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Agrammatism dissociations and generative theory: The evidence reviewed Arthur Holmer Agrammatism (Broca's aphasia) selectively affects the patient's production of grammatical and fluent language, while not affecting lexical competence. This is (not very controversially) taken as evidence that the syntactic component of language is mediated by other mechanisms than the lexical component. In short, language consists of its grammar and its words, and each can be affected separately (in Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasia respectively). But grammar is not always totally affected: since Grodzinsky (1990) it has been known that agrammatism affects different subsystems of the grammar to varying extents. Particularly striking is the contrast between Agreement and Tense, cf. Friedmann 2001:74. Berega ze ha-yeled now DET-boy TENSE: holex. walk.PRES.MASC.SG SUCCESS RATE Gam etmol ha-yeled _____. (-> halax) too yesterday DET-boy walk.PST.MASC.SG AGREEMENT: Berega ze gam now too 31% 91% ha-yelad-im ______. (-> holxim) DET-boy-PL walk.PRES.MASC.PL Similarly, Hebrew-speaking agrammatics perform poorly in wh-question production and subordination, whereas they perform almost normally in yes/no questions and non-finite embedding (such as adjectives or participles), cf. Friedmann 2002: 79–84. Repetition test: Whquestions success rate 57% Relative Complement clauses clauses 33% 33% Yes/no* questions Non-finite embedding 87% 92% * tested for elicitation, not repetition First solution: Tree Pruning Hypothesis (TPH) - agrammatism restricts access to functional nodes (AgrP, TP, CP) - varying degrees of agrammatism = varying span of structure affected - agrammatism affects all structure above cut-off point Spec CP 3 C° C' 3< 1 Spec Cut-off at: 1 => CP impaired (no embedding) 2 => TP + CP impaired (no embedding + no tense) 3 => Agrp + TP + CP impaired (no embedding + no tense + no agreement) TP 3 T' 3< 2 T° AgrP 3 Spec Agr' 3< 3 Agr° VP ! structure based on Pollock (1989) Baker (1985): The Mirror Principle One important consequence of the TPH as it stands is that it crucially assumes that Tense is structurally above Agreement. Since Baker (1985) it has been a common assumption among syntactic typologists that structural ordering can be determined independently. Baker’s Mirror principle states that: Morpheme order reflects movement of V through syntactic structure, which implies that a morpheme closer to the verbal root corresponds to a category lower in the structure). This can be demonstrated clearly for Finnish. AgrP minä e-n puhu-isi 2 1s NEG-1s speak-COND Spec Agr' ‘I would not speak’ minä 2 Agr° NegP -n 2 Neg° ModP e2 Mod° VP -isi 2 V° OBJ puhu- AgrP minä puhu-isi-n 2 1s speak-COND-1s Spec Agr' ‘I would speak’ minä 2 Agr° ModP -n 2 Mod° VP -isi 2 V° OBJ puhu- German morphology According to the Mirror Principle, facts from German suggest a structure where AGR is above Tense. Taken together, the Mirror Principle and the Tree Pruning Hypothesis predict that the German agrammatism pattern should be the exact reverse of Hebrew. German agrammatics should have more serious impairments in Agreement than in Tense. TENSE arbeite- -tearbeite- -tearbeite- -tearbeite- -tearbeite- -tearbeite- -te- AGR -Ø -st -Ø -n -t -n 3 ‘I worked’ C° AgrP ‘thou workedest’ 3 ‘s/he worked’ => Spec Agr' ‘we worked’ 3 ‘you worked’ Agr° TP ‘they worked’ 3 T° VP ! The German data (adapted from Wenzlaff & Clahsen 2004): AGREEMENT Sentence completion Grammaticality judgment 92% 81% TENSE 68% 57% This shows that German and Hebrew agrammatics pattern similarly, despite the assumed structural differences between the languages. Either the assumed structural differences are a misinterpretation, or agrammatism dissociations do not depend on syntactic structure. Wenzlaff & Clahsen (2004) argue that Tense and Agreement (following Chomsky 2000) are located in one syntactic node (T), and that the dissociations depend on the fact that Tense values are inherently underspecified (Tense Underspecification Hypothesis: TUH). A reason for this underspecification would be that Tense establishes a relation between event time and the speech act itself, while agreement only establishes a relation within the syntax (cf. Wenzlaff & Clahsen 2005). Morphological reasons? Hebrew tense is derived by vowel alterations, along a number of different patterns. Hebrew agreement, on the other hand, involves affixation. The same contrast holds for the most frequent verbs in German (strong verbs with Ablaut inflection). Thus, Agreement is generally more salient and more linear than Tense. If non-linear grammatical processes require greater effort, they might be selectively impaired. Hebrew: roked-et rakad-eti rakad-nu ‘dance.PRES-FEM.SG’ ‘dance.PST-1SG’ ‘dance.PST-1PL’ German: geh-t ging-st ‘go.PRES-3SG’ ‘go.PST-2SG’ However, this hypothesis would predict a greater tense impairment for strong verbs than for weak verbs in German. Wenzleff & Clahsen (2004) note that there are no significant performance differences in this respect. Syntactic bonsai? An analysis compatible with German data is presented by Lee (2003), who claims that impairment sets in below, rather than above, cut-off point. A patient with impaired Tense but functioning Agreement has has an impairment cut-off below AgrP (see below). In analogy with Tree Pruning, this could be referred to as “Root Pruning” or, indeed, bonsai. CP 3 This proposal would tally well with the assumed structure for German, but would instead face problems with Hebrew structure (T above Agr). It would also have problems accounting for Spec C' impairment of embedding. 3 Ouhalla (1993) does, indeed, argue for a T-above-Agr analysis for both Arabic and Berber C° AgrP (which are relatives of Hebrew). His arguments involve, in Arabic, the realization of Tense 3 and Agreement on different elements in the clause (i.e. tensed negations preceding Spec Agr' agreement-inflected verbs), and, in Berber, morpheme ordering within the verb (TNS-AGR-√). 3< HERE Following Baker (1985), both facts point in the same direction (T-above-AGR). Data below Agr° TP..... from Ouhalla (1993). t-tullabu lam yadhab-uu DET-student-NOM NEG.PST go-3PL ‘The students did not go.’ ad-y-segh Mohand ijn FUT-3M.S-buy Mohand 1 ‘Mohand will buy a house’ teddart house t-tullab-u lan yadhab-uu DET-student-NOM NEG.FUT go-3PL ‘The students will not go.’ ARABIC BERBER However, it is not clear that this carries over to Hebrew, however, which lacks tensed negations, and cf. the parallelism between Hebrew and German morphology. By the Mirror Principle, Hebrew should presumably have Agr-above-T structure like German, and the pattern for both would fit with Lee (2003) - “root pruning”. However, this would not affect CP, so it still does not permit a structural account for the lack of embedding. How robust is the selective impairment of Tense? success rates Speaker A: Speaker B: Speaker C: ... Agreement 75% 75% 50% Tense 92% 50% 67% Burchert et al (2005) present data which show that the impaired category in dissociation can vary according to individuals. For the selection of speakers shown here, two have a more severe impairment with Agreement, while one has a more severe impairment with Tense. This cannot be reconciled with a single cut-off point. Burchert et al. (2005) suggest that Tense and Agreement can be separately underspecified (individual varition). This is the Tense or Agreement Underspecification Hypothesis (TAUH). However, it is not clear that their data is representative (only 2 speakers in the whole study show Agr>Tns impairment), and the data is unique. separate underspecification TUH: TAUH: TNS + + AGR + Both models are incompatible with Baker’s (1985) Mirror Principle. If either of these analyses is right, then the quite robust connection between morpheme order and independently verifiable syntactic structure can not be accounted for structurally. Further, these analyses face severe empirical problems in both Arabic and Finnish, where Tense and AGR are demonstrably realized in different positions in the clause. Is TAUH / TUH only valid for a subset of languages? - if TAUH / TUH holds in languages where there is a single node (T) for both Tense and Agreement (e.g. German), and if Hebrew has the same structure, how does agrammatism dissociation work in languages where we have evidence for two separate nodes (e.g. Arabic, Berber or Finnish)? It would be interesting to see whether a closer investigation of agrammatism among speakers of these languages can replicate Burchert et al.’s results. Does TAUH / TUH require a single head T? - if the features affected by underspecification need not necessarily share a single node, there is no correspondence between syntactic structure and agrammatism, and aphasia data has no import for syntactic theory. References Baker, Mark. 1985. The mirror principle and morphosyntactic explanation. Linguistic Inquiry 16: 373–416 Burchert, Frank, Maria Swoboda-Moll & Ria De Bleser. 2005. Tense and agreement dissociations in German agrammatic speakers: Underspecification vs. hierarchy. Brain and Language 94: 188–199 Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries. the framework. R. Martin, D. Michaels & J. Uriagereka (eds). Step by step. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 89–155. Friedmann, Na'ama. 2001. Agrammatism and the psychological reality of the syntactic tree. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 30: 71–90 Friedmann, Na'ama. 2002. Question production in agrammatism: The Tree Pruning Hypothesis. Brain and Language 80: 160–187. Gleason, J. B., H. Goodglass, E. Green, N. Ackerman & M. R. Hyde. 1975. The retrieval of syntax in Broca’s aphasia. Brain and lanaguge 2: 451–471. Goodglass, H., J. B. Gleason, N. A. Bernholz & M.R. Hyde. 1972. Some linguistic structures in the speech of Broca’s aphasics. Cortex 8: 191–212 Grodzinsky, Y. 1990. Theoretical perspectives on language deficits. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lee, M. 2003. Dissociations among functional categories in Korean agrammatism. Brain and Language 84: 170–188 Ouhalla, Jamal. 1993. Functional categories and parametric variation. London: Routledge Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, Universal Grammar and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 365–424 Wenzlaff, Michaela & Harald Clahsen. 2004. Tense and agreement in German agrammatism. Brain and Language 89: 57–68 Wenzlaff, Michaela & Harald Clahsen. 2005. Finiteness and verb-second in German agrammatism. Brain and Language 92: 33–44.