Language deficits and the theory of syntax

doi:10.1016/0093-934X(86)90009-X

Brain and Language

Volume 27, Issue 1, January 1986, Pages 135-159

https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934X(86)90009-X Get rights and content

Abstract

A new structural account of agrammatism is proposed, which analyzes the deficit in terms of one current theory of syntax. First, the motivation for accounts of this kind is given. Then, a variety of experimental findings from sentence comprehension in agrammatism are examined and accounted for in a unified way. It is shown that a minimal change in the syntactic model (achieved by imposing a special condition on a construct called trace), results in a model which accounts for all the data at hand. A number of possible objections to this proposal is then examined, and reasons are given to dismiss these objections. Also, it is shown that this proposal is preferable to other structural accounts which have been recently proposed. Finally, the empirical consequences of this account are discussed, with a special emphasis on the implications for models of language processing.

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The lack of significant subject-object asymmetry in most conditions, together with better comprehension of object than subject extractions in direct questions, indicates that Spanish SWA rely on the preposition a in the comprehension of object wh-dependencies. However, this strategy fails in more complex conditions (embedded questions), because the processing costs outweigh the facilitating effects of this cue, unless additional cues to the object are present (object relatives). The present findings have implications for the accounts of wh-dependencies in Broca’s aphasia involving Discourse-linking, the Intervener hypothesis, and the Competition model.
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^☆: This paper is an extended version of a talk presented at the BABBLE conference. Niagara Falls, Canada, March 1984. It is also a revised version of Chapter 2 in Grodzinsky (1984b). The preparation of this manuscript was supported by the MIT Center for Cognitive Science, under a grant from the A. P. Sloan Foundation's particular program in Cognitive Science, and by NIH Grants NS 11408 and 06209 to the Aphasia Research Center, Boston University School of Medicine.

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Language deficits and the theory of syntax☆

Abstract

Brain and Language

Brain and Language

Brain and Language

Brain and Language

Neuropsychologia

Cortex

Cognition

Cognition

Cognition

Cognition

The cognitive basis for linguistic structures

Syntactic deficits in Broca's aphasia

Syntactic competence in agrammatism: a lexical hypothesis

A multicomponential deficit view of agammatic Broca's aphasia

On binding

Linguistic Inquiry

Rules and representations

Lectures on Government and Binding

The sound pattern of English

Filters and control

Linguistic Inquiry

How can grammars help parsers?

The modularity of mind

The psychology of language