scholarly journals Verb production in agrammatic aphasia: The influence of semantic class and argument structure properties on generalisation

Aphasiology ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Schneider ◽  
Cynthia Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Semantic Class ◽  
Agrammatic Aphasia ◽  
Structure Properties

scholarly journals Manual Versus Automated Narrative Analysis of Agrammatic Production Patterns: The Northwestern Narrative Language Analysis and Computerized Language Analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chien-Ju Hsu ◽  
Cynthia K. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Coding Systems ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Agrammatic Aphasia ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
Assessment And Treatment ◽  
Healthy Control ◽  
Narrative Language

Purpose The purpose of this study is to compare the outcomes of the manually coded Northwestern Narrative Language Analysis (NNLA) system, which was developed for characterizing agrammatic production patterns, and the automated Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN) system, which has recently been adopted to analyze speech samples of individuals with aphasia (a) for reliability purposes to ascertain whether they yield similar results and (b) to evaluate CLAN for its ability to automatically identify language variables important for detailing agrammatic production patterns. Method The same set of Cinderella narrative samples from 8 participants with a clinical diagnosis of agrammatic aphasia and 10 cognitively healthy control participants were transcribed and coded using NNLA and CLAN. Both coding systems were utilized to quantify and characterize speech production patterns across several microsyntactic levels: utterance, sentence, lexical, morphological, and verb argument structure levels. Agreement between the 2 coding systems was computed for variables coded by both. Results Comparison of the 2 systems revealed high agreement for most, but not all, lexical-level and morphological-level variables. However, NNLA elucidated utterance-level, sentence-level, and verb argument structure–level impairments, important for assessment and treatment of agrammatism, which are not automatically coded by CLAN. Conclusions CLAN automatically and reliably codes most lexical and morphological variables but does not automatically quantify variables important for detailing production deficits in agrammatic aphasia, although conventions for manually coding some of these variables in Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts are possible. Suggestions for combining automated programs and manual coding to capture these variables or revising CLAN to automate coding of these variables are discussed.

scholarly journals Training verb argument structure production in agrammatic aphasia: Behavioral and neural recovery patterns

Cortex ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 49 (9) ◽  
pp. 2358-2376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia K. Thompson ◽  
Ellyn A. Riley ◽  
Dirk-Bart den Ouden ◽  
Aya Meltzer-Asscher ◽  
Sladjana Lukic
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Agrammatic Aphasia ◽  
Verb Argument Structure

scholarly journals Grammatical Planning Units During Real-Time Sentence Production in Speakers With Agrammatic Aphasia and Healthy Speakers

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 1182-1194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiyeon Lee ◽  
Masaya Yoshida ◽  
Cynthia K. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Sentence Production ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Advanced Planning ◽  
Agrammatic Aphasia ◽  
Competing Models ◽  
Simple Sentences

PurposeGrammatical encoding (GE) is impaired in agrammatic aphasia; however, the nature of such deficits remains unclear. We examined grammatical planning units during real-time sentence production in speakers with agrammatic aphasia and control speakers, testing two competing models of GE. We queried whether speakers with agrammatic aphasia produce sentences word by word without advanced planning or whether hierarchical syntactic structure (i.e., verb argument structure; VAS) is encoded as part of the advanced planning unit.MethodExperiment 1 examined production of sentences with a predefined structure (i.e., “The A and the B are above the C”) using eye tracking. Experiment 2 tested production of transitive and unaccusative sentences without a predefined sentence structure in a verb-priming study.ResultsIn Experiment 1, both speakers with agrammatic aphasia and young and age-matched control speakers used word-by-word strategies, selecting the first lemma (noun A) only prior to speech onset. However, in Experiment 2, unlike controls, speakers with agrammatic aphasia preplanned transitive and unaccusative sentences, encoding VAS before speech onset.ConclusionsSpeakers with agrammatic aphasia show incremental, word-by-word production for structurally simple sentences, requiring retrieval of multiple noun lemmas. However, when sentences involve functional (thematic to grammatical) structure building, advanced planning strategies (i.e., VAS encoding) are used. This early use of hierarchical syntactic information may provide a scaffold for impaired GE in agrammatism.

scholarly journals Eliciting specialized frames from corpora using argument-structure extraction techniques

Terminology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Beatriz Sánchez Cárdenas ◽  
Carlos Ramisch
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Environmental Science ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Science Texts ◽  
Semantic Class ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Specialized Language ◽  
Semantic Frames ◽  
Cross Lingual

Abstract Frame Semantics provides a powerful cross-lingual model to describe the conceptual structure underlying specialized language. Building specialized frames is challenging because of the complex nature of predicate-argument structures, and because of the domain-specific uses of general-language predicates. Our semi-automatic method elicits semantic frames from specialized corpora. It aims to discover lexical patterns that reveal the structure of specialized frames and to populate them with corpus-based data. Firstly, we automatically extracted verb-noun triples from corpora using bootstrapping to identify noun-verb-noun phraseological patterns. Secondly, we annotated each noun-verb-noun triple with the lexical domain of the verbs and the semantic class and role of the noun filling each argument slot. We then used these annotations and patterns to classify similar triples. Thus, the structure and the types of lexical units that belong to each specialized frames were inferred. Specialized corpora analysis of environmental science texts in English and in Spanish illustrate our methodology.

Expanding the causative alternation

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 104-136
Author(s):  
Eugenia Mangialavori Rasia
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
General Assumption ◽  
Event Structure ◽  
Transitive Verb ◽  
Causative Constructions ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Variation Patterns ◽  
Syntactic Projection ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Structure Properties

Abstract The causative-inchoative alternation has been a subject of much debate. It might also be a case where variation patterns that escape existing typological descriptions provide a new perspective on the problem. We analyze the variability and systematicity of alternative argument structure realizations, together with corresponding aspectual/event properties, by considering three different ways in which change-of-state verbs can be semantically and syntactically construed in Romance. Under the general assumption that the syntactic projection of arguments correlates non-trivially with event structure, we apply a novel theoretical approach to the semantics and syntax of the causative-inchoative alternation. We argue that different verbal heads can be independently combined to yield contrasting verbal configurations, with corresponding event/argument structure properties quite freely. Alongside standard cases such as causative and inchoative frames, we discuss what we call ‘stative-causative constructions’ [SCC], where the initiator appears as the sole argument. The general properties of this additional (third) variant suggest the availability of a null causative (external-argument-selecting) v0 producing original monoargumental structures with corresponding (simpler) event structure. These little-known Spanish data challenge current argument structure theories assuming that the causative v0 necessarily implicates the eventive (BECOME) component, or that the latter figures in the verb’s permanent lexical entry. SCCs provide empirical evidence suggesting that what is commonly described as a basic unaccusative/transitive verb may have unergative uses.

scholarly journals Agrammatic aphasia verb and argument patterns in Kiswahili-English spontaneous language

2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hillary K. Sang
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Agrammatic Aphasia ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance ◽  
First Time ◽  
Narrative Language ◽  
Selective Impairment

Background: The spontaneous and narrative language of Kiswahili agrammatic aphasic and non-brain-damaged speakers was analysed. The bilingual participants were also tested in English to enable comparisons of verb production in the two languages. The significance of this study was to characterise bilingual Kiswahili-English spontaneous agrammatic output. This was done by describing Kiswahili-English bilingual output data with a specific focus on the production of verbs. The description involves comparison of verb and argument production in Kiswahili and English. Methods and procedures: The participants recruited for this study were drawn from two groups of participants (six non-fluent aphasic/agrammatic speakers and six non-braindamaged). From each participant, a sample of spontaneous output was tape-recorded in English and Kiswahili based on the description and narration of the Flood rescue picture’ and the ‘Cookie theft picture’. The data elicited were compared for each subject and between the participants and relevant verb parameters have been analysed. The variables that were studied included mean length of utterance (MLU), inflectional errors, verb tokens and types, copulas and auxiliaries. Further, all verbs produced were classified as per their argument structure. Results: The results from English data supported previous findings on agrammatic output. The agrammatic participants produced utterances with shorter MLU and simpler sentence structure. However, Kiswahili data surprisingly showed reversed results, with agrammatic speakers producing longer utterances than non-brain-damaged (NBD) controls. The results also revealed selective impairment in some agrammatic speakers who made inflectional errors. The verb argument structure showed contrasting results, with agrammatic speakers preferring transitive verbs whilst the NBD speakers used more intransitive verbs.Conclusions: The study attempts for the first time to characterise English-Kiswahili bilingual spontaneous and narrative output. A quantitative analysis of verb and argument production is conducted. The results of the English data are consistent with those in the literature; agrammatic speakers produce utterances with shorter MLU and simpler sentence structure. However, Kiswahili data reveals a surprisingly reversed pattern most notably with respect to MLU with agrammatics producing longer utterances than NBD controls. Argument structure analysis revealed that agrammatics used more transitive verbs than intransitives.

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