word Production

“…Semenza et al [17] and Bencini et al [18] reported on an Italian aphasic patient (GBC) with a phonological output deficit for words sparing number words. Interestingly, GBC's vowels were more affected from substitution errors than consonants.…”

“…Interestingly, GBC's vowels were more affected from substitution errors than consonants. In number word production no phonological but only few lexical substitutions were observed [17,18]. Semenza et al suggest that number words can be produced via dedicated numerical (orthographic or Arabic)-to-spoken name transcoding algorithms that need not contain semantic information.…”