Maria Black

Noun–verb dissociations: a multi-faceted phenomenon

Abstract If we are looking for dissociations in language processing, nouns and verbs are strong candidates. In normal development as well as in developmental and acquired impairments, differences are typically found, usually, though not exclusively, in favour of nouns. In this paper, we re-visit these differences. We argue that the syntactic distinction between nouns and verbs goes hand in hand with phonological and semantic differences. Phonologically, verbs in English tend to have less typical stress patterns than nouns; to be of shorter duration in sentences; and to have fewer syllables. Semantically, a number of factors load differently for verbs and nouns: their conceptual range (with ‘things’ always mapping onto nouns and ‘relations’ typically mapping onto verbs); their semantic complexity in terms of the occurrence and number of entities they connect (their ‘argument structure’); and the closeness of the mapping between their meanings and non-linguistic concepts (something similar but not identical to the concrete/abstract distinction). We review the reported dissociations showing that all these factors play a role. Normally developing children commonly produce nouns before verbs but this varies depending on semantic, syntactic and phonological characteristics of these categories. Language-impaired children and adults with aphasia commonly show greater limitations in their use of verbs than nouns but patterns of difficulty point to phonological and semantic influences. We conclude that the patterns reported cannot be reduced to any one level of language processing.

Replicating therapy for mapping deficits in agrammatism: Remapping the deficit?

Abstract This study was designed to replicate and extend an earlier study in which a therapy programme was carried out with two agrammatic aphasic patients with sentence processing impairments suggested to be at the level of mapping thematic roles and grammatical relations (Byng 1988). In the current study one of the therapy procedures implemented in the previous study was repeated with three different people with long-term ‘agrammatism’. The outcome of the therapy resulted in some gains in sentence production and verb retrieval, but these gains varied across the three patients. Whilst some change had taken place for each person, the pattern of results showed that the quality and extent of the change was different in each case. The potential source for these differences is explored and the implications of the study for the necessary development of theories about therapy are discussed.

Sentence processing deficits: A replication of therapy

This paper describes the replication of a therapeutic programme originally used by one of the authors, Byng (Cognitive Neuropsychology, 1988, 5, 629-676) to remediate a specific sentence processing deficit. Our patient is shown to have similar although not identical deficits to those of one of the patients (JG) described in that programme. Sentence comprehension and production both improved as a result of therapy. The pattern of results observed gave further insights into both the nature of the patients deficit and the mechanism of therapy.

Some aspects of sentence production in aphasia

Abstract In this paper, we address the question of whether aphasic patients can produce complete predicate-argument structures. We present a descriptive framework for analyzing this particular aspect of output, and identify different patterns of deficit. We argue that specific output analyses along these lines are a necessary first step in the assessment and treatment of sentence production deficits.

Patterns of sentence processing deficit: Processing simple sentences can be a complex matter

Abstract The performance of normal and aphasie subjects on a sentence-picture matching task shows that many different factors can affect accuracy. The data presented in this paper suggest that, for normal subjects, reversal errors are not errors of sentence parsing or comprehension, but reflect “late” stages of processing which mediate the translation between language and pictures. We argue that normal performance is significantly affected by the semantic or conceptual properties of the verbs used and by the interaction of verb meaning and sentence meaning. Aphasie errors, on the other hand, can arise from different sources and have multiple causes. We discuss data from three aphasic subjects who appear to have similar linguistic symptoms, and we argue that each patient fails on this task for different reasons.

Prosodic constraints on lexical access in reading

Abstract In this paper, the reading responses of six dyslexic subjects are reported and analysed. Some subjects responses are shown to be affected by prosodic factors in two ways: (a) bisyllabic words with stress on the second syllable are significantly more difficult than comparable words with stress on the first syllable; (b) more errors are made to the portion of the target string that corresponds to the stressed syllable. We argue that prosodic factors must constrain the early stages of lexical access since many of the errors could not have occurred at a later output stage. We propose a way in which prosodic factors could be incorporated into models of word recognition, and conclude that visual, as well as phonological, representations are organised in terms of prosodic units.

Exploring event processing and description in people with aphasia

Background: A recent proposal is that verb retrieval difficulties in some people with aphasia may reflect impairment to processes that construct event representations in a language-appropriate way. This level of processing has been termed “thinking for speaking” (Slobin, 1996), “conceptual preparation” (Level, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999), or “event processing” (Marshall, Pring, & Chiat, 1993).Aims: The present study aims to extend understanding of this early stage of language production and the implications of its impairment. We examine verbs and sets of noun phrases produced in picture descriptions, comparing two people with disproportionate verb retrieval difficulties, and analyse their performance with respect to variables deemed to affect event processing. One person, EM, is argued to have event-processing difficulties, while the other, MH, is argued to have difficulties primarily in retrieving lexical verb forms.Methods & Procedures: The two participants with aphasia were compared on a picture description task, with target descriptions provided by control data. The study examined effects of stimulus format (photograph vs line drawing) and complexity of the situation (whether a single act, process, or state was the focus, versus a combination of these). Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed.Outcomes & Results: The event-processing variables influenced the sets of noun phrases produced by EM and not MH, as per our predictions. However, statistically reliable effects were not evident in rates of verb retrieval. Error analyses revealed that EM focused on non-target aspects of the situation in many of her descriptions, while MH retained target situation type despite his verb retrieval deficit.Conclusions: The performance of the two participants dissociated with respect to event-processing variables. This study extends understanding of the consequences of impaired event processing on language production, and suggests a novel and theoretically motivated means of examining the communicative abilities of people with aphasia.

Re-stressing prosody: A reply to Cutler, Howard, and Patterson

Abstract Cutler, Howard, and Patterson (this volume) claim that prosodic properties play no role in visual lexical access. In this paper, we argue that prosodic theory has its feet more firmly on the psycholinguistic ground than they think.