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Parallels in the breakdown of CP and DP-internal movement processes in agrammatism: A preliminary case study
Brain and Language 95 (2005) 129–130 www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l
Parallels in the breakdown of CP and DP-internal movement processes in agrammatism: A preliminary case study Philip Rausch
a,b,*
, Frank Burchert b, Ria De Bleser
b
a b
Institute of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Austria Institute of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany Accepted 8 July 2005 Available online 22 August 2005
Introduction
Methods
Abney (1987) formulated his influential ‘DP-hypothesis’, which equipped noun phrases with their own functional projection DP hosting determiners and other noun-related functional material. Since then, the general tendency within syntactic theory has been to treat the verbal and the nominal domain in an increasingly parallel manner. Grimshaw (1991) reduced the distinction between the two domains basically to the difference in the feature composition of the respective lexical head. Further work suggests that certain types of CP-related processes, such as X or XP-movement to V-related functional projections, may have DP-internal counterparts: N-to-D raising of proper names and possessor movement (Longobardi, 2001) constitute instances of DP-internal nominal head and phrasal movement, respectively. Despite the central role the DP plays in contemporary syntactic theory, systematic investigations of DP-internal processes by means of controlled tests do not feature prominently in current aphasiological research and syntactic accounts of agrammatic speech production differ in their scope with respect to the two domains. Recent studies investigating CP-internal movement suggest that verb (X) movement in V-2 languages such as Dutch or German is impaired in agrammatism and that the impairment may further affect XP-movement within the sentential domain (cf. Bastiaanse, Koekkoek, & van Zonneveld, 2003). Work on DP-internal movement in agrammatism is virtually non-existent, but Semenza, Grana`, Cocolo, Longobardi, and Di Benedetto (2002) provide preliminary evidence that head movement of Italian proper names to the topmost nominal functional head D might be affected. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the ability of a severely impaired German-speaking agrammatic aphasic to construct movement-derived structures in both domains by means of two constituent ordering tasks.
Subject
*
Corresponding author. Fax: +43 1 292 57 20. E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Rausch).
0093-934X/$ - see front matter 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2005.07.070
S.R., a right-handed woman with no college education, suffered a left-hemispheric CVA at the age of 36, 14 weeks prior to testing, causing right hemiplegia and aphasia. According to the standard German aphasia test (AAT), administered 8 weeks p.o., she was diagnosed as a case of global/Broca’s aphasic. At the time of testing, she presented with severe agrammatic speech production. Tasks The first experiment examined the production of German movement-derived V-2 transitive main clauses and V-end transitive subordinated clauses introduced by a complementiser (constituent ordering task, n = 20/condition). The second test probed the patient’s capability to construct German DP-structures as exemplified in Table 1. If an argument of the head noun is realised as a genitive proper name, it may surface either in a low postnominal functional projection or in a high prenominal one (Longobardi, 2001). The actual position is regulated by the presence or absence of a determiner in D: while the proper name obligatorily moves to the prenominal position when the determiner is absent (1a), it has to stay in the postnominal position in the presence of a determiner (1b). This pattern thus resembles the complementary distribution of complementisers and moved verbs in V-2 languages (2a-b), though it is a case of XP- rather than X-movement. (1c) further shows that both positions may be simultaneously filled. While the prenominal one can only be occupied by a prenominal genitive proper name (‘PrePN’), the lower argument may be realised either as a genitive proper name (‘PostPN’), a full genitive DP (‘FullDP’) or an in-situ PP. While the genitive proper names thus belong to the class of elements which might potentially move to the prenominal position (as finite verbs in German), FullDPs and PPs always stay low (as non-finite verbs in German) (1d-e). The second constituent ordering task comprised 8 conditions (n = 16 each), the DPs which had to be arranged were embedded in the canonical subject (50%) or object (50%) position of simple transitive sentences and S.R. had to arrange either two (noun + 1 ar-
130
Abstract / Brain and Language 95 (2005) 129–130
Table 1 Examples of DP-internal nominal argument movement and CP-internal verb movement in German (*, ungrammatical order) Nominal argument mvt. 1. (a) [PrePN Marias] [N Beschreibung] / * [N Beschreibung] [PostPN Marias] Mary’s description / description Mary’s (b) dieDet [N Beschreibung] [PostPN Marias] / * dieDet [PrePN Marias] [N Beschreibung] the description Mary’s / the Mary’s description (c) [PrePN Marias] [N Beschreibung] [PostPN Peters] / [FullDP des Jungen] / [PP von Peter] Mary’s description Peter’s / the boy’s / of Peter (d) dieDet [N Beschreibung] [FullDP des Ma¨dchens] / * [FullDP des Ma¨dchens] [N Beschreibung] the description the girl’s / the girl’s description (e) dieDet [N Beschreibung] [PP von Maria] / * [PP von Maria] [N Beschreibung] the description of Mary / of Mary description V-mvt. 2. (a) Maria beschreibtV-2 Peter / * Maria Peter beschreibtV-end Mary describes Peter / Mary Peter describes (b) … dassComp Maria Peter beschreibtV-end / * ... dassComp Maria beschreibtV-2 Peter that Mary Peter describes / that Mary describes Peter
gument, 4 conditions) or three cards (noun + 2 arguments, 4 conditions). Chance levels were calculated using binomial tests.
Results S.R. tended towards leaving the finite verb in final position, suggesting that CP-related verb movement caused her problems. Similarly, she generally performed below chance on the PrePN argument type in the DP-internal movement test, while she tended to correctly place PostPN arguments in postnominal position. Further, performance on FullDPs and PPs, which may never appear in prenominal position, was virtually perfect. Also, S.R. hardly ever produced structures which are always ungrammatical, independent of the context they occur in (e.g., V-1 subordinate clauses or FullDP-initial DPs). Such a complete breakdown of performance was only observed in condition 8 of the DP-experiment, the only condition with a head noun and two potentially moving elements (PrePN and PostPN; see (1c)) within a construction. The number of the cards which had to be arranged alone did not influence S.R.’s performance, however.
Discussion The results indicate that both X- and XP-movement in agrammatism may be impaired across the verbal and the nominal domain, in general agreement with Bastiaanse et al.’s (2003) conclusion for the CP
and Semenza et al.’s (2002) for the DP. The performance on movement-derived constructions, however, may depend on the severity of the impairment and the overall syntactic complexity of the respective structure. In the current context, the degree of complexity seems to be determined by several factors, such as an element’s inherent ability to move, the number of ‘potential movers’/non-movers in a given structure and their interactions. The present study suggests that systematic investigation of the nominal domain might be a useful tool in agrammatism research. Currently, additional tests to further explore the relationship between the CP and the DP in agrammatism with a higher number of subjects are being developed.
References Abney, S. (1987). The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Bastiaanse, R., Koekkoek, J., & van Zonneveld, R. (2003). Object scrambling in Dutch Broca’s aphasia. Brain and Language, 86, 287– 299. Grimshaw, J. (1991). Extended projections. Ms., Brandeis University. Longobardi, G. (2001). The structure of DPs. In M. Baltin & C. Collins (Eds.), The handbook of contemporary syntactic theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Semenza, C., Grana`, A., Cocolo, R., Longobardi, G., & Di Benedetto, P. (2002). Proper names and noun-to-determiner movement in aphasia: A case study. Brain and Cognition, 48, 542–545.
Parallels in the breakdown of CP and DP-internal movement processes in agrammatism: A preliminary case study Philip Rausch
a,b,*
, Frank Burchert b, Ria De Bleser
b
a b
Institute of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Austria Institute of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany Accepted 8 July 2005 Available online 22 August 2005
Introduction
Methods
Abney (1987) formulated his influential ‘DP-hypothesis’, which equipped noun phrases with their own functional projection DP hosting determiners and other noun-related functional material. Since then, the general tendency within syntactic theory has been to treat the verbal and the nominal domain in an increasingly parallel manner. Grimshaw (1991) reduced the distinction between the two domains basically to the difference in the feature composition of the respective lexical head. Further work suggests that certain types of CP-related processes, such as X or XP-movement to V-related functional projections, may have DP-internal counterparts: N-to-D raising of proper names and possessor movement (Longobardi, 2001) constitute instances of DP-internal nominal head and phrasal movement, respectively. Despite the central role the DP plays in contemporary syntactic theory, systematic investigations of DP-internal processes by means of controlled tests do not feature prominently in current aphasiological research and syntactic accounts of agrammatic speech production differ in their scope with respect to the two domains. Recent studies investigating CP-internal movement suggest that verb (X) movement in V-2 languages such as Dutch or German is impaired in agrammatism and that the impairment may further affect XP-movement within the sentential domain (cf. Bastiaanse, Koekkoek, & van Zonneveld, 2003). Work on DP-internal movement in agrammatism is virtually non-existent, but Semenza, Grana`, Cocolo, Longobardi, and Di Benedetto (2002) provide preliminary evidence that head movement of Italian proper names to the topmost nominal functional head D might be affected. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the ability of a severely impaired German-speaking agrammatic aphasic to construct movement-derived structures in both domains by means of two constituent ordering tasks.
Subject
*
Corresponding author. Fax: +43 1 292 57 20. E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Rausch).
0093-934X/$ - see front matter 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2005.07.070
S.R., a right-handed woman with no college education, suffered a left-hemispheric CVA at the age of 36, 14 weeks prior to testing, causing right hemiplegia and aphasia. According to the standard German aphasia test (AAT), administered 8 weeks p.o., she was diagnosed as a case of global/Broca’s aphasic. At the time of testing, she presented with severe agrammatic speech production. Tasks The first experiment examined the production of German movement-derived V-2 transitive main clauses and V-end transitive subordinated clauses introduced by a complementiser (constituent ordering task, n = 20/condition). The second test probed the patient’s capability to construct German DP-structures as exemplified in Table 1. If an argument of the head noun is realised as a genitive proper name, it may surface either in a low postnominal functional projection or in a high prenominal one (Longobardi, 2001). The actual position is regulated by the presence or absence of a determiner in D: while the proper name obligatorily moves to the prenominal position when the determiner is absent (1a), it has to stay in the postnominal position in the presence of a determiner (1b). This pattern thus resembles the complementary distribution of complementisers and moved verbs in V-2 languages (2a-b), though it is a case of XP- rather than X-movement. (1c) further shows that both positions may be simultaneously filled. While the prenominal one can only be occupied by a prenominal genitive proper name (‘PrePN’), the lower argument may be realised either as a genitive proper name (‘PostPN’), a full genitive DP (‘FullDP’) or an in-situ PP. While the genitive proper names thus belong to the class of elements which might potentially move to the prenominal position (as finite verbs in German), FullDPs and PPs always stay low (as non-finite verbs in German) (1d-e). The second constituent ordering task comprised 8 conditions (n = 16 each), the DPs which had to be arranged were embedded in the canonical subject (50%) or object (50%) position of simple transitive sentences and S.R. had to arrange either two (noun + 1 ar-
130
Abstract / Brain and Language 95 (2005) 129–130
Table 1 Examples of DP-internal nominal argument movement and CP-internal verb movement in German (*, ungrammatical order) Nominal argument mvt. 1. (a) [PrePN Marias] [N Beschreibung] / * [N Beschreibung] [PostPN Marias] Mary’s description / description Mary’s (b) dieDet [N Beschreibung] [PostPN Marias] / * dieDet [PrePN Marias] [N Beschreibung] the description Mary’s / the Mary’s description (c) [PrePN Marias] [N Beschreibung] [PostPN Peters] / [FullDP des Jungen] / [PP von Peter] Mary’s description Peter’s / the boy’s / of Peter (d) dieDet [N Beschreibung] [FullDP des Ma¨dchens] / * [FullDP des Ma¨dchens] [N Beschreibung] the description the girl’s / the girl’s description (e) dieDet [N Beschreibung] [PP von Maria] / * [PP von Maria] [N Beschreibung] the description of Mary / of Mary description V-mvt. 2. (a) Maria beschreibtV-2 Peter / * Maria Peter beschreibtV-end Mary describes Peter / Mary Peter describes (b) … dassComp Maria Peter beschreibtV-end / * ... dassComp Maria beschreibtV-2 Peter that Mary Peter describes / that Mary describes Peter
gument, 4 conditions) or three cards (noun + 2 arguments, 4 conditions). Chance levels were calculated using binomial tests.
Results S.R. tended towards leaving the finite verb in final position, suggesting that CP-related verb movement caused her problems. Similarly, she generally performed below chance on the PrePN argument type in the DP-internal movement test, while she tended to correctly place PostPN arguments in postnominal position. Further, performance on FullDPs and PPs, which may never appear in prenominal position, was virtually perfect. Also, S.R. hardly ever produced structures which are always ungrammatical, independent of the context they occur in (e.g., V-1 subordinate clauses or FullDP-initial DPs). Such a complete breakdown of performance was only observed in condition 8 of the DP-experiment, the only condition with a head noun and two potentially moving elements (PrePN and PostPN; see (1c)) within a construction. The number of the cards which had to be arranged alone did not influence S.R.’s performance, however.
Discussion The results indicate that both X- and XP-movement in agrammatism may be impaired across the verbal and the nominal domain, in general agreement with Bastiaanse et al.’s (2003) conclusion for the CP
and Semenza et al.’s (2002) for the DP. The performance on movement-derived constructions, however, may depend on the severity of the impairment and the overall syntactic complexity of the respective structure. In the current context, the degree of complexity seems to be determined by several factors, such as an element’s inherent ability to move, the number of ‘potential movers’/non-movers in a given structure and their interactions. The present study suggests that systematic investigation of the nominal domain might be a useful tool in agrammatism research. Currently, additional tests to further explore the relationship between the CP and the DP in agrammatism with a higher number of subjects are being developed.
References Abney, S. (1987). The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. Bastiaanse, R., Koekkoek, J., & van Zonneveld, R. (2003). Object scrambling in Dutch Broca’s aphasia. Brain and Language, 86, 287– 299. Grimshaw, J. (1991). Extended projections. Ms., Brandeis University. Longobardi, G. (2001). The structure of DPs. In M. Baltin & C. Collins (Eds.), The handbook of contemporary syntactic theory. Oxford: Blackwell. Semenza, C., Grana`, A., Cocolo, R., Longobardi, G., & Di Benedetto, P. (2002). Proper names and noun-to-determiner movement in aphasia: A case study. Brain and Cognition, 48, 542–545.