Treatment of written verb and written sentence production in an individual with aphasia: A clinical study

Background: Although the efficacy of treatments for spoken verb and sentence production deficits in aphasia has been documented widely, less is known about interventions for written verb and written sentence production deficits. Aims: This study documents a treatment aiming to improve production of (a) written subject-verb sentences (involving intransitive verbs) and (b) written subject-verb-object sentences (involving transitive verbs). Methods & Procedures: The participant, a 63-year-old female aphasic speaker, had a marked language comprehension deficit, apraxia of speech, relatively good spelling abilities, and no hemiplegia. The treatment involved intransitive verbs producing subject-verb active sentences and transitive verbs producing subject-verb-object active non-reversible sentences. The treatment was undertaken in the context of current UK clinical practice. Outcomes & Results: Statistical improvements were noted for the trained sets of verbs and sentences. Other improvements were also noted in LW's ability to retrieve some non-treated verbs and construct written sentences. Treatment did not generalise to sentence comprehension and letter spelling to dictation. Conclusions: Our participant's ability to write verbs and sentences improved as a result of the treatment.

Passive verb morphology: the effect of phonotactics on passive comprehension in typically developing and grammatical-SLI children

In this study we explore the impact of a morphological deficit on syntactic comprehension. A self-paced listening task was designed to investigate passive sentence processing in typically developing (TD) children and children with Grammatical-Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI). Participants had to judge whether the sentence they heard matched a picture they were shown. Working within the framework of the Computational Grammatical Complexity Hypothesis, which stresses how different components of the grammar interact, we tested whether children were able to use phonotactic cues to parse reversible passive sentences of the form the X was verbed by Y We predicted that TD children would be able to use phonotactics to parse a form like touched or hugged as a participle, and hence interpret passive sentences correctly. This cue is predicted not be used by G-SLI children, because they have difficulty building complex morphological representations. We demonstrate that indeed TD, but not G-SLI, children are able to use phonotactics cues in parsing passive sentences. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Verb retrieval in fluent aphasia: a clinical study

Background: Problems with lexical retrieval are common across all types of aphasia but certain word classes are thought to be more vulnerable in some aphasia types. Traditionally, verb retrieval problems have been considered characteristic of non-fluent aphasias but there is growing evidence that verb retrieval problems are also found in fluent aphasia. As verbs are retrieved from the mental lexicon with syntactic as well as phonological and semantic information, it is speculated that an improvement in verb retrieval should enhance communicative abilities in this population as in others. We report on an investigation into the effectiveness of verb treatment for three individuals with fluent aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Multiple pre-treatment baselines were established over 3 months in order to monitor language change before treatment. The three participants then received twice-weekly verb treatment over approximately 4 months. All pre-treatment assessments were administered immediately after treatment and 3 months post-treatment. Outcome & Results: Scores fluctuated in the pre-treatment period. Following treatment, there was a significant improvement in verb retrieval for two of the three participants on the treated items. The increase in scores for the third participant was statistically nonsignificant but post-treatment scores moved from below the normal range to within the normal range. All participants were significantly quicker in the verb retrieval task following treatment. There was an increase in well-formed sentences in the sentence construction test and in some samples of connected speech. Conclusions: Repeated systematic treatment can produce a significant improvement in verb retrieval of practised items and generalise to unpractised items for some participants. An increase in well-formed sentences is seen for some speakers. The theoretical and clinical implications of the results are discussed.

Grammatical collocations and verb-particle constructions in Brussels French: a corpus-linguistic approach to transfer

In this study the focus is on transfer in Brussels French, the variety of French spoken in Brussels. The methodology proposed in Jarvis (2000) and Jarvis and Pavlenko (2009) is followed to provide proof for the fact that grammatical collocations such as chercher après "to look for" are the result of contact with the source language, Brussels Dutch.

Processing coordinate subject-verb agreement in L1 and L2 Greek

The present study examines the processing of subject-verb (SV) number agreement with coordinate subjects in pre-verbal and post-verbal positions in Greek. Greek is a language with morphological number marked on nominal and verbal elements. Coordinate SV agreement, however, is special in Greek as it is sensitive to the coordinate subject's position: when pre-verbal, the verb is marked for plural while when post-verbal the verb can be in the singular. We conducted two experiments, an acceptability judgment task with adult monolinguals as a pre-study (Experiment 1) and a self-paced reading task as the main study (Experiment 2) in order to obtain acceptance as well as processing data. Forty adult monolingual speakers of Greek participated in Experiment 1 and a hundred and forty one in Experiment 2. Seventy one children participated in Experiment 2: 30 Albanian-Greek sequential bilingual children and 41 Greek monolingual children aged 10–12 years. The adult data in Experiment 1 establish the difference in acceptability between singular VPs in SV and VS constructions reaffirming our hypothesis. Meanwhile, the adult data in Experiment 2 show that plural verbs accelerate processing regardless of subject position. The child online data show that sequential bilingual children have longer reading times (RTs) compared to the age-matched monolingual control group. However, both child groups follow a similar processing pattern in both pre-verbal and post-verbal constructions showing longer RTs immediately after a singular verb when the subject was pre-verbal indicating a grammaticality effect. In the post-verbal coordinate subject sentences, both child groups showed longer RTs on the first subject following the plural verb due to the temporary number mismatch between the verb and the first subject. This effect was resolved in monolingual children but was still present at the end of the sentence for bilingual children indicating difficulties to reanalyze and integrate information. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that (a) 10–12 year-old sequential bilingual children are sensitive to number agreement in SV coordinate constructions parsing sentences in the same way as monolingual children even though their vocabulary abilities are lower than that of age-matched monolingual peers and (b) bilinguals are slower in processing overall.

On-line processing of wh-questions in children with G-SLI and typically developing children

Background: The computational grammatical complexity ( CGC) hypothesis claims that children with G(rammatical)-specific language impairment ( SLI) have a domain-specific deficit in the computational system affecting syntactic dependencies involving 'movement'. One type of such syntactic dependencies is filler-gap dependencies. In contrast, the Generalized Slowing Hypothesis claims that SLI children have a domain-general deficit affecting processing speed and capacity. Aims: To test contrasting accounts of SLI we investigate processing of syntactic (filler-gap) dependencies in wh-questions. Methods & Procedures: Fourteen 10; 2 - 17; 2 G-SLI children, 14 age- matched and 17 vocabulary-matched controls were studied using the cross- modal picturepriming paradigm. Outcomes & Results: G-SLI children's processing speed was significantly slower than the age controls, but not younger vocabulary controls. The G- SLI children and vocabulary controls did not differ on memory span. However, the typically developing and G-SLI children showed a qualitatively different processing pattern. The age and vocabulary controls showed priming at the gap, indicating that they process wh-questions through syntactic filler-gap dependencies. In contrast, G-SLI children showed priming only at the verb. Conclusions: The findings indicate that G-SLI children fail to establish reliably a syntactic filler- gap dependency and instead interpret wh-questions via lexical thematic information. These data challenge the Generalized Slowing Hypothesis account, but support the CGC hypothesis, according to which G-SLI children have a particular deficit in the computational system affecting syntactic dependencies involving 'movement'. As effective remediation often depends on aetiological insight, the discovery of the nature of the syntactic deficit, along side a possible compensatory use of semantics to facilitate sentence processing, can be used to direct therapy. However, the therapeutic strategy to be used, and whether such similar strengths and weaknesses within the language system are found in other SLI subgroups are empirical issues that warrant further research.

Tyche

The word tyche (plural tychai) denotes an ancient Greek concept encompassing many aspects of fortune – chance, fate, luck, occurrence, even achievement, success, and wealth – both good and bad. As a personification of that concept, the goddess Tyche came to symbolize the fate and fortune of rulers and through them their cities; she thus emerged as the preeminent city goddess throughout the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. Her name is etymologically related to the verb tynchanein (“to hit, meet with, be favored with, happen accidentally”). The connection between the noun and verb is so close that it is difficult to distinguish in Greek literature between the deity and the abstraction.

Selective listening in L2 learners of French

This paper considers the issue raised by Brown (2008) regarding whether nouns are ‘privileged’ in memory over verbs during listening tasks, and whether attention to nouns, at least in the early stages of L2 learning, is a desirable strategy to be taught to learners, as Brown suggests it might be. The question of verb/noun recognition was explored in the present study using data from 30 lower-intermediate learners of French in England. Learners completed a listening task on two occasions, six months apart, producing recall protocols for short oral passages in French. We also explored learners’ attentional strategy use by asking them to report on this in writing immediately after the recall task. An analysis of verbs and nouns recognised indicated that verb recognition was lower than that of nouns, and that progress in verb recognition over six months was negligible. A qualitative analysis of learners’ strategy use indicated that learners with a more balanced verb/noun recognition profile took a broader focus, tending to focus their attention consciously at phrase/sentence level rather than at word level. These findings are discussed in terms of the development of listening skills over time, and the implications of this for L2 listening pedagogy.

Processing of regular and irregular past tense morphology in highly proficient second language learners of English: a self-paced reading study

Dual-system models suggest that English past tense morphology involves two processing routes: rule application for regular verbs and memory retrieval for irregular verbs (Pinker, 1999). In second language (L2) processing research, Ullman (2001a) suggested that both verb types are retrieved from memory, but more recently Clahsen and Felser (2006) and Ullman (2004) argued that past tense rule application can be automatised with experience by L2 learners. To address this controversy, we tested highly proficient Greek-English learners with naturalistic or classroom L2 exposure compared to native English speakers in a self-paced reading task involving past tense forms embedded in plausible sentences. Our results suggest that, irrespective to the type of exposure, proficient L2 learners of extended L2 exposure apply rule-based processing.

Interpreting at Vindolanda: commercial and linguistic mediation in the Roman army.

A fragmentary tablet from Vindolanda (Tab. Vindol. II, 213) contains an occurrence of the verb interpretari (‘interpret’, ‘explain’, ‘mediate’) in an apparently commercial context, relating to the grain supply for the Roman fort. This usage is paralleled in a text on a wooden stilus tablet from Frisia in the Netherlands. ‘Interpreters’ and their activities make rather infrequent appearances in the Latin epigraphic and documentary records. In the Danubian provinces, interpreters (interpretes) are attested as army officers and officials in the office of the provincial governor. ‘Interpreters’, in both Latin and Greek inscriptions and papyri, often, however, play more ambiguous roles, not always connected with language-mediation, but also, or instead, with mediation in commercial transactions

'Quasi'-norm of an arithmetical convolution operator and the order of the Riemann zeta function

In this paper we study Dirichlet convolution with a given arithmetical function f as a linear mapping 'f that sends a sequence (an) to (bn) where bn = Pdjn f(d)an=d. We investigate when this is a bounded operator on l2 and ¯nd the operator norm. Of particular interest is the case f(n) = n¡® for its connection to the Riemann zeta function on the line 1, 'f is bounded with k'f k = ³(®). For the unbounded case, we show that 'f : M2 ! M2 where M2 is the subset of l2 of multiplicative sequences, for many f 2 M2. Consequently, we study the `quasi'-norm sup kak = T a 2M2 k'fak kak for large T, which measures the `size' of 'f on M2. For the f(n) = n¡® case, we show this quasi-norm has a striking resemblance to the conjectured maximal order of j³(® + iT )j for ® > 12 .

Subject-to-subject raising and the syntax of tense in L2 Spanish: a full access approach

This paper investigates the acquisition of syntax in L2 grammars. We tested adult L2 speakers of Spanish (English L1) on the feature specification of T(ense), which is different in English and Spanish in so-called subject-to-subject raising structures. We present experimental results with the verb parecer “to seem/to appear” in different tenses, with and without experiencers, and with Tense Phrase (TP), verb phrase (vP) and Adjectival Phrase (AP) complements. The results show that advanced L2 learners can perform just like native Spanish speakers regarding grammatical knowledge in this domain, although the subtle differences between both languages are not explicitly taught. We argue that these results support Full Access approaches to Universal Grammar (UG) in L2 acquisition, by providing evidence that uninterpretable syntactic features can be learned in adult L2, even when such features are not directly instantiated in the same grammatical domain in the L1 grammar.

Individual differences and the role of the L1 in L2 processing: an ERP investigation

This study used ERP (event-related potentials) to examine both the role of the L1 and the role of individual differences in the processing of agreement violations. Theories of L2 acquisition differ with regard to whether or not native-like acquisition of L2 features is possible (Schwartz and Sprouse, 1994, 1996; Tsimpli and Mastropavlou, 2007), and the results of previous ERP studies are inconsistent when it comes to whether or not native-like processing is observed in response to L2 agreement violations (e.g., Sabourin, 2003; Tokowicz and MacWhinney, 2005). Furthermore, studies of learners in early stages of L2 acquisition have found variability in the emergence of native-like responses (e.g., McLaughlin et al., 2010; Tanner et al., 2009), but sources of variability have not been investigated. The current study examines responses to gender and number agreement violations in English-speaking learners of Spanish (n=24). Stimuli targeted agreement in three conditions: subject-verb agreement (el barco flota/*flotan), which is similar in Spanish and English; number agreement on adjectival predicates (la isla rocosa/*rocosas), a context in which agreement is not instantiated in English; and gender agreement on adjectival predicates (la isla rocosa/*rocoso), which is unique to Spanish. Grammaticality judgments and ERP responses were also tested for correlations with aptitude scores on the Modern Languages Aptitude Test (MLAT; Carroll and Sapon, 1959) and the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices (Raven, 1965). Results are in line with theories that claim native-like processing is acquirable, since learners demonstrated similar ERP responses to a control group of native Spanish-speakers (n=8) with regard to all three agreement types. Additionally, the MLAT (but not the Raven) was significantly correlated with sensitivity to number violations, both in terms of grammaticality judgments and ERP amplitudes, indicating a role for verbal but not nonverbal aptitude in L2 processing.