The effect of syntactic frequency on sentence comprehension in standard Indonesian Broca’s aphasia

Abstract

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.

Syntactic Frequency and Sentence Processing in Standard Indonesian: Data from agrammatic aphasia and ERP

“…As per the group results, we did not find a significant difference between the production performance of active and passive sentences in SI agrammatic speakers. Similar results were found in the comprehension study by Jap et al (2016), where passive structures were found to be preserved. However, further scrutiny reveals that the scores for the non-canonical condition are quite diverse across subjects.…”

“…Finally, the study by Jap et al (2016) suggested that the preservation of the passive structure in SI aphasic comprehension is at least partially caused by the frequent occurrence of the structure in the language.…”

Adaptation of the Token Test in Standard Indonesian

“…There are only few studies on Indonesian aphasic speakers in general and only some of those used the Token Test in their studies (e.g. Anjarningsih et al, 2012;Jap et al, 2016). As such, future research with the tool could not only improve its sensitivity via norm establishment, but also test its validity in the context of other language and cognitive tasks.…”

“…Aside from its uses in the present study, the adaptation of the Token Test can contribute further in both research and clinical contexts of Indonesian aphasiology. One such instance where this present norm data was used, was in a study of sentence comprehension in Broca's aphasic speakers in Indonesian (Jap, Martinez-Ferreiro, & Bastiaanse, 2016). After attaining norms on healthy participants and individuals with aphasia, the Token Test in Indonesian can be used, if needed, to compare scores crosslinguistically with many standardized aphasia batteries like the Aachen Aphasia Test (original Dutch version by Graetz, De Bleser, & Willmes, 1992).…”

Peer talk in collaborative writing of primary school students: A conversation analytic study of student interaction in the context of inquiry learning

“…((reads aloud)) once upon a time there was a little boy. Alisia asks her peers if they still know what their schoolmaster and Mary once told and acted out, concerning the real story about the little pole (lines [183][184][185][186][187][188]. The turn-initial 5 placement of 'you know' serves as a projection for displaying agreement by the other participants, with her statement that they won't be following the suggestion of the attic, since that does not agree with the real (original) story (line 190).…”