Patterns of Comprehension and Production of Nouns and Verbs in Agrammatism: Implications for Lexical Organization

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between verb retrieval and verb-argument-structure properties in seven agrammatic aphasic patients using tasks requiring access to the verb's lexicon for both comprehension-and production like processes. Results showed intact comprehension of both nouns and verbs and noun naming, but impaired naming of verbs. Subjects also demonstrated near-normal performance on a grammaticality judgment task involving verb-argument-structure violations but were impaired in categorizing verbs by type (based on number of obligatory arguments). In both naming and categorization conditions, a hierarchy of verb difficulty emerged. Subjects were more accurate in naming/categorizing one-place verbs than two-place verbs and more accurate in naming/categorizing two-place verbs than three-place verbs. The pattern of selective impairment in lexical access/retrieval supports the hypothesis that one dimension of normal lexical organization is by form class. The results also suggest that no necessary relationship exists between production difficulties and comprehension of nouns/verbs in agrammatism. Further, the performance pattern noted supports the claim that verb-argumentstructure properties, an important component of the verb lexicon, influence verb production at the single-word and at the sentence level. Subjects' performance on different tasks suggests that the locus of breakdown in the verb-retrieval processes for production like tasks may be in accessing information at the lemma level of representation as per Bock's model (1995) of sentence production. Keywordsverb production in aphasia; verb categorization in aphasia; verb argument structure in aphasia; agrammatism; lexical organization in aphasia Comprehension and production of nouns and verbs have been studied in several neurological populations including aphasic patients. Researchers investigating production of nouns and verbs in aphasic patients have reported dissociations between these word classes HHS Public Access Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript (Berndt, Mitchum, Haendiges, & Sandson, 1997;Miceli, Silveri, Nocentini, & Caramazza, 1988;Miceli, Silveri, Villa, & Caramazza, 1984; Zingeser & Berndt, 1990). Agrammatic aphasic patients show more difficulty naming verbs than nouns, while anomic aphasic subjects show the opposite pattern, suggesting that selective impairment in lexical representation and/or the lexical retrieval process can occur along the form class category. Miceli et al.'s (1988) Italian-speaking agrammatic aphasic subjects also showed such dissociations in comprehension, but this finding has not held up across studies (Berndt et al., 1997); most studies have shown a selective deficit in verb production, with comprehension remaining relatively unimpaired.Similar patterns also have been reported in studies examining sentence processing and production with a focus on verb-argument structure. Data from sentence comprehension studies indicate that agrammatic aphasic subjects show in...

Unaccusative verb production in agrammatic aphasia: the argument structure complexity hypothesis

“…While recent research focused on determining the nature of verb production deficits has shown that several factors may play a role in this production difficulty, including frequency and familiarity (Kemmerer & Tranel, 2000), imageability (Bird, Howard, & Franklin, 2000), and semantic factors (Breedin, Saffran, & Schwartz, 1998), the number of syntactic arguments associated with the verb and corresponding participant roles has been shown to influence verb production in several studies (Jonkers & Bastiaanse, 1996Kegl, 1995;Kemmerer & Tranel, 2000;Kim & Thompson, 2000;Kiss, 2000 Lange, Schneider, & Shapiro, 1997; Thompson, Shapiro, Li, & Schendel, 1995a). For example, Thompson et al (1995aThompson et al ( , 1997 found that agrammatic aphasic subjects with verb retrieval difficulty in both verb naming and in sentence production showed a pattern of verb production deficit in both tasks related to the number of arguments associated with the verb.…”

“…These findings suggested that verb production is influenced by the syntactically relevant argument-taking properties of verbs (Levin & Rappaport-Hovav, 1995). Kim and Thompson (2000) further considered the locus of breakdown in the process of verb retrieval based on models of lexical representation which suggest that verbs are stored in the lexicon according to form class and their argument structure properties (Bock, 1995;Bock & Levelt, 1994;Levelt, 1989Levelt, , 1993Levelt, , 1999Trueswell & Kim, 1998;Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Kello, 1993 for evidence from sentence processing). In the process of verb retrieval, a lemma is selected, which matches the meaning and communicative perspective of the speaker and associated grammatical information is signaled.…”

“…Dell, 1986;Dell & O'Seaghdha, 1991; Levelt et al, 1991a,b), Levelt's (1999) model suggests that verb retrieval failure can occur at either the lemma or the lexeme level. Based on their data, Kim and Thompson (2000) speculated that verb production deficits in agrammatic aphasia result, at least in part, from difficulties at the level of lemma selection. The finding that verbs with a greater number of arguments are more difficult to retrieve than those with fewer arguments suggests that verb selection, like noun selection, involves automatic access to lexical entries, which for verbs, includes information about their argument structure characteristics.…”

“…the transitive verb fix, as in Zack fixed the computer; the ditransitive verb put as in Zack put the shirt in the closet). Comparing production of transitive and ditransitive verbs, transitives were found to be easier.The question of the relationship between verb production difficulty and verb argument structure properties was further investigated by Kim and Thompson (2000) in seven agrammatic aphasic patients. Subjects first were tested for comprehension of nouns (organized by semantic category) and verbs (organized by the number of arguments represented in their lexical entry).…”

“…The question of the relationship between verb production difficulty and verb argument structure properties was further investigated by Kim and Thompson (2000) in seven agrammatic aphasic patients. Subjects first were tested for comprehension of nouns (organized by semantic category) and verbs (organized by the number of arguments represented in their lexical entry).…”