Passive sentence constructions by Hindi-English bilingual speakers with Broca’s aphasia

Background - It has been observed that speakers with Broca’s aphasia often have difficulties producing complex sentences with movement-derived structures. An example of this are passive sentences. Production of passive sentences in Broca’s aphasia is characterized by role reversals and syntactic errors in English. However, research on passive sentence constructions in languages which are syntactically different from English, such as Hindi, is scarce. Hence, more research is required to better understand language specific difficulties that patients with aphasia face while producing complex sentences and what can explain these deficits. Several language models try to explain the deficits in complex sentences in Broca’s aphasia. Representational models such as the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH) (Grodzinsky, 2000) claim that some syntactic representations are lost in certain structures involving movement. Processing models claim that the computational mechanisms required to process syntactic representations are limited. For example, the Competition Model (MacWhinney et al., 1991) proposes that speakers resort to language specific cues while producing sentences. Based on this assumption, speakers should resort to word order cues in English while inflection and case markers should have the highest cue validity in Hindi. A better understanding of which model applies and which cues are most salient to speakers is important to guide effective treatment of monolingual and bilingual people with aphasia. Aim - The aim of the present study was to conduct a pilot investigation to determine what type of data would be required to investigate the performance of Hindi-English bilingual speakers in comprehension and production of passive sentences. Methods - Since a vast majority of population is bilingual in India, the current study focused on bilingual speakers. Five adult Hindi-English bilingual speakers with Broca’s aphasia participated in the study. Their language competence was assessed using the Cookie Theft picture description task from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE) (Goodglass et al., 2001). This was followed by the two main experimental tests which aimed to study passive sentence production and comprehension. Passive sentence comprehension was assessed using a sentence-to-picture matching task from subtest 55 for passives in the Psycholinguistic Assessments of Language Processing in Aphasia (PALPA) (Kay et al., 1992). Passive sentence production was tested using a picture description task adapted from the PALPA. Results - The results indicate that in the English passive sentence production task, the participants produced a higher number of syntactic errors than role reversals. The results for the passive production task in Hindi showed that the percentage of role reversals and syntactic errors was almost the same. The results do not support the Competition model since a higher number of role reversals were expected in English in comparison with Hindi. Other models cannot explain these types of differences in bilingual speakers with Broca’s aphasia’s language samples either. Conclusion - The asymmetry between English and Hindi results suggests that the current participants did not always resort to language specific cues while producing sentences. The finding that the number of role reversals was higher in Hindi in comparison to English suggests the presence of cross-language effects, i.e., the patients might have made use of cues such as word order in Hindi while producing passives which could have been transferred from English. However, more data needs to be collected in future studies in order to confirm the findings of the current study.Background - It has been observed that speakers with Broca’s aphasia often have difficulties producing complex sentences with movement-derived structures. An example of this are passive sentences. Production of passive sentences in Broca’s aphasia is characterized by role reversals and syntactic errors in English. However, research on passive sentence constructions in languages which are syntactically different from English, such as Hindi, is scarce. Hence, more research is required to better understand language specific difficulties that patients with aphasia face while producing complex sentences and what can explain these deficits. Several language models try to explain the deficits in complex sentences in Broca’s aphasia. Representational models such as the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH) (Grodzinsky, 2000) claim that some syntactic representations are lost in certain structures involving movement. Processing models claim that the computational mechanisms required to process syntactic representations are limited. For example, the Competition Model (MacWhinney et al., 1991) proposes that speakers resort to language specific cues while producing sentences. Based on this assumption, speakers should resort to word order cues in English while inflection and case markers should have the highest cue validity in Hindi. A better understanding of which model applies and which cues are most salient to speakers is important to guide effective treatment of monolingual and bilingual people with aphasia. Aim - The aim of the present study was to conduct a pilot investigation to determine what type of data would be required to investigate the performance of Hindi-English bilingual speakers in comprehension and production of passive sentences. Methods - Since a vast majority of population is bilingual in India, the current study focused on bilingual speakers. Five adult Hindi-English bilingual speakers with Broca’s aphasia participated in the study. Their language competence was assessed using the Cookie Theft picture description task from the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE) (Goodglass et al., 2001). This was followed by the two main experimental tests which aimed to study passive sentence production and comprehension. Passive sentence comprehension was assessed using a sentence-to-picture matching task from subtest 55 for passives in the Psycholinguistic Assessments of Language Processing in Aphasia (PALPA) (Kay et al., 1992). Passive sentence production was tested using a picture description task adapted from the PALPA. Results - The results indicate that in the English passive sentence production task, the participants produced a higher number of syntactic errors than role reversals. The results for the passive production task in Hindi showed that the percentage of role reversals and syntactic errors was almost the same. The results do not support the Competition model since a higher number of role reversals were expected in English in comparison with Hindi. Other models cannot explain these types of differences in bilingual speakers with Broca’s aphasia’s language samples either. Conclusion - The asymmetry between English and Hindi results suggests that the current participants did not always resort to language specific cues while producing sentences. The finding that the number of role reversals was higher in Hindi in comparison to English suggests the presence of cross-language effects, i.e., the patients might have made use of cues such as word order in Hindi while producing passives which could have been transferred from English. However, more data needs to be collected in future studies in order to confirm the findings of the current study

Neural connectivity in syntactic movement processing

Linguistic theory suggests non-canonical sentences subvert the dominant agent-verb-theme order in English via displacement of sentence constituents to argument (NP-movement) or non-argument positions (wh-movement). Both processes have been associated with the left inferior frontal gyrus and posterior superior temporal gyrus, but differences in neural activity and connectivity between movement types have not been investigated. In the current study, functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired from 21 adult participants during an auditory sentence-picture verification task using passive and active sentences contrasted to isolate NP-movement, and object- and subject-cleft sentences contrasted to isolate wh-movement. Then, functional magnetic resonance imaging data from regions common to both movement types were entered into a dynamic causal modeling analysis to examine effective connectivity for wh-movement and NP-movement. Results showed greater left inferior frontal gyrus activation for Wh > NP-movement, but no activation for NP > Wh-movement. Both types of movement elicited activity in the opercular part of the left inferior frontal gyrus, left posterior superior temporal gyrus, and left medial superior frontal gyrus. The dynamic causal modeling analyses indicated that neither movement type significantly modulated the connection from the left inferior frontal gyrus to the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, nor vice-versa, suggesting no connectivity differences between wh- and NP-movement. These findings support the idea that increased complexity of wh-structures, compared to sentences with NP-movement, requires greater engagement of cognitive resources via increased neural activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus, but both movement types engage similar neural networks.This work was supported by the NIH-NIDCD, Clinical Research Center Grant, P50DC012283 (PI: CT), and the Graduate Research Grant and School of Communication Graduate Ignition Grant from Northwestern University (awarded to EE). (P50DC012283 - NIH-NIDCD, Clinical Research Center Grant; Graduate Research Grant and School of Communication Graduate Ignition Grant from Northwestern University)Published versio

A paradox of syntactic priming: why response tendencies show priming for passives, and response latencies show priming for actives

Speakers tend to repeat syntactic structures across sentences, a phenomenon called syntactic priming. Although it has been suggested that repeating syntactic structures should result in speeded responses, previous research has focused on effects in response tendencies. We investigated syntactic priming effects simultaneously in response tendencies and response latencies for active and passive transitive sentences in a picture description task. In Experiment 1, there were priming effects in response tendencies for passives and in response latencies for actives. However, when participants' pre-existing preference for actives was altered in Experiment 2, syntactic priming occurred for both actives and passives in response tendencies as well as in response latencies. This is the first investigation of the effects of structure frequency on both response tendencies and latencies in syntactic priming. We discuss the implications of these data for current theories of syntactic processing

The formulation of argument structure in SLI: an eye-movement study

This study investigated the formulation of verb argument structure in Catalan- and Spanishspeaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing age-matched controls. We compared how language production can be guided by conceptual factors, such as the organization of the entities participating in an event and knowledge regarding argument structure. Eleven children with SLI (aged 3;8 to 6;6) and eleven control children participated in an eyetracking experiment in which participants had to describe events with different argument structure in the presence of visual scenes. Picture descriptions, latency time and eye movements were recorded and analyzed. The picture description results showed that the percentage of responses in which children with SLI substituted a non-target verb for the target verb was significantly different from that for the control group. Children with SLI made more omissions of obligatory arguments, especially of themes, as the verb argument complexity increased. Moreover, when the number of arguments of the verb increased, the children took more time to begin their descriptions, but no differences between groups were found. For verb type latency, all children were significantly faster to start describing one-argument events than two- and three-argument events. No differences in latency time were found between two- and three-argument events. There were no significant differences between the groups. Eye-movement showed that children with SLI looked less at the event zone than the age-matched controls during the first two seconds. These differences between the groups were significant for three-argument verbs, and only marginally significant for one- and two-argument verbs. Children with SLI also spent significantly less time looking at the theme zones than their age-matched controls. We suggest that both processing limitations and deficits in the semantic representation of verbs may play a role in these difficulties

Syntactic development in early foreign language learning: Effects of L1 transfer, input and individual factors

This study explores parallels and differences in the comprehension of wh-questions and relative clauses between early foreign-language (FL) learners and monolingual children. We test for (a) effects of syntactic first-language (L1) transfer, (b) the impact of input on syntactic development, and (c) the impact of individual differences on early FL syntactic development. We compare the results to findings in child second language (L2) naturalistic acquisition and adult FL acquisition. Following work on adult FL acquisition, we carried out a picture-based interpretation task with 243 child FL learners in fourth grade at different regular, partial, and high-immersion schools in Germany plus 68 monolingual English children aged 5 to 8 years as controls. The child FL learners display a strong subject-first preference but do not appear to use the L1 syntax in comprehension. Input differences across different schools affect overall accuracy, with students at high-immersion FL schools catching up to monolingual performance within 4 years of learning. Finally, phonological awareness is implicated in both early FL learning and naturalistic child L2 development. These findings suggest that early FL development resembles child L2 acquisition in speed and effects of individual factors, yet is different from adult FL acquisition due to the absence of L1 transfer effects.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio