Presentation
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Grammar in 'agrammatical' aphasia: What’s intact?
Poster B73 in Poster Session B and Reception, Thursday, October 6, 6:30 - 8:30 pm EDT, Millennium Hall
Han Zhang1, Wolfram Hinzen1,2; 1Pompeu Fabra University, 2Catalan Institute for Advanced Studies and Research (ICREA)
Aphasia following cerebro-vascular accidents has been a primary source of insight for models of language in the brain. However, deviant language patterns in aphasia may reflect processing limitations and cognitive impairment more than language impairment per se. Here we sought to obtain new evidence from spontaneous speech for the intactness of grammatical knowledge in aphasia, operationalized as the preservation of the basic hierarchical structure of syntactic projections. Speech obtained with the AphasiaBank protocol was analyzed from 20 people with Broca’s aphasia (BA) and 20 matched non-brain-damaged controls. We quantified (i) marking of Aspect, Tense, and Modality (A-T-M), which are located at specific (high) layers of the syntactic hierarchy and ordered in relation to one another ([M…[T…[A…]]]); (ii) hierarchies of clausal units ([C…[C]]); (iii) discourse markers embedding clauses, located at the highest layer of the hierarchy; and (iv) attachment of adjuncts at different heights of a given hierarchical syntactic structure. Supplementary evidence was obtained from a typology of errors and from pauses subcategorized according to their hierarchical syntactic position. Results showed that groups did not quantitatively differ on rates of either Aspect or Modality but underproduced Tense and embedded clauses. Evidence for compensatory effects was seen in both of the latter two cases. While all adjunct types were underproduced in BA, and pauses overproduced, both showed the same relative proportions within both groups. Errors were largely restricted to omissions, of a kind that would also be expected in condensed neurotypical speech. Overall, these patterns support the hypothesis of intactness of grammatical knowledge in BA, questioning it as a disease model of language impairment.
Topic Areas: Disorders: Acquired, Language Production