Structural Description of Agrammatic Comprehension

Aphasic Sentence Comprehension as a Resource Deficit: A Computational Approach

“…The demonstration of an adjective padding effect would have implications for the more traditional neurolinguistic approach to aphasic sentence comprehension (e.g., Grodzinsky, 1986Grodzinsky, , 1989Hickok, Zurif, & Canseco-Gonzalez, 1993). While this approach, like ours, emphasizes the importance of structural linguistic properties of the sentence materials, it tends to ignore the more graded effects of processing load and deficit severity on sentence comprehension performance (for an exception, see Caplan & Hildebrandt, 1988).…”

“…The model addresses the effect of structural linguistic factors, such as phrase-structure complexity (Caplan & Hildebrandt, 1988) and long-distance dependencies involving traces (e.g., Grodzinsky, 1986Grodzinsky, , 1989Hickok et al, 1993), while at the same time taking into account the dynamic factors involving the time course of activation (e.g., Friederici & Kilborn, 1993;Haarmann & Kolk, 1991a, 1991bShankweiler et al, 1989) and moment-to-moment availability of processing resources (e.g., McNeil et al, 1991). We have developed the model partially in the hope that it will encourage new research that represents a synergy among the different approaches.…”

“…While this approach, like ours, emphasizes the importance of structural linguistic properties of the sentence materials, it tends to ignore the more graded effects of processing load and deficit severity on sentence comprehension performance (for an exception, see Caplan & Hildebrandt, 1988). A well-known example is the trace-deletion hypothesis of agrammatic sentence comprehension (e.g., Grodzinsky, 1986Grodzinsky, , 1989; for a revised version see Hickok et al, 1993), which permits only two performance levels: abovechance (on actives and subject relatives) and chance level (on passives and object relatives). The predictions of the trace-deletion hypothesis follow from the following three assumptions: (i) Moved noun phrases (present in passives and relative clause sentences) do not receive a thematic role on a structural semantic basis due to the absence of traces in the surface representation of a sentence.…”

Hipótese da preservação de elos locais: uma explicação unificada para os déficits de produção e compreensão no agramatismo

“…Pelo lado da compreensão, os estudos feitos (HICKOK et al 1993;SADDY, 1995;HICKOK & AVRUTIN, 1995;GRODZINSKY & FINKEL, 1998) indicam que estruturas que contêm movimento aberto de sintagma, ou seja, antes da Estrutura-S, são problemáticas para os agramáticos. Grodzinsky mantém nos trabalhos posteriores (1995, 2000a) a idéia apontada no primeiro trabalho de que os vestígios estão, de algum modo, inacessíveis na "gramática" do agramático.…”

“…As hipóteses de Grodzinsky sobre produção e compreensão são consideradas como parâmetro para a formulação de novas hipóteses, se o arcabouço utilizado for o da Teoria Gerativa (HICKOK et al, 1993;MAUNER et al, 1993;BERETTA et al, 1996;PIÑANGO, 1998, entre outros). Em relação à hipótese sobre a compreensão agramática, o próprio Grodzinsky a classifica apenas como uma entre as possíveis descrições do que deve, provavelmente, ser o âmago do déficit: o movimento aberto de sintagmas.…”