Disorders of Syntax and Morphology

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Disorders of Syntax and Morphology
Ling 411 09
Goodglass 1993 Chapter 6
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Language Areas
Angular gyrus
Wernickes area
Exners area Brocas area
Superior parietal lobule
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Agrammatism

• Usually associated with Brocas aphasia
• Generally present in Brocas aphasia
• But other aphasics also have grammatical
  dysfunctions
• Paragrammatism common in Wernicke aphasia
• A lot of variation among different patients

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Agrammatism vs. Paragrammatism

• Paragrammatism too much speech
• Normal or excessive fluency
• Use of inappropriate words
• Neologisms
• No lack of function words and inflections
• But not always used appropriately
• Common in Wernickes aphasia
• Agrammatism not enough speech
• Lack of fluency
• Omission (NOT deletion!) of function words and
  inflections
• Common in Brocas aphasia

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Brocas Aphasia

• Damage to frontal lobe
• Largely intact comprehension
• Nonfluent, agrammatic speech
• Telegraphic speech
• Abundance of content words (e.g., nouns)
• Lack of function words (e.g. prepositions)
• Impaired verb processing
• Bates, Chen, Tzeng, Li Opie, 1991 Damasio
  Tranel, 1993 Daniele, Giustolisi, Silveri,
  Colosimo Gainotti, 1994 Lamb Zhang, 2002
  Shapiro Caramazza, 2003

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Agrammatism an early observation (1819)

• Deleuze (1819), referring to a French-speaking
  patient The patient used exclusively the
  infinitive of verbs and used no pronouns. She
  produced absolutely no conjugated verb.

Goodglass 1993 104
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Example of agrammatic speech
Examiner Can you tell me about why you came back
to the hospital? Patient yes eh Monday eh
dad Peter Hogan and dad hospital. Er
two er doctors and er thirty minutes
and ... er yes hospital. And er Wednesday
Wednesday. Nine oclock. And er Thursday,
ten oclock doctors two two doctors and
er teeth fine. E Not exactly your teeth
your g- P Gum gum E What did they do to
them? P And er doctor and girl and er and
er gum
Goodglass 1993 107
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Some features of agrammatism

• Telegraphic speech
• Short utterances
• Omission of grammatical functors
• Relative abundance of substantives
• Verbs are uncommon, rare in some patients
• When present, uninflected or ing form
• For French aphasics, infinitive form
• Use of word order is resistant to damage
• Comprehension is impaired for complex sentences

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Omission vs. Deletion

• Goodglass (106)
• Sentences with a deleted main verb (Joan and I .
  . . Coffee) may continue to appear.
• . . . misuse or deletions of morphology . . .
• Is he talking about deletion or omission?
• Deletion implies that it was there first, and
  then removed
• Goodglass is following a practice that was common
  among linguists at the time he wrote the book

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Problems in the study of agrammatism

• Must be distinguished from paragrammatism
• Grammatical aberrations even among Broca
  aphasics vary from patient to patient
• Linguistics has not (yet) provided clear answers
  to important basic questions
• What normal grammatical functions are
• How they operate

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Syntax

• First, we need to dispel the notion that syntax
  is one capacity, that can be lost (or spared) as
  a unit
• It is a label of the grammarian for multiple
  things
• Word order is often spared in Brocas aphasia
  while a lot of syntax is lost
• Syntax can be understood as a set of
  constructions
• Learned by children (and others) one by one
• Like vocabulary
• Some can be lost, others spared, in aphasia

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Stability of word order in agrammatism

• Agrammatic patients can usually handle word order
  in both production and comprehension
• Evidence (comprehension)
• passive sentences misconstrued
• The horse was kicked by the dog
• Passive marker not apprehended
• Canonical word order guides the interpretation
• Possibly aided by conceptual knowledge

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Reading and writing in agrammatism

• Agrammatic difficulties are also seen in
• Oral reading
• Writing to dictation
• Repetition
• But
• Some patients are agrammatic in speech but not in
  writing (Goodglass 1993 110)
• Some can repeat correctly
• How to explain?
• Menn Obler (1990) describe some patients who
  are less agrammatic in oral reading than in
  spontaneous speech (Goodglass 1993111)

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Variation among agrammatics (Goodglass 1993107)

• Syntax and morphology (study of agrammatic French
  aphasics)
• Some patients have fairly good syntax but
  defective morphology
• Some patients have fairly good morphology but
  defective syntax
• Both types of patients fail to use inflected verb
  forms
• Gleason et al. observations (1975)
• Some patients use s plural marker but not
  articles
• Other patients use articles but not s plural
  marker

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Loss of the use of relational markers in
receptive agrammatism (118)

• E.g. fathers sister
• Ex Is my fathers sister a man or a woman?
• Patient answers randomly
• Unable to grasp the relational function of s
• Command given in testing
• Ex Touch the comb with the pencil
• Patient may touch the pencil with the comb
• Perhaps picks up comb because the word comb comes
  first in the instruction
• Locative relations somewhat less fragile
• in back of/in front of, over/under, before/after

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Linguistic structure in the cortexWhat we learn
from agrammatism

• Agrammatism is generally associated with Brocas
  aphasia
• Therefore, the grammatical skills lost in Brocas
  aphasia must be supported at least in part by
  either
• Brocas area, or
• Area(s) adjacent to Brocas area
• In other words There must be something in or
  near Brocas area that is essential for correct
  grammatical production
• And grammatical comprehension
• Receptive agrammatism

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Attempts to explain agrammatism

• Many theories have been proposed
• Cf. Goodglass 1993111ff
• Some intriguing ideas
• Loss of relational use of words (Jakobson, Luria)
• Difficulty with markers of such relationships
• Impairment of inner speech (Luria)
• Hence, impairment of auditory working memory
• Difficulty with unstressed words (Goodglass,
  Kean)
• Substantive words are commonly stressed
• Functors are generally unstressed

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Caution in interpreting

• Agrammatism may not be just one phenomenon
• Syntax is not one structure but several
• All agrammatics and probably all Brocas aphasics
  are deficient in use of verbs
• Other phenomena of agrammatism show more
  variability
• The problem (or part of the problem) may not be
  grammar as such
• Short-term memory the inner speech loop
• Phonology stressed vs. unstressed words

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Phonological factors

• Function words are (in general) unstressed
• Maybe the difficulty is in production of
  unstressed words
• Intriguing finding of Goodglass et al.
• Function words
• May be produced after a stressed word
• But almost never produced initially
• Production starts with stressed word
• Even with repetition
• Open the door gt Open the door
• The door is open gt Door is open

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More evidence on relational markers (119f)

• Grammatical particles that do not mark relations
  are exempt from omission
• and
• Japanese clause-final particles
• Emphatic yo
• Question marker ka
• Confirmation-seeking particle ne
• Verbs always have a syntactic implication
• I.e. relationship to one or more nouns
• Menn Obler Impairment affecting grammatical
  elements that mark relationships within the
  sentence

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