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

Abstract

This study examined patterns of verb production in narrative samples of eight individuals with agrammatic aphasia and seven education-and age-matched normal subjects. Comprehension and constrained production of two types of intransitive verbs-unaccusatives whose argument structure triggers a complex syntactic derivation and unergatives that are considered syntactically simple-was also tested. Results showed that in narrative tasks a hierarchy of verb production difficulty as seen in previous studies [Aphasiology 11 (1997) 473; Brain and Language 74 (2000) 1] emerged for the aphasic participants, with a preference noted for production of verbs with a fewer number of arguments. Both normal and agrammatic subjects also showed fewer productions of unaccusative intransitive verbs in their narrative samples as compared to other verb types (supporting findings reported by Kegl [Brain and Language 50 (1995) 151]. In contrast to relatively spared comprehension of both unaccusative and unergative intransitives, the aphasic participants showed significantly greater difficulty producing unaccusatives as compared to unergatives in the constrained task. These findings suggest that deficits in accessing verbs for production are influenced by the verb's argument structure entry and led to what is referred to as the 'argument structure complexity hypothesis'. When verbs become more complex in terms of the number of associated arguments or when the argument structure entry of the verb does not directly map to its s-structure representation, production difficulty increases. KeywordsVerb production; Unaccusatives; Syntactic deficits; Agrammatism It has been well documented in the literature that some individuals with aphasia, particularly those showing deficit patterns consistent with a diagnosis of Broca's aphasia with agrammatism, evince greater difficulty producing verbs as compared to nouns (Berndt, Mitchum, Haendiges, & Sandson, 1997; Miceli, Silveri, Nocentini, & Caramazza, 1988;Miceli, Silveri, Villa, & Caramazza, 1984; Thompson et al., l995b;Zingeser & Berndt, 1990). 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. That i...

Verb use in aphasic and non-aphasic personal discourse: What is normal?

“…There is evidence that aphasic speakers find verbs with increasing numbers of arguments more difficult to retrieve, and perform poorly compared to controls (Edwards & Bastiaanse, 1998;Thompson, 2003;Whitworth, 1995). This has been noted in assessment contexts investigating thematic roles (Whitworth, 1995) and personal narrative tasks (describing the onset of aphasia; talking about last trip to hospital; Edwards & Bastiaanse, 1998), compared with controls.…”

Linguistic complexity and frequency in agrammatic speech production

“…The findings are interesting with respect to argument structure. Thompson's Argument Structure Complexity Hypothesis (ASCH: Thompson, 2003) predicts that the more complex argument structure of a verb is, the more difficult this verb is for agrammatic speakers. This is an alternative account for the data of the experiment on verbs with alternating transitivity, although the idea is the same: what is linguistically complex is difficult for agrammatic speakers.…”

“…These assume that parts of the linguistic representations (traces, top of the syntactic tree) are gone due to brain damage. Other theories, such as the Argument Structure Complexity Hypothesis (Thompson, 2003) and the Derived Order Problem Hypothesis (Bastiaanse & van Zonneveld, 2005), assume that the linguistic representations are intact, but due to processing disorders, some are harder to retrieve than others. What these theories have in common is that they hold linguistic complexity responsible for the problems that agrammatic patients encounter.…”

Afasiaren azterketa hizkuntza ezberdinetan neurozientzia kognitiboaren ikuspegitik

“…Aldiz, esaldi-ekoizpenean ekoiztu zituen hiru adizki jokatuen artean, Nor motako bi zeuden, eta Nor-Nork motako bat, baina Nor-Nori-Nork motako aditzik, bat ere ez. Argument Structure Complexity hipotesiak [31] dio egitura argumentalaren konplexutasunak aditzak lexikotik berreskuratzeko zailtasunak areagotzen dituela. Baina behaketa honetatik, euskarazko datu gutxi dauden arren, proposa liteke agramatismoan egitura argumentalaren konplexutasunak maila morfosintaktikoan duela eragina ez, maila lexikoan [28].…”