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Adverb placement as evidence for clause structure and parameterization of verb movement in a bilingual Greek-English speaking patient with Broca’s aphasia
Brain and Language 87 (2003) 19–20 www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l
Adverb placement as evidence for clause structure and parameterization of verb movement in a bilingual Greek–English speaking patient with Broca’s aphasia Artemis Alexiadoua and Stavroula Stavrakakib a Institute of English Linguistics, University of Stuttgart, Keplerstr. 17, Stuttgart 70174, Germany Center for Developmental Language Disorders and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Human Communication Science, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, UK
b
Recent studies in aphasiology suggest that syntactic deficits in agrammatism are highly selective and restricted to certain syntactic domains and operations, i.e., the CP domain (Friedmann, 2001) and verb movement (Bastiaanse & van Zonneveld, 1998), respectively. Among the criteria used to test the preservation or not of clause structure layers in agrammatic grammar is adverb placement (cf. Lonzi & Luzzati, 1993). In this study, we investigate properties of clause structure and verb movement in the grammar of a Greek–English bilingual patient with Broca’s aphasia and mild agrammatism on the basis of adverbial distribution. We examine which aspects of the Greek and English clause structure in the patient’s grammar have been affected by brain damage and to what extent. We further study the parameterisation of clause structure and verb movement in the patient’s two grammars.
Method Subjects The subject of this study is KS, a 32-year-old, right handed woman who suffered a left CVA 30 months before entering our study and presented with right hemiplegia. KS was born in Greece but moved in her puberty to the States where she graduated from a high school in Illinois and got professional qualification as a teacher of English as a foreign language. She came back to Greece and started working as a teacher of English till her CVA. Immediately after her CVA, i.e., during the acute phase, the patient was able to say some words only in English. She received language therapy services in Greek and at the time of testing, her speech in Greek and English was consistently non-fluent with mild agrammatism. There were three control groups for the aphasic patient of this study matched to the patient on the basis of chronological age and years of education: two groups of 5 native speakers of Greek and English and one group of 5 Greek teachers of English who had studied and lived in UK or USA for at least 7 years and have been working as teachers of English in Greece for 10 years at the time of testing.
cality judgment task made up by 60 sentences in Greek and English. In the first experiment, the patient and the control groups were presented with the stimuli on separate cardboard and was told that they should order the stimuli presented in order to form the best Greek and English sentence (unmarked in our terms); in the second experiment the patient and the control groups were presented with 3–4 sentences, which differ in adverb placement and grammaticality (grammatical, ungrammatical, and marked sentences) and had to mark the correctness of each of the sentences by rating their judgments on a 5-point scale (1:totally incorrect–5:totally correct). We split the adverbs into two types (Alexiadou, 1997; Lonzi & Luzzati, 1993): specifier-type adverbs and complement-type adverbs. The former are VP external and include the Spec,CP and Spec, MoodP adverbs which are part of the higher part of the tree, and AspectP and NegP adverbs which are part of the lower part of the clause. Complement type adverbs include VP internal adverbs. Both types were tested. The responses were classified as correct, incorrect, and marked ones, i.e., the responses produced under special circumstances.
Results The results of both experiments are presented in Table 1. The first experiment indicated the following: First, the patient’s performance was language independent on the CP- and VP-related adverbs; selective difficulties with the CP-related adverbs were found whereas the patient performed at ceiling on complement adverbs in both Greek and English. Second, the patient exhibited language dependent performance on MoodP, AspectP, and NegP related adverbs: her performance was better in Greek than in English. The second experiment indicated increased grammatical sensitivity even to CP related adverbs. All control groups showed a high level of correct performance in both experiments.
Discussion Materials and procedure We examined adverb placement using a constituent ordering task made up by 60 sentences in Greek and English and a grammati-
We argue that: (i) The CP layer causes great difficulties to aphasic performance in both languages; however, we cannot conclude that it is altogether missing, as increased performance on CP-related adverbs is
0093-934X/$ – see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00176-7
20
Abstract / Brain and Language 87 (2003) 19–20
Table 1 The patient’s performance (%) on the constituent ordering task (COT) and the grammaticality judgment task (GJT): correct, incorrect, and marked responses Adverb type
Correct responses Greek
CP adverbs MoodP adverbs NegP adverbs AspectP adverbs VP adverbs
Incorrect responses English
Greek
Marked responses English
Greek
English
COT
GJT
COT
GJT
COT
GJT
COT
GJT
COT
GJT
COT
GJT
25
66.7
16.7
58.3
58.3
16.7
41.7
33.3
16.7
16.7
41.7
8.3
33.3
75
41.7
25
66.7
25
58.3
58.3
83.3
25
75
33.3
25
25
16.7
41.7
75
91.7
41.7
83.3
58.3
16.7
25
91.7
83.3
83.3
91.7
8.3
8.3
50 16.6
exhibited in the grammaticality judgment task. (ii) The better performance of the patient with MoodP, AspectP, and NegP adverbs is attributed to the peculiarities of English and Greek verbal morphology and movement. Our subject has the operation of V-to-T movement in her Greek grammar, but she has difficulties with correctly inserting do (and modals) in T(/Mood) in English, and with the operation of Aux-toT movement, otherwise available in English. This suggests that T and layers such as Mood are occasionally inactive. An interrelated factor is involved: our subject gets cues from morphology (particles, verbal affixes) in Greek but not in English that a close connection (agreement) exists between aspectual and modal-adverbs and the respective functional categories. Such cues are unavailable in English. (iii) The lower part of the clause is completely intact in both languages. We conclude that grammatical disorders in bilingual aphasia depend on the specific properties of each language (Paradis, 1988) to some extent, as difficulties with the CP projection hold for both languages (Friedmann, 2001). Moreover, overt morphology functions as a helping device for the patient of this study; consequently, the linguistic breakdown of this patient can be described better as a breakdown at
25
8.33 16.7
16.7
the level of syntax rather than of morphology (cf. Bastiaanse & van Zonneveld, 1998).
References Alexiadou, A. (1997). Adverb placement: A case study in antisymmetric syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bastiaanse, R., & van Zonneveld, R. (1998). On the relation between verb inflection and verb position in Dutch agrammatic patients. Brain and Language, 64, 165–181. Friedmann, N. (2001). Agrammatism and the psychological reality of syntactic tree. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 30(1), 71–90. Lonzi, L., & Luzzatti, C. (1993). Relevance of adverb distribution for the analysis of sentence representation in agrammatic patients. Brain and Language, 45, 306–317. Paradis, M. (1988). Recent development in the study of agrammatism: their import for the assessment of bilingual aphasia. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 3, 127–160.
Adverb placement as evidence for clause structure and parameterization of verb movement in a bilingual Greek–English speaking patient with Broca’s aphasia Artemis Alexiadoua and Stavroula Stavrakakib a Institute of English Linguistics, University of Stuttgart, Keplerstr. 17, Stuttgart 70174, Germany Center for Developmental Language Disorders and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Human Communication Science, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, UK
b
Recent studies in aphasiology suggest that syntactic deficits in agrammatism are highly selective and restricted to certain syntactic domains and operations, i.e., the CP domain (Friedmann, 2001) and verb movement (Bastiaanse & van Zonneveld, 1998), respectively. Among the criteria used to test the preservation or not of clause structure layers in agrammatic grammar is adverb placement (cf. Lonzi & Luzzati, 1993). In this study, we investigate properties of clause structure and verb movement in the grammar of a Greek–English bilingual patient with Broca’s aphasia and mild agrammatism on the basis of adverbial distribution. We examine which aspects of the Greek and English clause structure in the patient’s grammar have been affected by brain damage and to what extent. We further study the parameterisation of clause structure and verb movement in the patient’s two grammars.
Method Subjects The subject of this study is KS, a 32-year-old, right handed woman who suffered a left CVA 30 months before entering our study and presented with right hemiplegia. KS was born in Greece but moved in her puberty to the States where she graduated from a high school in Illinois and got professional qualification as a teacher of English as a foreign language. She came back to Greece and started working as a teacher of English till her CVA. Immediately after her CVA, i.e., during the acute phase, the patient was able to say some words only in English. She received language therapy services in Greek and at the time of testing, her speech in Greek and English was consistently non-fluent with mild agrammatism. There were three control groups for the aphasic patient of this study matched to the patient on the basis of chronological age and years of education: two groups of 5 native speakers of Greek and English and one group of 5 Greek teachers of English who had studied and lived in UK or USA for at least 7 years and have been working as teachers of English in Greece for 10 years at the time of testing.
cality judgment task made up by 60 sentences in Greek and English. In the first experiment, the patient and the control groups were presented with the stimuli on separate cardboard and was told that they should order the stimuli presented in order to form the best Greek and English sentence (unmarked in our terms); in the second experiment the patient and the control groups were presented with 3–4 sentences, which differ in adverb placement and grammaticality (grammatical, ungrammatical, and marked sentences) and had to mark the correctness of each of the sentences by rating their judgments on a 5-point scale (1:totally incorrect–5:totally correct). We split the adverbs into two types (Alexiadou, 1997; Lonzi & Luzzati, 1993): specifier-type adverbs and complement-type adverbs. The former are VP external and include the Spec,CP and Spec, MoodP adverbs which are part of the higher part of the tree, and AspectP and NegP adverbs which are part of the lower part of the clause. Complement type adverbs include VP internal adverbs. Both types were tested. The responses were classified as correct, incorrect, and marked ones, i.e., the responses produced under special circumstances.
Results The results of both experiments are presented in Table 1. The first experiment indicated the following: First, the patient’s performance was language independent on the CP- and VP-related adverbs; selective difficulties with the CP-related adverbs were found whereas the patient performed at ceiling on complement adverbs in both Greek and English. Second, the patient exhibited language dependent performance on MoodP, AspectP, and NegP related adverbs: her performance was better in Greek than in English. The second experiment indicated increased grammatical sensitivity even to CP related adverbs. All control groups showed a high level of correct performance in both experiments.
Discussion Materials and procedure We examined adverb placement using a constituent ordering task made up by 60 sentences in Greek and English and a grammati-
We argue that: (i) The CP layer causes great difficulties to aphasic performance in both languages; however, we cannot conclude that it is altogether missing, as increased performance on CP-related adverbs is
0093-934X/$ – see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S0093-934X(03)00176-7
20
Abstract / Brain and Language 87 (2003) 19–20
Table 1 The patient’s performance (%) on the constituent ordering task (COT) and the grammaticality judgment task (GJT): correct, incorrect, and marked responses Adverb type
Correct responses Greek
CP adverbs MoodP adverbs NegP adverbs AspectP adverbs VP adverbs
Incorrect responses English
Greek
Marked responses English
Greek
English
COT
GJT
COT
GJT
COT
GJT
COT
GJT
COT
GJT
COT
GJT
25
66.7
16.7
58.3
58.3
16.7
41.7
33.3
16.7
16.7
41.7
8.3
33.3
75
41.7
25
66.7
25
58.3
58.3
83.3
25
75
33.3
25
25
16.7
41.7
75
91.7
41.7
83.3
58.3
16.7
25
91.7
83.3
83.3
91.7
8.3
8.3
50 16.6
exhibited in the grammaticality judgment task. (ii) The better performance of the patient with MoodP, AspectP, and NegP adverbs is attributed to the peculiarities of English and Greek verbal morphology and movement. Our subject has the operation of V-to-T movement in her Greek grammar, but she has difficulties with correctly inserting do (and modals) in T(/Mood) in English, and with the operation of Aux-toT movement, otherwise available in English. This suggests that T and layers such as Mood are occasionally inactive. An interrelated factor is involved: our subject gets cues from morphology (particles, verbal affixes) in Greek but not in English that a close connection (agreement) exists between aspectual and modal-adverbs and the respective functional categories. Such cues are unavailable in English. (iii) The lower part of the clause is completely intact in both languages. We conclude that grammatical disorders in bilingual aphasia depend on the specific properties of each language (Paradis, 1988) to some extent, as difficulties with the CP projection hold for both languages (Friedmann, 2001). Moreover, overt morphology functions as a helping device for the patient of this study; consequently, the linguistic breakdown of this patient can be described better as a breakdown at
25
8.33 16.7
16.7
the level of syntax rather than of morphology (cf. Bastiaanse & van Zonneveld, 1998).
References Alexiadou, A. (1997). Adverb placement: A case study in antisymmetric syntax. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bastiaanse, R., & van Zonneveld, R. (1998). On the relation between verb inflection and verb position in Dutch agrammatic patients. Brain and Language, 64, 165–181. Friedmann, N. (2001). Agrammatism and the psychological reality of syntactic tree. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 30(1), 71–90. Lonzi, L., & Luzzatti, C. (1993). Relevance of adverb distribution for the analysis of sentence representation in agrammatic patients. Brain and Language, 45, 306–317. Paradis, M. (1988). Recent development in the study of agrammatism: their import for the assessment of bilingual aphasia. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 3, 127–160.