Christina Manouilidou

Thematic roles in Alzheimer's disease: Hierarchy violations in psychological predicates

The nature of the verb deficit in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) was investigated with a special focus on thematic-role assignment, employing verbs whose argument realization follows canonical thematic hierarchy, with Agent and Theme as main roles (e.g., The hunter killed the deer), and verbs whose argument realization deviates from canonical hierarchy, such as psych verbs (e.g., fear, frighten). SubjectExperiencer verbs (e.g., fear) do not assign an Agent role to the subject position of the sentence, but instead assign the role of Experiencer to that position. Object-Experiencer verbs (e.g., frighten) deviate from canonical thematic hierarchy in two ways. Like fear verbs, the frighten verbs do not assign the role of Agent. Moreover, they assign the role of Theme to the subject position and the role of Experiencer to the object position, thus resulting in the non-canonical Theme <Experiencer argument realization. Ten AD patients, 11 matched elderly controls, and 49 young controls performed a sentence completion task in which they had to choose a verb that would render the sentence grammatical and meaningful. AD patients showed no problems with canonical structures, but performed worse than controls in psych verb sentences, demonstrating greater difficulty with object-Experiencer sentences. Results suggest that AD patients may have an impairment in more fine-grained aspects of verb-semantic representation, such as thematic roles. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Study of Verbs in Cognitive Science

Verbs are said to play a central role in the lexicalization of events and states—thus they are crucial for understanding how we represent and use information about these events and states in linguistic utterances. This chapter introduces some key controversies in the study of verb meaning and structure from the interdisciplinary perspective of cognitive science. We begin with a methodological discussion on the interdisciplinary investigation characteristic of cognitive science, aiming to understand how different types of evidence might be relevant in uncovering the nature of linguistic and cognitive principles underlying verb meaning and structure, their representations, and processes. We then discuss three broad content areas bearing on verb representation and processing: argument structure, thematic roles, and the nature of semantic or conceptual structure. For each of these areas, we bring sample theoretical and empirical (experimental) research aiming to provide a context for interdisciplinary research conducted in the field and, more specifically, to the chapters collected in the present volume.

Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing

Part 1: Foundations.- Chapter 1: The study of verbs in Cognitive Science - Roberto G. de Almeida (Concordia University) & Christina Manouilidou (University of Patras).- Part 2: Structure and Composition.- Chapter 2: Lexicalizing and combining - Paul Pietroski (University of Maryland).- Chapter 3: Optional complements of English verbs and adjectives - Brendan Gillon (McGill University).- Chapter 4: The representation and processing of participant role information - Gail Mauner (University at Buffalo).- Part 3: Events: Aspect, and Telicity.- Chapter 5: Force dynamics and directional change in event lexicalization and argument realization - William Croft (University of New Mexico).- Chapter 6: Neural processing of verbal event structure: temporal and functional dissociation between telic and atelic verbs - Evgenia Malaia, Javier Gonzalez-Castillo, Christine Weber-Fox, Thomas M. Talavage, & Ronnie B. Wilbur, (Purdue University).- Chapter 7: Argument structure and time reference in agrammatic aphasia - Roelien Bastiaanse (University of Groningen) & Artem Platonov (Radboud University Nijmegen).- Chapter 8: Building aspectual interpretations online - E. Matthew Husband (University of Oxford), Linnaea Stockall (Queen Mary University of London).- Part 4: Meaning and Structure: Representation and Processing.- Chapter 9: Visual and motor features of the meanings of action verbs: a cognitive neuroscience perspective - David Kemmerer (Purdue University).- Chapter 10: Which event properties matter for which cognitive task? - Jean-Pierre Koenig, Doug Roland, Hohg-Oak Yun, & Gail Mauner (University at Buffalo).- Chapter 11: Verb representation and thinking-for-speaking effects in Spanish-English bilinguals - Vicky T. Lai (University of South Carolina and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) & Bhuvana Narasimhan (University of Colorado, Boulder).- Part 5: Acquiring Verbs.- Chapter 12: Argument structure: Relationships between theory and acquisition - Sudha Arunachalam (Boston University).- Chapter 13: The beginning of morphological learning: Evidence from verb morpheme processing in preverbal infants - Alexandra Marquis (Universite de Montreal) & Rushen Shi (Universite du Quebec a Montreal).

Coordinative compounds in Greek: lexical access and representation

two lexical decision tasks, one with overt and one with masked priming, were carried out in order to explore lexical access and mental representation of coordinative compounds in modern Greek. results of both experiments showed strong priming effects in both first and second constituent recognition when primed by the whole compound, pointing to lexical access through robust decomposition and, consequently, a structured mental representation where both constituents contribute equally. the study provides some initial insights about co rdination at the lexical level and also discusses the role of different relational information between constituents during lexical access of compounds.

Subject–verb agreement and verbal short-term memory: A perspective from Greek children with specific language impairment

This study investigated the performance of school age Greek-speaking children with SLI on verbal short-term memory (VSTM) and Subject–Verb (S-V) agreement in comparison to chronological age controls and younger typically developing children. VSTM abilities were assessed by means of a non-word repetition task (NRT) and an elicited production task, an off-line grammaticality judgment (GJ) task, and an on-line self-paced listening task were employed to examine S-V agreement abilities. The study found significant between-group differences in the NRT and the off-line GJ task. No significant between-group differences were found for the S-V agreement production task and for reaction times of the on-line task. The authors argue that the children with SLI showed increased grammatical sensitivity in S-V agreement and relate their lower performance on the off-line GJ task to the task’s metalinguistic demands. The findings suggest that deficits in VSTM constitute a robust marker for SLI and claim that S-V agreement can be acquired by SLI individuals with apparent limitations in VSTM.

Beyond aphasia: Altered EEG connectivity in Broca's patients during working memory task.

Brocas region and adjacent cortex presumably take part in working memory (WM) processes. Electrophysiologically, these processes are reflected in synchronized oscillations. We present the first study exploring the effects of a stroke causing Brocas aphasia on these processes and specifically on synchronized functional WM networks. We used high-density EEG and coherence analysis to map WM networks in ten Brocas patients and ten healthy controls during verbal WM task. Our results demonstrate that a stroke resulting in Brocas aphasia also alters two distinct WM networks. These theta and gamma functional networks likely reflect the executive and the phonological processes, respectively. The striking imbalance between task-related theta synchronization and desynchronization in Brocas patients might represent a disrupted balance between task-positive and WM-irrelevant functional networks. There is complete disintegration of left fronto-centroparietal gamma network in Brocas patients, which could reflect the damaged phonological loop.

Processing correlates of verb typologies: Investigating internal structure and argument realization

Abstract The paper investigates the processing correlates of core verb features used to generate verb typologies. The aim was to contrast the effects of verb internal structure (as in semantic/conceptual features e.g., Jackendoff [1991]; Levin and Rappaport Hovav [2005]) with argument structure and argument realization in sentence processing. To this end, we designed a self-paced reading task with internal structure and argument realization as variables in verb processing. Results showed that absence of a prototypical Agent or mismatch between thematic hierarchies and argument realization yields longer processing times possibly due to some form of thematic reanalysis or as a reaction to a “surprise” effect by the human processor while detecting a non-expected thematic assignment. No effects of verb internal structure were found. We take this result as an indication that argument structure and argument realization play an important role in verb recognition during sentence processing. We further propose that this reflects their prominent role in verb representation and we suggest that this finding could give additional support to verb classifications based on verb argument structure features compared to those based on internal structure.

Syntactic and semantic restrictions on morphological recomposition: MEG evidence from Greek

HighlightsFusiform gyrus is involved in form‐based decomposition at ˜170 ms.Syntactic licensing occurs at ˜200–300 ms in the temporal lobe.Temporal lobe effects suggest that stem look up precedes whole‐item processing.The orbitofrontal regions have a primary role in semantic composition.Argument structure and syntactic category constraints are processed separately. ABSTRACT Complex morphological processing has been extensively studied in the past decades. However, most of this work has either focused on only certain steps involved in this process, or it has been conducted on a few languages, like English. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the spatiotemporal cortical processing profile of the distinct steps previously reported in the literature, from decomposition to re‐composition of morphologically complex items, in a relatively understudied language, Greek. Using magnetoencephalography, we confirm the role of the fusiform gyrus in early, form‐based morphological decomposition, we relate the syntactic licensing of stem‐suffix combinations to the ventral visual processing stream, somewhat independent from lexical access for the stem, and we further elucidate the role of orbitofrontal regions in semantic composition. Thus, the current study offers the most comprehensive test to date of visual morphological processing and additional, crosslinguistic validation of the steps involved in it.

The Neuronal Correlates of Indeterminate Sentence Comprehension: An fMRI Study

Sentences such as The author started the book are indeterminate because they do not make explicit what the subject (the author) started doing with the object (the book). In principle, indeterminate sentences allow for an infinite number of interpretations. One theory, however, assumes that these sentences are resolved by semantic coercion, a linguistic process that forces the noun book to be interpreted as an activity (e.g., writing the book) or by a process that interpolates this activity information in the resulting enriched semantic composition. An alternative theory, pragmatic, assumes classical semantic composition, whereby meaning arises from the denotation of words and how they are combined syntactically, with enrichment obtained via pragmatic inferences beyond linguistic-semantic processes. Cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the neuroanatomical and functional correlates of indeterminate sentences have shown activations either at the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (vmPFC) or at the left inferior frontal gyrus (L-IFG). These studies have supported the semantic coercion theory assuming that one of these regions is where enriched semantic composition takes place. Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that indeterminate sentences activate bilaterally the superior temporal gyrus (STG), the right inferior frontal gyrus (R-IFG), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), more so than control sentences (The author wrote the book). Activation of indeterminate sentences exceeded that of anomalous sentences (…drank the book) and engaged more left- and right-hemisphere areas than other sentence types. We suggest that the widespread activations for indeterminate sentences represent the deployment of pragmatic-inferential processes, which seek to enrich sentence content without necessarily resorting to semantic coercion.

Processing complex pseudo-words in mild cognitive impairment: The interaction of preserved morphological rule knowledge with compromised cognitive ability.

Abstract Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) affects the cognitive performance of elderly adults. However, the level of severity is not high enough to be diagnosed with dementia. Previous research reports subtle language impairments in individuals with MCI specifically in domains related to lexical meaning. The present study used both off-line (grammaticality judgment) and on-line (lexical decision) tasks to examine aspects of lexical processing and how they are affected by MCI. 21 healthy older adults and 23 individuals with MCI saw complex pseudo-words that violated various principles of word formation in Slovenian and decided if each letter string was an actual word of their language. The pseudo-words ranged in their degree of violability. A task effect was found, with MCI performance to be similar to that of healthy controls in the off-line task but different in the on-line task. Overall, the MCI group responded slower than the elderly controls. No significant differences were observed in the off-line task, while the on-line task revealed a main effect of Violation type, a main effect of Group and a significant Violation × Group interaction reflecting a difficulty for the MCI group to process pseudo-words in real time. That is, while individuals with MCI seem to preserve morphological rule knowledge, they experience additional difficulties while processing complex pseudo-words. This was attributed to an executive dysfunction associated with MCI that delays the recognition of ungrammatical formations.