Tense and Agreement in Agrammatic Production: Pruning the Syntactic Tree

doi:10.1006/brln.1997.1795

Brain and Language

Volume 56, Issue 3, 15 February 1997, Pages 397-425

https://doi.org/10.1006/brln.1997.1795 Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper discusses the description of agrammatic production focusing on the verbal inflectional morphology. Agrammatism in Hebrew is investigated through an experiment with a patient who displays a highly selective impairment: agreement inflection is completely intact, but tense inflection, use of copula, and embedded structures are severely impaired. A retrospective examination of the literature shows that our findings are corroborated by others. A selective account of the agrammatic production deficiency is proposed, according to which only a subclass of the functional syntactic categories is impaired in this syndrome. The consequence of this deficit is the pruning of the syntactic phrase marker of agrammatic patients, which impairs performance from the impaired node and higher. These findings also bear upon central issues in linguistic theories, particularly that of Pollock (1989), regarding split inflection.

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Agrammatism in a usage-based theory of grammatical status: Impaired combinatorics, compensatory prioritization, or both?
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Citation Excerpt :
Many of the most influential theories of agrammatism are representational in the sense that they assume that the central deficit pertains to syntactic representation. This is the case, for instance, with Grodzinsky's Trace Deletion Hypothesis (e.g., Drai & Grodzinsky, 2006), Hickok and Avrutin's Differential Chain Deficit Hypothesis (e.g., Hickok & Avrutin, 1996), Mauner, Fromkin and Cornell's (1993) Double Dependency Hypothesis, and Friedmann and Grodzinsky's (1997) Tree Pruning Hypothesis. In contrast, neither of our two hypotheses assumes a representation deficit.
This paper proposes an understanding of agrammatism from the perspective of a recent usage-based theory of grammatical status, the ProGram theory (Boye and Harder, 2012). According to this theory, grammatical elements have two central properties: they are by convention discursively secondary (i.e. attentional background) and dependent on combination with a host item. The paper first surveys studies of agrammatic speech which, based on or reconsidered in relation to the above-mentioned criteria, show that the usage-based theory makes correct predictions about the behaviour of linguistic elements in agrammatic speech. Subsequently, the paper outlines and discusses two hypotheses about the mechanism behind agrammatism that can be derived from each of the two central properties of grammatical items. According to the prominence hypothesis, agrammatism is due to insufficient overall processing resources; this leads to a prioritization of lexical over grammatical expressions because the latter, being discursively secondary, can be dispensed with for communicative purposes. According to the dependence hypothesis, agrammatism results from an impaired capacity for combining or unifying simple elements into complex wholes: This impairment affects grammatical elements in particular, because these are dependent on (combination with) host items.
Treatment of verb tense morphology in agrammatic aphasia: A systematic review
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In this part, we will discuss these theories to see which one is more applicable to the results of reviewed studies. The TPH theory (Friedmann & Grodzinsky, 1997) limits the tense deficit to output modality and predicts the non-equal impairment of verb inflection production and the higher vulnerability of higher-level nodes on the syntactic tree (e.g. complementizer) compared to the impairment of the lower nodes (e.g. tense, agreement). Further, based on Pollock’s (1989) theory of split inflection phrase (IP), TPH proposes that the tense node is higher and more vulnerable than the agreement.
This paper aims to review the literature on the therapeutic approaches employed for the treatment of verb tense inflection in individuals with agrammatic aphasia and the reported outcomes on language production and verb tense inflection. All studies on the treatment of verb tense inflection were found by searching Cochrane library, ISI Web of Knowledge, Google Scholar, Pubmed, and Scopus until December 2020, with the combination of these keywords, ‘aphasia, verb, morphology, tense, therapy, treatment, rehabilitation’. All studies (single-case or group design) on the treatment of verb tense inflection in individuals with acquired aphasia were reviewed. Data were synthesized descriptively through tables to allow the facilitated comparison of the studies. The methodology of the reviewed studies was assessed using single-case experimental designs (SCED) scale. An adaptation of the Cochrane Collaboration's risk of bias (RoB) tool was employed to evaluate the risk of bias (RoB) in the reviewed studies. A total of 14 studies were selected and reviewed. The results of the reviewed studies demonstrated that the remediation of tense morphology production in individuals with agrammatic aphasia is effective and verb tense marking can be improved by therapies that specifically target this disorder. This review highlights the need for a more systematic investigation of different types of treatments for tense marking. Also, more detailed information about the treatment of regular vs irregular verbs are required to elucidate the potential efficiency of these two verb types in the treatment of tense inflection. Overall, regarding the theoretical and clinical aspects, the number of studies that specifically target tense morphology are growing and based on the positive potential of these treatments, they could be suitable for the rehabilitation of people with aphasia, especially those with agrammatism.
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^☆: We thank Jennifer Balogh, Roelien Bastiaanse, Uri Hadar, Maria Mercedes Piñango, Esterella de Roo, and Edgar Zurif for their insightful comments on this paper. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Na'ama Friedmann, Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel. E-mail:[email protected].

^☆☆: M.-L. Kean

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Regular ArticleTense and Agreement in Agrammatic Production: Pruning the Syntactic Tree☆,☆☆

Abstract

Working memory

Human memory

Grammatical morphology in aphasia: evidence from three languages

Cortex

Relating events in narrative

A redefinition of the syndrome of Broca's aphasia: Implications of a neuropsychological model of language

Applied Psycholinguistics

Syntactic and semantic structures in agrammatism

Agrammatism

The disruption of sentence production: some dissociations

Brain and Language

Dissociation of algorithmic and heuristic processes in language comprehension: evidence from aphasia

Brain and Language

Syntactic structures

A minimalist program for linguistic theory

MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics

German word formation and aphasia

The linguistic review

Morphological processing in Italian agrammatic speakers: Syntactic implementation of inflectional morphology

Brain and Language

Agrammatism

Agrammatism and inflectional morphology in English

Journal of speech and hearing research

Comparison of morphology and syntax in free narrative and structured tests: fluent vs. nonfluent aphasics

Cortex

Language disorders (aphasia)

The syntactic characterization of agrammatism

Cognition

Language deficits and the theory of syntax

Brain & Language

Theoretical perspectives on language deficits

There is an entity called agrammatic aphasia

Brain & Language

A restrictive theory of agrammatic comprehension

Brain and Language

Regular Article
Tense and Agreement in Agrammatic Production: Pruning the Syntactic Tree☆,☆☆