Syntactic complexity in the presence of an intervener: the case of an anomic Italian speaker.

• ¹ Université de Genève, Switzerland
• ² Azienda USL Toscana Sud Est, Italy
• ³ Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom

A robust finding from language acquisition, adult processing and individuals with language impairment is that certain Object Relatives and Object Questions are more challenging to comprehend and produce compared to Subject Relatives and Subject Questions and to other Object Relatives and Object Questions. Approaches informed by linguistic theory have been proposed to clarify the source of the difficulties with these sentences. Recent models support the idea of a grammatically based resource reduction that selectively affects sentences requiring the processing of an object dependency across an intervening subject similar to the object in relevant features (such as R for Relatives, Q for Questions, NP for lexically restricted noun phrases, Sing/Plur for number) (Garraffa & Grillo, 2008; Friedmann, Belletti & Rizzi, 2009). Whilst sentences like (1a-c) and (2a-b) are rather easy to compute, sentences like (1d) and (2c) appear to be hard. (1) a. (Show me) the mom that hugs the girl No intervention R NP R NP b. (Show me) who the mom hugs Feature Disjunction R NP R c. (Show me) the girls that the mom hugs Feature Intersection R NP Plur NP Sing R NP Plur d. (Show me) the girl that the mom hugs Feature Inclusion R NP NP R NP (2) a. Which girl hugs the woman? No intervention Q NP Q NP b. Who does the girl hug ? Feature Disjunction Q NP Q c. Which woman does the girl hug Feature Inclusion Q NP NP Q NP This work presents new evidence from a single case study concerning the morphosyntactic competence of an Italian anomic speaker (F.G., male, 66 years old, Left TPO lesion, tested 4 months post-onset). The clinical diagnosis of anomia revealed a deficit in lexical retrieval measured with two standard assessments (BADA, Miceli et al., 1984; AAT, Luzzatti et al., 1996). Both batteries reported no impairment at grammatical level and no sign of agrammatism. Morphosyntactic competence was investigated through a detailed series of off-line tasks testing both comprehension and production, from determiner–noun agreement to more complex sentences (Table 1). F.G.’s performance was compared with that of 6 controls matched in age and education, using the Crawford test for single-case studies (Crawford & Howell, 1998). The morphosyntactic abilities of F.G. turned out to be basically intact with no difficulties in comprehension or production such as those found in agrammatism. However, a selective deficit in both the comprehension and production of ORs and OQs involving an intervening subject whose featural specification is included in the one of the moved object emerged. In conclusion, syntactic asymmetries in both comprehension and production emerged in the performance of an anomic speaker with no apparent morphosyntactic impairment or sign of agrammatism. The deficit in syntactic computation is selective and expected under recent models informed by linguistic theory of the difficulty with sentences involving interveners. Patients with anomia can reveal a syntactic based impairment, thus calling for refinements in the classical classification of aphasia syndromes.