Time reference decoupled from tense in agrammatic and fluent aphasia

Abstract

Background: Reference to an event's time frame can be accomplished through verb inflection. In agrammatic aphasia, a deficit in past time reference has been identified by Bastiaanse and colleagues (2011). In fluent aphasia, specific problems with this time frame (expressed by the past tense) have been found as well Jonkers & de Bruin, 2009). However, time reference does not always coincide with tense; in languages such as Dutch and English, reference to the past can be established by using past tense (e.g., "he wrote a letter") or a present tense auxiliary in combination with a participle, i.e., the present perfect (e.g., "he has written a letter"). Aims: The goal of this study is twofold. First, it aims to untangle tense problems from problems with past time reference through verb morphology in people with aphasia. Second, this study aims to compare the production of time reference inflection by people with agrammatic and fluent aphasia. Methods & Procedures: A sentence completion task was used to elicit reference to the non-past and past in Dutch. Reference to the past was tested through (1) a simple verb in past tense and (2) a verb complex with an auxiliary in present tense + participle (the present perfect). Reference to the non-past was tested through a simple verb in present tense. Fourteen agrammatic aphasic speakers, sixteen fluent aphasic speakers, and twenty non-brain-damaged speakers (NBDs) took part in this study. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Outcomes & Results: NBDs scored at ceiling and significantly higher than the aphasic participants. Agrammatic speakers performed worse than fluent speakers, but the pattern of performance in both aphasic groups was similar. Reference to the past through past tense and [present tense auxiliary + participle] was more impaired than reference to the non-past. An error analysis revealed differences between the two groups.

Grammatical versus lexical words in theory and aphasia: Integrating linguistics and neurolinguistics

“…One might argue then that agrammatic speakers have problems expressing anterior with relevance to reference time (see Bastiaanse 2013), while fluent aphasic speakers have problems expressing possession. However, fluent aphasic speakers have the same problems with reference to the past as agrammatic speakers (Bos & Bastiaanse 2014) and they use hebben twice as often as an auxiliary than as a lexical word, ruling out a semantic explanation. The modal verbs also present an argument against any semantic account.…”

A characterization of verb use in Turkish agrammatic narrative speech

“…We believe that the common denominator here is that the verb forms for which discourse linking is required are difficult. This is because referring to past needs to be parsed by discourse syntax, which is hard for agrammatic speakers (Avrutin, 2000(Avrutin, , 2006Bastiaanse et al, 2011;Bos & Bastiaanse, 2014).…”

Neurolinguistic Studies on the Linguistic Expression of Time Reference in Thai

“…One of the 23 aims is to investigate how grammatical problems with time reference can be determined in Thai. Note that time reference refers to the semantic feature of the event expressed by a verb phrase as a whole, whereas tense refers more precisely to the morphological inflection of the finite verb (Bos & Bastiaanse, 2014).…”