Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-328). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Claudia F Tumiate.pdf: 400392 bytes, checksum: ab49f226de355bec786e97df108d6791 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-05-17 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This study focuses on and discusses the concept of agrammatism which names and qualifies a particular kind of aphasic symptom related to a specific damaged cerebral zone or area. Physicians, speech pathologists/therapists and linguists have tried to describe such a linguistic occurrence also endeavored to develop theoretical proposals in order to provide plausible explanations for the mentioned phenomenon. My interest in discussing the so called agrammatism started at the very beginning of my clinical practice as a speech therapist, i.e., when I received one of my first aphasic patients. The effects of that patient s utterances on me were quite paradoxical in the sense that, although evaluated as severely ungrammatical, they sounded communicative to me, that is, I felt at ease to interpret them. Face-to-face with such a disturbing situation, I decided to study and reflect upon the effects of agrammatical utterances on the listener and also on agrammatism itself. I found out that none of the representative theoretical or descriptive approaches investigated could either help me understand the above mentioned subjective effects, or touch the heterogeneity of the agrammatical utterances . Moreover, I could verify that although not coincident on discursive grounds, most of the investigated theoretical proposals converged as to the methodological-descriptive approach they applied. Two different historical constructs concerning Aphasia are presented in the first part of this thesis: one which was derived from Chomsky s reflections on language and another one which was developed from Jakobson s studies on aphasia. Two researcher s discussions were respectively at stake: Grodzinsky s (1990) and Fonseca s (1995, 2002), respectively. On the second part I aimed at opposing the notions of agrammatism and ungrammaticality which seemed to be a possible source of theoretical-methodological problems. It must be stressed that such a discussion, although recognized by me as extremely important and original on intuitive grounds, has just been initiated. The LAEL-CNPq certified Research Group: Language Acquisition, Language Pathology and Language Clinic, supervised by Dr. Maria Francisca Lier-DeVitto, provides this study with specific theoretical background / Este estudo discute o agramatismo, termo utilizado para caracterizar um tipo de sintoma afásico, que desperta o interesse de médicos, fonoaudiólogos e lingüistas. Meu interesse pelo agramatismo foi motivado, antes de tudo, por efeitos de dizeres de afásicos, sobre mim, num atendimento clínico, quando apenas iniciava meu percurso como fonoaudióloga. Considerei necessário refletir sobre falas agramáticas. Iniciei minhas leituras e pude constar que as definições não contemplam a heterogeneidade das manifestações lingüísticas propriamente ditas e nem as análises divergem substancialmente, mesmo que, do ponto de vista do posicionamento teórico, as elaborações discursivas sejam plurais. Assim, um de meus objetivos, neste trabalho, foi apresentar um panorama das abordagens mais representativas, em que o agramatismo tem destaque e é questão problemática. Decidi, para isso, contrapor dois traçados históricos: um oferecido por Grodzinsky (1990), claramente ligado à reflexão de Chomsky sobre a linguagem, e outro realizado por Fonseca (2002), explicitamente decorrente do pensamento de Jakobson sobre as afasias. Procurei contrapor agramatismo e agramaticalidade porque, esta oposição não chega a ser focalizada e, como indico, discuti-la é de importância capital. Pareceu-me, também ou por conseqüência, que esses termos acabam confundidos, a meu ver, equivocadamente. Afirmo ser esta uma questão que mantenho para reflexão futura. Este trabalho filia-se à vertente teórica do Grupo de Pesquisa, cadastrado no CNPq: Aquisição, Patologias e Clínica de Linguagem do LAEL-DERDIC da PUCSP, liderado por Maria Francisca Lier-DeVitto, em que questões teórico-clínicas relativas às afasias vêm sendo abordadas em profundidade

The incremental nature of sentence processing raises questions about the way the information of incoming functional elements is accessed and subsequently employed in building the syntactic structure which sustains interpretation processes. The present work approaches these questions by investigating the negative particle ne used for sentential negation in Bulgarian and its impact on the overt realisation and the interpretation of imperative inflexion, bound aspectual morphemes and clitic pronouns in child, adult and aphasic language. In contrast to other Slavic languages, Bulgarian negative imperatives (NI) are grammatical only with imperfective verbs. We argue that NI are instantiations of overt aspectual coercion induced by the presence of negation as a temporally sensitive sentential operator. The scope relation between imperative mood, negation, and aspect yields the configuration of the imperfective present which in Bulgarian has to be overtly expressed and prompts the imperfective marking of the predicate. The regular and transparent application of the imperfectivising mechanism relates to the organisation of the TAM categories in Bulgarian which not only promotes the representation of fine perspective shifts but also provides for their distinct morphological expression. Using an elicitation task with NI, we investigated the way 3- and 4-year-old children represent negation in deontic contexts as reflected in their use of aspectually appropriate predicates. Our findings suggest that children are sensitive to the imperfectivity requirement in NI from early on. The imperfectivisation strategies reveal some differences from the target morphological realisation. The relatively low production of target imperfectivised prefixed verbs cannot be explained with morphological processing deficits, but rather indicates that up to the age of five children experience difficulties to apply a progressive view point to accomplishments. Two self-paced reading studies present evidence that neurologically unimpaired Bulgarian speakers profit from the syntactic and prosodic properties of negation during online sentence comprehension. The imperfectivity requirement negation imposes on the predicate speeds up lexical access to imperfective verbs. Similarly, clitic pronouns are more accessible after negation due to the phono-syntactic properties of clitic clusters. As the experimental stimuli do not provide external discourse referents, personal pronouns are parsed as object agreement markers. Without subsequent resolution, personal pronouns appear to be less resource demanding than reflexive clitics. This finding is indicative of the syntax-driven co-reference establishment processes triggered through the lexical specification of reflexive clitics. The results obtained from Bulgarian Broca's aphasics show that they exhibit processing patterns similar to those of the control group. Notwithstanding their slow processing speed, the agrammatic group showed no impairment of negation as reflected by their sensitivity to the aspectual requirements of NI, and to the prosodic constraints on clitic placement. The aphasics were able to parse the structural dependency between mood, negation and aspect as functional categories and to represent it morphologically. The prolonged reaction times (RT) elicited by prefixed verbs indicate increasing processing costs due to the semantic integration of prefixes as perfectivity markers into an overall imperfective construal. This inference is supported by the slower RT to reflexive clitics, which undergo a structurally triggered resolution. Evaluated against cross-linguistic findings, the obtained result strongly suggests that aphasic performance with pronouns depends on the interpretation efforts associated with co-reference establishment and varies due to availability of discourse referents. The investigation of normal and agrammatic processing of Bulgarian NI presents support for the hypothesis that the comprehension deficits in Broca's aphasia result from a slowed-down implementation of syntactic operations. The protracted structure building consumes processing resources and causes temporal mismatches with other processes sustaining sentence comprehension. The investigation of the way Bulgarian children and aphasic speakers process NI reveals that both groups are highly sensitive to the imperfective constraint on the aspectual construal imposed by the presence of negation. The imperfective interpretation requires access to morphologically complex verb forms which contain aspectual morphemes with conflicting semantic information – perfective prefixes and imperfective suffixes. Across modalities, both populations exhibit difficulties in processing prefixed imperfectivised verbs which as predicates of negative imperative sentences reflect the inner perspective the speaker and the addressee need to take towards a potentially bounded situation description. / Die schnelle und automatische Natur der Satzverarbeitung wirft Fragen nach der inkrementellen Integration von funktionalen Elementen auf. Wie erfolgt der Zugriff auf die strukturellen, semantischen und prosodischen Informationen der funktionalen Elemente? Wie werden diese Informationen beim Aufbau der syntaktischen Struktur so verknüpft, dass eine wohlgeformte semantische Repräsentation entsteht? Die vorliegende Dissertation widmet sich diesen Fragen durch die Untersuchung der Verarbeitungsmuster von bulgarischen negativen Imperativen (NI) in der Sprache von Kindern, Erwachsenen und Broca-Aphasikern. Die Effekte der Negationspartikel ne auf die Realisierung und die Interpretation von Imperativ- und Aspektmorphologie sowie von klitischen Pronomen werden in Produktions- und online Satzverständnistests untersucht. Im Unterschied zu anderen slawischen Sprachen sind synthetische NI im Bulgarischen mit perfektiven Verben ungrammatisch. Diese Besonderheit wird zunächst durch die aspektuelle Interpretation von NI und die sprachspezifische Organisation des TAM-Systems begründet. Die Aspektrestriktion resultiert aus dem Aspektzwang, den die Negation als temporal sensitiver Operator auslöst. Die Skopusrelation zwischen imperativem Modus, Negation und Aspekt ergibt die temporale Konfiguration von imperfektivem Präsens, die im Bulgarischen morphologisch durch die Imperfektivierung des Prädikats markiert werden muss. Der Wechsel in der aspektuellen Perspektive wird durch einen produktiven und transparenten Imperfektivierungsmechanismus gewährleistet. Der Erwerb von Negation in deontischen Kontexten wurde anhand der Produktion von imperfektiven Prädikaten in einem Elizitationsexperiment mit 3- und 4-jährigen Kindern untersucht. Die Ergebnisse belegen eine frühe Sensitivität für die aspektuelle Wohlgeformtheit der NI. Die Imperfektivierungsstragien zeigen jedoch Abweichungen von der zielsprachlichen morphologischen Realisierung. Die relativ niedrige Produktion von imperfektivierten präfigierten Verben kann nicht durch Defizite in der Morphologieverarbeitung erklärt werden. Die Fehleranalyse verdeutlicht die Schwierigkeiten der Kinder eine Innenperspektive zu potenziell gebundenen Ereignissen einzunehmen, die der zielsprachlichen Interpretation entspräche. Die syntaktischen und prosodischen Effekte der Negation auf die inkrementelle Verarbeitung von Imperativen bei erwachsenen bulgarischen Muttersprachlern wurde in zwei online Leseexperimenten (self-paced reading) untersucht. Die Reaktionszeiten (RT) zeigen, dass die Negation den lexikalischen Zugriff auf imperfektive Verben beschleunigt. In NI wird der Verarbeitungsaufwand für klitische Pronomen auch deutlich reduziert, da die proklitische Negation mit den pronominalen Enklitika eine phono-syntaktisch strikt geordnete Sequenz bildet. Da der experimentelle Kontext keine externen Diskursreferenten bereitstellt, werden klitische Personalpronomen als Objektkongruenzmarker verarbeitet. Dementsprechend elizitieren sie kürzere RT als die reflexiven Klitika, die eine syntaktisch motivierte Resolution auslösen. Abgesehen von der deutlich verlangsamten Geschwindigkeit, weisen die RT der untersuchten Broca-Aphasikern ein mit dem der Kontrollgruppe vergleichbares Muster auf. Die Agrammatiker profitieren vom Aspektzwang sowie von den phono-syntaktischen Restriktionen der klitischen Gruppe in NI. Dieses Ergebnis wird als Evidenz interpretiert, dass keine qualitative Beeinträchtigung in der Verarbeitung der funktionalen Eigenschaften der Negation vorliegt. Die Aphasiker sind in der Lage die strukturell bedingte Interaktion zwischen Modus, Negation und Aspekt zu parsen und morphologisch abzubilden, weisen jedoch längere RT für präfigierte Verben auf, was auf einen erhöhten Interpretationsaufwand hindeutet. Die längeren RT der reflexiven Klitika sprechen auch dafür, dass die Performanz der Broca-Aphasikern eher durch den Resolutionsprozess und durch die Verfügbarkeit von Diskursreferenten bedingt wird. Die Lesezeit-Experimente liefern Evidenz für die Hypothese, dass Verständnisdefizite bei Broca-Aphasie von einer langsamen Implementierung syntaktischer Operationen resultieren. Die Limitierung von Verarbeitungsressourcen verzögert den Strukturaufbau und verursacht zeitliche Diskrepanzen zwischen Prozessen, die die semantische Repräsentation bedingen. Die Untersuchungen zur Verarbeitung von NI bei bulgarischen Kindern und Broca-Aphasikern belegen die hohe Sensitivität beider Gruppen für den Aspektzwang in prohibitiven NI. Die imperfektive Interpretation erfordert Zugang zu morphologisch komplexen Verben mit semantisch widersprüchlichen aspektuellen Affixen – perfektiven Präfixen und imperfektiven Suffixen. Beide Gruppen haben Schwierigkeiten präfigierte imperfektivierte Verben zu verarbeiten. Als Prädikate in NI reflektieren solche komplexe Verben die innere Perspektive, die Sprecher und Hörer in der Repräsentation eines potenziell gebundenen Ereignisses einzunehmen haben.

Das Herbsttreffen Patholinguistik wird seit 2007 jährlich vom Verband für Patholinguistik e.V. (vpl) durchgeführt. Das 6. Herbsttreffen mit dem Schwerpunktthema "Labyrinth Grammatik: Therapie von syntaktischen Störungen bei Kindern und Erwachsenen" fand am 17.11.2012 in Potsdam statt. Im vorliegenden Tagungsband finden sich alle Beiträge der Veranstaltung: die vier Hauptvorträge zum Schwerpunkthema, die Vorträge aus Praxis und Forschung von vier Patholinguistinnen in der Reihe Spektrum Patholinguistik sowie die Abstracts der Posterpräsentation. / The 'Herbsttreffen Patholinguistik' is an annual conference organized by the Association for Patholinguistics (Verband für Patholinguistik e.V./vpl) since 2007. The 6th Herbsttreffen with its theme "Labyrinth Grammar: Therapy of Syntactic Disorders in Children and Adults" took place on November 17th, 2012 in Potsdam. These proceedings contain all contributions of the meeting: the four keynote talks, the talks on speech/language therapy and research in the section "Spektrum Patholinguistik" by four patholinguists as well as the abstracts of the poster session.

Purpose: Response Elaboration Training (RET) is a treatment program for increasing the amount of information contained in the speech of individuals with aphasia. This study employed a sentence production task (SPT) to examine whether RET will (1) generalize to a task not worked on in treatment and (2) affect syntactic performance. Methods and Procedures: Three adults with chronic non-fluent Broca’s aphasia received RET in this prospective, repeated case study. The dependent variable was a SPT requiring the participant to put a verb in a sentence. Changes in the syntactic performance of the participant’s sentence productions were classified across three parameters: (1) syntactic structure, (2) grammatical completeness, and (3) semantic appropriateness. Results: Findings of this study indicate that RET improves the syntactic performance of individuals with chronic Broca’s aphasia and generalizes to a task not worked on in treatment. Participant responses to the SPT showed increased complexity in syntactic structures, improved grammaticality, and improved topic relevancy. In addition, qualitative improvements were seen in 5 randomly selected verbs for each participant. These improvements included increased length of sentences and fewer false starts, interjections, and disfluencies. Finally, improvements on the Western Aphasia Battery and two picture description tasks were evinced for two participants.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Considerando discussões recentes no campo da neurolingüística este trabalho se propõe a investigar a morfologia verbal, sentenças não-canônicas e encaixadas na produção de informantes afásicos falantes de português. O trabalho investiga o quanto hipóteses sobre a produção agramática são eficazes na descrição de dados obtidos no português brasileiro e busca dissociações pertinentes a modelos lingüísticos. Foram realizados duas avaliações de desempenho lingüístico com de um total quatro afásicos não-fluentes com lesões cerebrais na área de Broca e adjacências. Uma das avaliações destina-se a investigar a morfologia flexional e a dissociação entre Concordância e Tempo, que desde o trabalho de Friedmann & Grodzinsky (1997) vem provocando discussões no campo. Este teste foi realizado por meio de tarefa de preenchimento de lacunas. O segundo teste visa a investigar a produção de sentenças encaixadas, inergativas, intransitivas e passivas numa tarefa de repetição. Em ambos os experimentos, os resultados foram, em boa medida, diferentes dos esperados. Por um lado, dissociações comumente reportadas na literatura não foram encontradas e, por outro, dissociações não esperadas foram encontradas. A partir destes dados, são feitas considerações acerca de possíveis explicações sobre o déficit de informantes não-fluentes e sobre a metodologia dos estudos da área, ressaltando-se o cuidado necessário no trato com grupos formados através de critérios pouco precisos / This work investigates verbal morphology, non-canonical and embedded sentences on the production of Brocas aphasics. The goals were to evaluate some hypothesis about agrammatic production and to search for aspects of aphasic behavior that could be useful for linguistic theories. We carried out two tests with a whole of four individuals who suffered lesions on the left cortex, at (or potentially affecting) Brocas area. The first test investigates the dissociation between Agreement and Tense originally reported by Friedmann & Grodzinsky (1997). For this purpose we have conducted a filler-gap task with forced choice. The second test consisted of a repetition task involving unergatives, unaccusatives, passives and embedded sentences. Our results showed that some reported dissociations could not be replicated by our study, while other unexpected ones were brought up. Considering this data, we draw some conclusions about some hypotheses about aphasic behavior and also propose some cautions to be taken concerning research methodology in neurolinguistics

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Considerando discussões recentes no campo da neurolingüística este trabalho se propõe a investigar a morfologia verbal, sentenças não-canônicas e encaixadas na produção de informantes afásicos falantes de português. O trabalho investiga o quanto hipóteses sobre a produção agramática são eficazes na descrição de dados obtidos no português brasileiro e busca dissociações pertinentes a modelos lingüísticos. Foram realizados duas avaliações de desempenho lingüístico com de um total quatro afásicos não-fluentes com lesões cerebrais na área de Broca e adjacências. Uma das avaliações destina-se a investigar a morfologia flexional e a dissociação entre Concordância e Tempo, que desde o trabalho de Friedmann & Grodzinsky (1997) vem provocando discussões no campo. Este teste foi realizado por meio de tarefa de preenchimento de lacunas. O segundo teste visa a investigar a produção de sentenças encaixadas, inergativas, intransitivas e passivas numa tarefa de repetição. Em ambos os experimentos, os resultados foram, em boa medida, diferentes dos esperados. Por um lado, dissociações comumente reportadas na literatura não foram encontradas e, por outro, dissociações não esperadas foram encontradas. A partir destes dados, são feitas considerações acerca de possíveis explicações sobre o déficit de informantes não-fluentes e sobre a metodologia dos estudos da área, ressaltando-se o cuidado necessário no trato com grupos formados através de critérios pouco precisos / This work investigates verbal morphology, non-canonical and embedded sentences on the production of Brocas aphasics. The goals were to evaluate some hypothesis about agrammatic production and to search for aspects of aphasic behavior that could be useful for linguistic theories. We carried out two tests with a whole of four individuals who suffered lesions on the left cortex, at (or potentially affecting) Brocas area. The first test investigates the dissociation between Agreement and Tense originally reported by Friedmann & Grodzinsky (1997). For this purpose we have conducted a filler-gap task with forced choice. The second test consisted of a repetition task involving unergatives, unaccusatives, passives and embedded sentences. Our results showed that some reported dissociations could not be replicated by our study, while other unexpected ones were brought up. Considering this data, we draw some conclusions about some hypotheses about aphasic behavior and also propose some cautions to be taken concerning research methodology in neurolinguistics

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Le présent mémoire vise à unifier les résultats d’études comportementales, neuropsychologiques et électrophysiologiques disponibles quant à la possibilité d’un partage des ressources neuronales dédiées au traitement du langage et de la musique. Pour ce faire, une analyse théorique précise des aspects traités lors de l’intégration structurale et temporelle d’éléments langagiers ou musicaux en processus de traitement en temps réel est essentielle. Le but visé est de se questionner sur l’effet potentiel d’un entraînement musical et linguistique sur les capacités syntaxiques touchées dans l’agrammatisme chez la population aphasique (Broca). / The present thesis aims at the unification of the results suggested by behavioral, neuropsychological and electrophysiological studies on the possible relation between neural correlates dedicated to treatment of language and music. To do this, a theoretical analysis of specific aspects processed in the structural and temporal integration of linguistic or musical elements when being processed on-line is essential. Our goal is to question whether a musical training would benefit the aphasic population (Broca) with agrammatism, especially on processing syntactic structures.