LINGUIST List 18.1316
Wed May 02 2007
Diss: Neuroling: Garraffa: 'Impoverishment of Grammatical Features...'
Editor for this issue: Hunter Lockwood
<hunterlinguistlist.org>
Directory
1. Maria
Garraffa,
Impoverishment of Grammatical Features in a Non-Fluent Aphasic Speaker: The grammatical nature of minimal structures
Message 1: Impoverishment of Grammatical Features in a Non-Fluent Aphasic Speaker: The grammatical nature of minimal structures
Date: 01-May-2007
From: Maria Garraffa <garraffaunisi.it>
Subject: Impoverishment of Grammatical Features in a Non-Fluent Aphasic Speaker: The grammatical nature of minimal structures
Institution: University of Siena
Program: Cognitive Science
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2007
Author: Maria Garraffa
Dissertation Title: Impoverishment of Grammatical Features in a Non-Fluent Aphasic Speaker: The grammatical nature of minimal structures
Dissertation URL: www.ciscl.unisi.it
Linguistic Field(s):
Neurolinguistics
Dissertation Director:
Adriana Belletti
Naama Friedmann
Luigi Rizzi
Dissertation Abstract:
The present study is an examination of an Italian aphasic speaker (M.R.)with non-fluent speech following a focal lesion in the left hemisphere. Wedevelop an explanation of M.R.'s language impairment compatible withtheories of generative syntax and with some observations on parsingstrategies. The explanatory framework we adopt considers the grammar to bean integral part of on-line language processing.
A series of experiments was run across modalities (production,comprehension and grammaticality judgment), with the aim of definingimpaired linguistic structures grammatically. Results of the variousexperiments show selective impairment in some selective configurationsinvolving object movement in relative clauses, in Wh-questions and inclitic object constructions.
Comprehension deficit of non-canonical sentences has been attested sinceCaramazza and Zurif's seminal work (1976). In the present case-study asimilar subject/object asymmetry emerges from interrogative sentenceproduction, which has been found to be selectively impaired for objectmovement of animate arguments. Some interesting data was obtained testingattraction effects with clitics and prepositional modifiers. M.R. does notmanifest attraction effects if a clitic object is a potential intervener ofthe relevant agreement relation; prepositional modifiers induce significantattraction effects. We will speculate on these effects has precisephenomena related to syntactic conditions on minimal structures.
This case study lends support to the hypothesis that the present linguisticdeficit is an impoverishment of procedural capacities. This impoverishmentis grammatically driven, and it manifests itself in reduced syntacticstructures. M.R.'s linguistic competence is not different to a non-impairedgrammatical system. M.R. has the capacity to analyse sentences respectingsyntactic phrase structures but not in the way normal speakers do.Crucially, this approach to aphasia does not assume the existence of aspecific grammatical deficit, as the so-called agrammatism.
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