Morpho-syntactic processing of Arabic plurals after aphasia: dissecting lexical meaning from morpho-syntax within word boundaries

Abstract

Within the domain of inflectional morpho-syntax, differential processing of regular and irregular forms has been found in healthy speakers and in aphasia. One view assumes that irregular forms are retrieved as full entities, while regular forms are compiled on-line. An alternative view holds that a single mechanism oversees regular and irregular forms. Arabic offers an opportunity to study this phenomenon, as Arabic nouns contain a consonantal root, delivering lexical meaning, and a vocalic pattern, delivering syntactic information, such as gender and number. The aim of this study is to investigate morpho-syntactic processing of regular (sound) and irregular (broken) Arabic plurals in patients with morpho-syntactic impairment. Three participants with acquired agrammatic aphasia produced plural forms in a picture-naming task. We measured overall response accuracy, then analysed lexical errors and morpho-syntactic errors, separately. Error analysis revealed different patterns of morpho-syntactic errors depending on the type of pluralization (sound vs broken). Omissions formed the vast majority of errors in sound plurals, while substitution was the only error mechanism that occurred in broken plurals. The dissociation was statistically significant for retrieval of morpho-syntactic information (vocalic pattern) but not for lexical meaning (consonantal root), suggesting that the participants' selective impairment was an effect of the morpho-syntax of plurals. These results suggest that irregular plurals forms are stored, while regular forms are derived. The current findings support the findings from other languages and provide a new analysis technique for data from languages with non-concatenative morpho-syntax.

A linguistically-driven response categorisation protocol for Arabic nouns and verbs: clinical and research applications

“…Studies investigating Arabic-speaking participants with brain damage have also provided further evidence that the root-pattern view is a feasible framework on which clinical and research tools can be based (e.g. Béland & Mimouni, 2001;Idrissi & Kehayia, 2004;Idrissi et al, 2002;Khwaileh, 2011;Khwaileh et al, 2015Khwaileh et al, , 2017Mimouni et al, 1998Mimouni et al, , 1997. The processing evidence in support of the root-pattern framework has been prevailing from clinical and neuropsychological data.…”

“…Further evidence in support of the root-pattern framework came from a study on processing regular and irregular plural forms in Levantine Arabic (Khwaileh et al, 2015). Khwaileh et al (2015) carried out a picture-naming paradigm consisting of 90 pictures representing nouns in their singular, dual and plural forms. The participants were three Levantine Arabic speakers with aphasia following cerebrovascular accidents.…”

“…Most of the research on Arabic processing (Albustanji, 2009;Béland & Mimouni, 2001;Idrissi & Kehayia, 2004;Idrissi et al, 2002;Khwaileh, 2011;Khwaileh et al, 2014Khwaileh et al, , 2015Khwaileh, Mustafawi, Howard, & Herbert, 2016;Khwaileh et al, 2017;Khwaileh, Mustafawi, Herbert, & Howard, 2018;Khwaileh, Mustafawi, Howard, & Herbert, 2019;Mimouni et al, 1998Mimouni et al, , 1997 lack use of standardized material and response categorisation protocols for error analysis. The aim of this paper is to develop a linguistically informed and data-driven response categorisation protocol for language breakdown of the Arabic language.…”

“…The study consisted of two phases: phase one included the first cycle of developing the error categories informed by previous literature. The first cycle of error categories selection was based on studies reporting error analysis from Arabic patients with aphasia (Albustanji, 2009;Béland & Mimouni, 2001;Idrissi & Kehayia, 2004;Idrissi et al, 2002;Khwaileh, 2011;Khwaileh et al, 2015Khwaileh et al, , 2017Mimouni et al, 1998Mimouni et al, , 1997. The abovementioned studies used a qualitative approach and reported their errors in details.…”

“…Previous studies on Arabic typical and atypical language processing (e.g. Albustanji, 2009;Béland & Mimouni, 2001;Idrissi & Kehayia, 2004;Idrissi, Prunet, & Béland, 2002;Khwaileh, 2011;Khwaileh, Body, & Herbert, 2015, 2017Khwaileh, Body, & Herbert., 2014;Mimouni, Kehayia, & Jarema, 1998, 1997 made use of error categories that are idiosyncratic in nature. Furthermore, some error categories (e.g.…”