This thesis examines the nature of the language deficit called agrammatism, the linguistic syndrome usually associated with Broca's aphasia. I focus on the narratives produced by agrammatics of five different languages, English, Dutch, German, French, and Italian, the transcripts of which are collected in Menn & Obler (1990). My goal is to account for the omission and substitution errors that characterize agrammatic production. Agrammatic utterances with omissions display appropriate word order. Among these are structures that include adverbs, negation, and verb-second matrix clauses. These structures are derived by movement to functional projections. I argue that agrammatic clauses include minimally three functional projections above VP. I propose that the full array of functional projections is present in agrammatic speech. I argue that the most concise account of agrammatic production is one in which Universal Grammar governs agrammatic speech. Although any syntactic category may be omitted, not all categories are omitted with the same frequency. Lexical categories are better retained than functional categories; and nominal categories are better retained than verbal categories. I propose a Principle of Robustness whereby the more Formal features a category is specified for, the more Robust it is. The net result is that the more features a syntactic category is specified for, the more likely it is retrieved. This results in the following Retrieval Hierarchy: N > V, A , D > P, T, K > C, where ">" means "better retained than". In addition to omissions, agrammatic speech includes substitutions: Syntactic substitutions display two striking characteristics. First, substitutions are not cross-categorial. Second, substitutions are subject to the Single Feature Constraint: only one optional Formal feature from agreement (person, number and gender), Case and tense is altered. To derive these characteristics, I argue that the structure of the Lexicon is paradigmatic. Both omissions and substitutions lead me to a discussion of Lexical Insertion, the process by which words are inserted into syntactic structures. I conclude that the agrammatic deficit lies outside the phonological, syntactic and semantic components proper. Instead, omissions and substitutions result from an impairment to the interface mechanisms between the Lexicon, the Syntax and the Phonology.

This thesis examines the nature of the language deficit called agrammatism, the linguistic syndrome usually associated with Broca's aphasia. I focus on the narratives produced by agrammatics of five different languages, English, Dutch, German, French, and Italian, the transcripts of which are collected in Menn & Obler (1990). My goal is to account for the omission and substitution errors that characterize agrammatic production. Agrammatic utterances with omissions display appropriate word order. Among these are structures that include adverbs, negation, and verb-second matrix clauses. These structures are derived by movement to functional projections. I argue that agrammatic clauses include minimally three functional projections above VP. I propose that the full array of functional projections is present in agrammatic speech. I argue that the most concise account of agrammatic production is one in which Universal Grammar governs agrammatic speech. Although any syntactic category may be omitted, not all categories are omitted with the same frequency. Lexical categories are better retained than functional categories; and nominal categories are better retained than verbal categories. I propose a Principle of Robustness whereby the more Formal features a category is specified for, the more Robust it is. The net result is that the more features a syntactic category is specified for, the more likely it is retrieved. This results in the following Retrieval Hierarchy: N > V, A , D > P, T, K > C, where ">" means "better retained than". In addition to omissions, agrammatic speech includes substitutions: Syntactic substitutions display two striking characteristics. First, substitutions are not cross-categorial. Second, substitutions are subject to the Single Feature Constraint: only one optional Formal feature from agreement (person, number and gender), Case and tense is altered. To derive these characteristics, I argue that the structure of the Lexicon is paradigmatic. Both omissions and substitutions lead me to a discussion of Lexical Insertion, the process by which words are inserted into syntactic structures. I conclude that the agrammatic deficit lies outside the phonological, syntactic and semantic components proper. Instead, omissions and substitutions result from an impairment to the interface mechanisms between the Lexicon, the Syntax and the Phonology. / Arts, Faculty of / Linguistics, Department of / Graduate

The aim of this study was to investigate sentence production deficits in subjects with aphasia, with a view to improving the description of the observed features of performance and determining the nature of the underlying impairment. An analysis of narrative speech was designed which described sentence production in terms of thematic, phrasal and morphological structure. The comprehensive analysis procedure allowed the sentence production of non-fluent aphasic subjects, fluent aphasic subjects and normal control subjects to be compared. The results of the narrative analysis questioned the validity of grouping subjects via the fluency of their speech; there was extensive variability within each group and the deficits seen in the nonfluent and fluent subjects were not differentiable. Garrett's (1980) model of normal sentence production provided a more beneficial framework for characterising sentence production deficits in aphasia. The majority of the subjects with aphasia presented with a combination of functional and positional level deficits. Selective deficits were, however, identified in the production of thematic structure, complex phrases, function words and inflectional morphology. The independence of functional and positional level processing was confirmed by an additional study of narrative speech investigating how thematic structure influenced subsequent phrasal realisation. There was no trade-off between the complexity of the predicate argument structure (in terms of the number of phrasal components associated with the verb) and the complexity of the phrases used to realise those arguments. In addition, the argument status of the phrase was not found to influence its complexity. The number of phrasal components in an utterance and the complexity of those phrases was only influenced by the information to be conveyed. The narrative analysis allowed the likely location of a subject's impairment to be identified. An investigation of four subjects with apparent difficulties in producing the functional level representation found that differential deficits were responsible for their production of thematic structure. These results provide support for the three subprocesses suggested by Schwartz (1987): - the retrieval of semantic information, the creation of the predicate argument structure and the assignment of thematic roles to lexical items.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-194). Also available on microfiche.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Alberta, 2010. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on April 28, 2010). A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Alberta, 2010. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on April 28, 2010). A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.

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In this thesis, a comparative linguistic investigation of morphological deficits in two English-speaking and two Greek-speaking agrammatic aphasic patients is presented. Adopting the Strong Lexicalist Hypothesis, the study focuses on the subjects' ability to repeat, comprehend and produce nominal and verbal inflections. The hypotheses investigated concern the effects of language-specific features in agrammatic performance and the role of morphological principles in the two languages. Finally the implications of the data for linguistic theory are investigated. / The data show that language-specific features are crucial in determining aphasic performance. Principles of well-formedness of lexical items appear to remain unaffected. Morphological deficits are found to manifest themselves at different levels: the lexical and the postlexical. A Storage Hypothesis which reflects the word structure of complex lexical items in the brain is proposed. Finally, it is proposed that only through a Strong Lexicalist framework can one achieve uniform interpretations of morphological deficits in aphasia.

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