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PRODUCTION AND COMPREHENSION OF UNACCUSATIVES IN APHASIA To appear in Aphasiology Special Issue, Proceedings of the 38th Clinical Aphasiology Conference.

Tara McAllister1,2, Asaf Bachrach2, Gloria Waters1, Jennifer Michaud3, David Caplan

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1

Boston University, Sargent College, Department of Communication Disorders 635 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215

2

77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 32-D808, Cambridge, MA 02139 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

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175 Cambridge Street, Suite 175, Boston, MA 02114 Massachusetts General Hospital, Neuropsychology Laboratory

Working Title: Production and Comprehension of Unaccusatives in Aphasia

Corresponding Author:

Tara McAllister

320 Memorial Drive, #317A, Cambridge, MA 02139

Phone (617) 970-2444

Fax (617) 730-0288

mcallis@mit.edu

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Structured Abstract

Background: Recent studies have reported impairments in the production of sentences containing

unaccusative verbs (e.g., The ball bounced down the street) in agrammatic patients. In these

sentences, the subject is the theme of the verb, resulting in a non-standard order of thematic roles

(often called non-canonical thematic role order).

Aims: We tested the hypothesis that aphasic patients would be affected by these features of

unaccusatives in both production and comprehension, and that they would show similar deficits

in sentences with unaccusative verbs and passive sentences, which also have non-canonical

thematic role order.

Methods & Procedures: Single-word naming, sentence production, and sentence-picture

matching tasks were administered to a group of 9 aphasic participants and 12 age- and education-

matched control participants.

Outcomes & Results: The aphasic patients performed less well than the controls, and there were

effects of the presence of movement in both groups, and an interaction between group and

sentence type in the sentence production task.

Conclusions: These findings support the view that non-canonical thematic role order makes

action naming, sentence production and sentence comprehension more difficult and that aphasic

patients are more affected by the demands of these tasks than controls.

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Introduction

One factor that has consistently been found to play a role in sentence processing in

aphasia is the occurrence of arguments in canonical versus derived order. A canonical sentence

in a particular language is defined as having that language’s “most typical main-clause surface

word order for subject (S), object (O), and main verb (V)” (Menn, 2000). Below, 1(a-b) shows a

simple transitive active sentence and a subject relative clause construction, two examples of

constructions with canonical word order. The non-canonical counterparts of these constructions,

namely a passive sentence and an object relative clause construction, are shown in 1(c-d). There

is general agreement that the non-canonical constructions tend to be significantly impaired

relative to their canonical counterparts in comprehension in aphasia (cf. e.g. Caramazza & Zurif,

1976; Ansell & Flowers, 1982; Grodzinsky, 1986; Zurif & Swinney, 1994).

1. a. The dog chased the cat. b. The dog that chased the cat was black. c. The cat was chased by the dog. d. The cat that the dog chased was black.

Several questions about aphasic performance on sentences with non-canonical word order

remain unanswered. One is whether performance is affected on all sentences with non-canonical

word order, or only subsets of these sentences. A second issue is whether poor performance on

sentences with non-canonical word order affects both production and comprehension. The

present study examined the performance of aphasic patients on a sentence type with non-

canonical word order that has received relatively little attention in both production and

comprehension tasks, and provides data relevant to these questions.

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The Unaccusative Construction

The unaccusative construction, which involves a non-canonical word order, has the

potential to extend our understanding of the role of canonicity in comprehension and production

in aphasia. The sentences in (2) illustrate the structural difference between an unaccusative verb,

freeze, and an unergative verb, cough. In 2(a), the river is the theme of froze; in 2(b), the boy is

the agent of coughed.

2. a. Unaccusative: The river

froze.

b. Unergative: The boy

In versions of generative grammar, the division of intransitive verbs into unaccusatives

and unergatives has been related to a difference in the site of origin of the subject NP (Perlmutter,

1978). The unaccusative subject is thought to be initially inserted in verb-internal object position,

where it is assigned the theme theta role, and must subsequently raise to subject position to

receive structural case. (Following the generative tradition, we will refer to this process as

“movement,” to the subject of an unaccusative as a “moved constituent,” and to the relation

between the overt subject and the postulated initial position of the subject in the position of

object as a “movement chain.”) Evidence for this analysis comes, for instance, from the fact the

unaccusative can be followed directly by a resultative clause (The river froze solid), whereas an

unergative verb must have a reflexive object in order to support a resultative (The boy coughed

himself hoarse). The “trace” of the surface subject in its original object position in the

unaccusative serves the same function as the reflexive in the unergative, allowing the resultative

expression to be connected to an entity in the sentence.

coughed.

As noted, passives also have non-canonical thematic role order. In generative grammar,

passives share the property of having a subject that originates in an underlying object position.

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Given these similarities between unaccusative and passive constructions, we can test whether

aphasic patients’ sentence production and comprehension might be similar for different types of

sentences with non-canonical thematic role order. In agrammatic aphasia, parallel performance

on these constructions is predicted by the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (Grodzinsky, 2000), which

maintains that agrammatic patients have a disorder affecting the comprehension of sentences

with moved constituents. The non-canonicity of thematic role order in unaccusatives and

passives might lead to similar performances in aphasic patients in general.

A number of studies have found that unaccusatives can be impaired in the output of

speakers with aphasia. Thompson (2003) found that agrammatic aphasic participants were

significantly more accurate in a picture-naming task when targets were unergative rather than

unaccusative verbs, where both classes were matched for frequency. Lee and Thompson (2004)

presented agrammatic aphasic participants with pictures labeled with the bare form of an

unergative or unaccusative verb and asked them to describe each picture using the verb provided.

With a scoring system based on word order and completeness of argument structure, it was

determined that the aphasic participants produced correct sentences at a significantly higher rate

for unergative than for unaccusative verbs. Similarly, Bastiaanse and van Zonneveld (2005)

looked at the use of unaccusative verbs in pictorial contexts that suggested either a transitive or

an unaccusative reading of the verb. For instance, a patient might be presented with the verb

ring and see a picture of a bell ringing for the intransitive sentence target The bell is ringing, or a

picture of a man ringing a bell for a transitive target such as He/The man is ringing the bell. It

was found that agrammatic aphasic participants produced unaccusative verbs more accurately in

the transitive frame, which uses canonical word order and does not, according to generative

grammar models, involve a chain of movement. In the studies cited above, impairments in

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unaccusative production have been interpreted as the consequence of a specific deficit disrupting

the chain of movement in the unaccusative construction. It has been suggested that this is similar

to the finding that agrammatic aphasics often have difficulties in comprehension of sentences

with such chains (Bastiaanse, Koekkoek & van Zonneveld, 2003). However, other researchers

postulate that agrammatic patients’ difficulty constructing such chains is limited to

comprehension, and that they suffer from other disturbances in sentence production (cf. the

“tree-pruning hypothesis” proposed by Friedmann & Grodzinsky, 1997). To determine the

degree to which these constructions pattern together within and across tasks, there is a need for

further study of patients’ ability both to produce and to comprehend sentences with unaccusative

as well as passive verbs. In addition, studies of a wide range of patients are needed to determine

whether any deficit in unaccusative structures is limited to one type of aphasia, as it has been

established that difficulty comprehending non-canonical sentences is not exclusive to patients

who exhibit agrammatism in production (cf. e.g. Martin & Blossom-Stach, 1986; Lukatela,

Shankweiler, & Crain, 1995; Berndt, Haendiges, Mitchum, & Sandson, 1997; Berndt, Mitchum,

& Wayland, 1997).

Methods

Participants

Nine individuals (five males) with aphasia secondary to stroke were recruited from the

Aphasia Community Group of Boston, from aphasia therapy groups at Sargent College of Health

and Rehabilitation Sciences of Boston University, and from a pool of individuals who had

previously taken part in aphasia studies at Sargent College and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Patient characteristics are shown in Table 1. All patients had a diagnosis of aphasia as

determined by one or more standardized assessment instruments administered by a certified

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speech-language pathologist; the assessment tools that were used varied across clinicians. The

patient group had an average age of 62 years (range = 37 to 93 years, SD = 18.3 years) and an

average of 15.7 years of education (range = 12 to 19 years, SD = 2.5 years). Because the present

study made no a priori assumptions about the role of syndrome classification or lesion location in

aphasia outcomes, the only criteria for inclusion in the aphasic participant group were a

confirmed diagnosis of aphasia and native knowledge of English. Participants were not included

or excluded on the basis of aphasic syndrome, lesion location, or severity. As Table 1 reveals, the

patients recruited in this manner happened to be characterized predominantly by relatively mild

aphasia of the fluent type.

TABLE 1 HERE

The control group consisted of twelve age- and education-matched individuals (five

males) with no history of stroke or cognitive/linguistic impairment. Control participants were

recruited from a pool of previous participants in studies conducted by the Language Science

Research Laboratory at Sargent College. All control participants scored within the average range

of performance on the Boston Naming Test (Kaplan, Goodglass, & Weintraub, 2001) and/or the

Mini Mental State Examination (Folstein, Folstein, & McHugh 1975). This group had an average

age of 72.4 years (range = 55 to 82 years; SD = 8.8 years) and an average of 16.6 years of

education (range = 12 to 20 years, SD = 2.2 years). Comparison by unpaired Student's t-test

revealed no significant difference between control and patient groups with respect to age (p

= .15) or years of education (p = .38).

Materials

Picture stimuli were created by an artist in consultation with the experimenters. Members

of the lab were recruited to review each pairing of a stimulus picture and its intended target word

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or sentence; they were asked to rate the goodness of fit for each pair and to provide any

suggestions for modifications. Revisions were made until there was a consensus among the

authors that each picture was appropriate to elicit the desired word or sentence in the production

task, or corresponded to the intended spoken sentence in the comprehension task.

Word and sentence stimuli were recorded by a male native speaker of English using

careful, clear speech with even rate and intonation across all items. All sound stimuli were

digitized with a 44.1 kHz audio sample rate and 16 bit audio sample size and were saved as

WAV files.

Picture and sound stimuli were entered into the Boston University Language Lab’s

BullRunner Beta experiment presentation program. The experiment was run on a Dell Inspiron

700m laptop operating Windows XP professional. Auditory stimuli were presented in soundfield

at each patient’s preferred listening volume.

Experimental Tasks

Three experimental tasks were devised based on tasks that have previously been used to

study the production and comprehension of unaccusative and/or passive verbs. Other possible

tasks, such as sentence completion or cued picture description, were not selected because the

results could not be compared to those of previous studies.

Experiment 1: Picture Naming. The first task assessed single-word naming of unaccusative and

unergative verb targets. Following the methodology described in Thompson (2003), participants

were presented with pictures and asked to name the action depicted. Target verbs were either

unergative (e.g., crawl) or unaccusative (e.g., bounce). Ten unergative and eleven unaccusative

verb targets were used (see Appendix A for the complete set). Sample pictures from the

production tasks are presented in Figure 1(A). Verbs were drawn from published lists of

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unaccusative and unergative verbs (Levin & Rappaport Hovav, 1995; Froud, 1998; Thompson,

2003), with corroborating judgments from two trained linguists. Lexical frequencies for each

verb were obtained from an online corpus (Balota et al., 2002), and t-tests revealed no significant

difference in lexical frequency across the unaccusative and unergative verb sets. An unaccusative

verb such as bounce can be used either intransitively or transitively (e.g., The ball bounced

versus He bounced the ball). Both transitive and intransitive picture conditions were presented in

an effort to encourage participants to produce intransitive forms in response to the pictures

intended to elicit them. Only the intransitive picture condition is reported here.

FIGURE 1(A) ABOUT HERE

Experiment 2: Sentence Production. The second task used the same pictures in a sentence

production task. In this task, the bare stem of the target verb was printed above the picture and

was simultaneously presented in the auditory modality via digitized sound file. Participants were

instructed to use any form of the target verb in a sentence describing the picture.

Experiment 3: Sentence-Picture Matching. A two-picture choice task with unaccusative

transitive/intransitive and active/passive pairs was created. Twenty-one unaccusative picture

pairs and twenty active/passive picture pairs were generated (Fig 1B, 1C). A sample

unaccusative intransitive/transitive picture pair is shown in Figure 1(B). In the picture pairs

generated in connection with unaccusative stimuli, one picture represented the subject NP as the

theme of the verb. This picture was the intended target in the intransitive ([+movement])

condition, as seen in 3(a). A second image depicted the subject NP as the agent of the verb. This

image was the target in the transitive condition, as seen in 3(b). The two pictures in each pair

were visually balanced so that any person or object appearing in one picture was present in the

corresponding picture, whether or not it played a role in the action depicted.

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3. a. The boy is choking. [+ Movement] b. The boy is choking the girl. [- Movement]

FIGURE 1(B) ABOUT HERE

A sample active/passive pair is depicted in Figure 1(C). Each pair of pictures was presented

twice, accompanied once by a passive sentence ([+ movement]) and once by an active sentence

([- movement]), as seen in (4). A complete list of sentence stimuli is presented in Appendix B.

4. a. The girl was poked by the teacher. [+ Movement] b. The girl poked the teacher. [- Movement]

FIGURE 1(C) ABOUT HERE

Procedure

All participants completed the full experimental battery detailed above, comprising

measures of single-word naming, sentence production, and sentence-picture matching. Because

many stimuli occurred twice in different conditions, stimulus pairs were separated into two

blocks that were presented in separate testing sessions about one week apart. An exception to

this divided presentation was the single-word naming task, which was administered in its entirety

before any other subtests were introduced. Patients were tested in their homes or at the

Language Science Research Laboratory at Sargent College. All control participants were tested

at the Language Science Research Laboratory at Sargent College. All sessions were recorded,

either on videotape (for laboratory sessions) or on audiotape.

Scoring of Responses

In the naming task, all responses were recorded in writing, and the recording of the

session was reviewed to clarify any ambiguous responses. A score of 1 was assigned if the

participant responded with the target verb or an acceptable substitution, and 0 was assigned

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otherwise. A response was considered an acceptable substitution if it belonged to the same verb

class (unaccusative or unergative) as the target and was judged semantically appropriate.

Examples of scoring are presented in Appendix C.

In the sentence-production task, responses were transcribed on-line, and the recorded

session was consulted in the case of unclear responses. A score of 1 was assigned to a response

that included all obligatory arguments of the target verb in an appropriate order. Examples of

sentence scoring are presented in Appendix D.

In the sentence-picture matching task, scoring was computerized. Responses were scored

as 1 or 0, and reaction time data were also collected. Reaction times were recorded from the

offset of the auditory sentence stimulus.

Results

Production Tasks

Table 2 reports mean accuracy on the picture-naming, sentence production, and sentence-

picture matching tasks, as well as mean RT for sentence-picture matching.

Table 2 here

Naming accuracy data were entered into a 2 x 2 ANOVA with the factors of group

(control, patient) and verb type (unaccusative, unergative). There was a significant main effect

of group (F (1,19) = 11.93, p < .01), with controls responding with greater accuracy than

participants with aphasia. The ANOVA also revealed a significant main effect of verb type (F

(1,19) = 8.53, p < .01). Unergative targets were named with significantly higher accuracy than

unaccusative targets. The interaction of group with verb type was not significant.

Sentence production accuracy data were also entered into an ANOVA with the factors of

group (control, patient) and verb type (unaccusative, unergative). There was a main effect of

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verb type (F (1,19) = 13.49, p < .001), with unergative sentences produced with greater accuracy

than unaccusative sentences. There was an interaction of group and verb type (F (1, 19) = 9.64,

p < .01). This reflected the fact that unaccusative verb targets were produced with lower

accuracy than unergative verb targets only in the patient group, as well as the fact that

unaccusative verb targets were produced with lower accuracy in the patient group than in the

control group.

Pearson product moment correlation (r) was calculated to determine whether the ability

to produce unaccusative versus unergative verbs in action naming correlated with the ability to

produce sentences containing unaccusative versus unergative verbs. For each participant, the

value [percent correct unaccusative naming - percent correct unergative naming] was correlated

with the value [percent correct unaccusative sentence production - percent correct unergative

sentence production]. The resulting correlation was not significant for the entire group of

participants (r = .29), for the patients alone (r = .07), or for the normal participants alone (r

= .38).

Comprehension Task

For the sentence-picture matching task, accuracy data were analyzed using a 2 x 2 x 2

ANOVA with the factors of group (patient, control), verb type (transitive/intransitive

unaccusative; active/passive) and movement ([+movement], i.e. passives and intransitive

unaccusatives; [- movement], i.e. actives and transitive unaccusatives). There was no significant

main effect of group with respect to comprehension accuracy. In addition, there was no

significant interaction between group and movement or between group and verb type. There was

a significant effect of movement (F(1, 19) = 13.64, p < .01), and Tukey post-hoc comparisons

revealed that sentences without argument movement (actives and transitive unaccusatives) were

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comprehended at a higher rate than sentences with movement (passives and intransitive

unaccusatives). There was also a significant main effect of verb type (F(1, 19) = 6.66, p < .05),

with active/passive verbs associated with greater accuracy than transitive/intransitive

unaccusatives. Finally, the ANOVA showed a significant interaction of verb type and movement

(F(1, 19) = 12.56, p < .01). Tukey comparisons revealed that the difference in accuracy between

transitive/intransitive unaccusative and active/passive verb types was significant for movement

constructions but not for sentences without movement. That is, accuracy was lower for

intransitive unaccusatives than for passives, but accuracy did not differ for transitive

unaccusatives and actives.

Analysis of reaction times revealed a significant main effect of group (F(1, 19) = 5.58, p

< .05), with controls responding significantly faster than patients. There was no significant

interaction of group with movement or verb type. There was a significant effect of movement

(F(1, 19) = 35.49, p < .0001), with movement constructions associated with longer response

latencies than non-movement constructions. There was no significant main effect of verb type,

but the interaction of verb type and movement was significant (F(1, 19) = 15.76, p < .001). Post-

hoc analysis revealed that the effect of movement on reaction time was significant for

transitive/intransitive unaccusative stimuli but not for active/passive verbs.

Comprehension data were also examined to determine whether the difference in accuracy

between movement and non-movement constructions correlated significantly across

unaccusative and non-unaccusative verb types. The difference in accuracy between active and

passive sentences for each participant ([active – passive]) was found to correlate strongly with

the difference in accuracy between transitive and intransitive unaccusatives ([transitive

unaccusative - intransitive unaccusative]) (r = .75, p = .001). Thus, participants with a larger

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active-passive gap also tended to show a large difference between transitive and intransitive

unaccusatives. This effect reached significance in the patient group (r = .79, p = .01), and just

failed to be significant in the control group (r = .55, p = .06).

Relation between Production and Comprehension

The relation between comprehension of sentences with moved constituents and the ability

to name verbs with argument structures related to constituent movement was explored by

correlating the effect of movement in comprehension ([+ movement] - [- movement]) with the

difference in naming unaccusative and unergative verbs in the picture-naming task. The resulting

correlation was at the level of a trend for the entire group of participants (r = .38, p = .08) and

was not significant for either the patients alone (r = .48) or for the normal participants alone (r

= .05).

In addition, the relation between comprehension of sentences with moved constituents

and the ability to produce sentences with constituent movement (i.e., sentences with non-

canonical word order) was explored by correlating the effect of movement in comprehension

with the difference in producing sentences with unaccusative and unergative verbs. The resulting

correlation was not significant for the entire group of participants (r = -.01), for the patients alone

(r = -.26), or for the normal participants alone (r = -.15).

Discussion

This investigation tested the hypothesis that participants with aphasia would exhibit

decreased performance on unaccusative constructions relative to constructions with a canonical

order of thematic roles. It was predicted that these effects would extend across unaccusative

production and comprehension. We begin our discussion with the results of the production tasks.

In both production tasks, unergative verbs were produced with significantly higher accuracy than

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unaccusatives. This difference is expected in sentence production because of the increased

complexity of producing the non-canonical thematic role order in the unaccusative sentences.

The difference between producing unaccusatives and unergatives in picture-naming is predicted

by the Argument Structure Complexity Hypothesis, or ASCH (Thompson, 2003), which holds

that the argument structure properties of a verb, including the need for argument movement, have

an effect at the level of single-word naming.

The findings of this study suggest an alternative account of the effect of unaccusativity.

Thompson considered the effect of unaccusativity in aphasia to be a reflection of a specific

deficit in the representation of movement that occurs in agrammatic aphasic patients. The present

results differ from Thompson’s in suggesting an unaccusative-unergative difference in control

participants as well as in individuals with aphasia. This suggests that the lower naming accuracy

for verbs with more complex argument structure does not reflect a deficit specific to one type of

aphasia. Rather, it may be a general effect of processing complexity in lexical retrieval, affecting

aphasic patients of various types as well as normal individuals.

Why the effect of argument structure appeared in the normal individuals tested here and

not in those tested by Thompson requires further study. The difference across the studies may

reflect variability among individuals in the strength of the effect of argument structure on naming

actions, differences related to test materials or aspects of the task set-up, or other factors. Ceiling

effects may have contributed to the patterns of performance seen here. In the sentence production

task, control participants were effectively at ceiling for both unaccusative and unergative targets,

and patients were effectively at ceiling for unergative targets. It is impossible to know whether

the interaction of group and sentence type would continue to be found if the task were made

more difficult, such that neither group was at ceiling on either sentence type. Similar

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considerations apply in sentence-picture matching, where both controls and patients were again

close to ceiling on transitive unaccusative and active sentence; there is no way to know whether

an interaction between sentence type and task would have emerged if the task were made more

demanding such that neither group was at ceiling. These questions will require further study to

answer.

The effect of unaccusative argument structure on production was more pronounced in

patients than in controls in the sentence production task. This may reflect the increased difficulty

of planning and producing an entire set of thematic roles relative to simple action naming.

One implication of the effect of unaccusative verbs on sentence production in the patient

group is that increased difficulty producing sentences with unaccusatives (and possibly other

sentences with non-canonical word order and displaced constituents) is not limited to patients

with agrammatism. In this respect, our result joins a growing literature reporting difficulty in the

production of non-canonical constructions in fluent aphasia (cf. e.g. Berndt et al., 1997; Caplan

& Hanna, 1998; Faroqi-Shah & Thompson, 2003). Aphasic diagnostic group played no role in

patient selection in the present study, but, as it happened, no patient in the group tested here was

classified as a Broca’s or agrammatic aphasic. It is possible that the source of difficulty in

producing sentences with unaccusatives differs between Broca’s/agrammatic patients and

patients in other clinical aphasic groups. For instance, individuals with Broca’s/agrammatic

aphasia may have a specific deficit in producing verbs whose argument structure requires

syntactic movement, while other aphasic groups may have a superficially similar abnormal

pattern of performance because they have a reduction in the processing resources needed to

produce such verbs.

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While the present study did not find a correlation between the effect of argument

structure on action naming and its effect on sentence production, this does not entail that there

are no operations common to these two processes. However, the absence of such a correlation

does suggest that task-specific factors played a significant role in determining the effect of

argument structure. These factors can be understood as part of a linguistic and psycholinguistic

theory of encoding actions and events, and much work is needed for them to be fully explained.

Turning to comprehension, results of the sentence-picture matching task revealed that

sentences without argument movement were comprehended at a significantly higher rate than

movement constructions. The results of this study showed an effect of group in reaction times,

but no interaction of group with sentence type in either accuracy or reaction times. The lack of a

greater effect of syntactic complexity in patients relative to controls has been reported previously

for comprehension of active and passive sentences when patients with mild aphasia are

compared to controls (Dick et al., 2001; Caplan, Waters, DeDe, Michaud, & Reddy, 2007).

The highly significant correlation between the effect of movement in

transitive/intransitive unaccusative and active/passive sentences points to the importance of a

common mechanism in determining comprehension of these two sentence types. The leading

candidate for such a mechanism is some aspect of the comprehension of thematic roles presented

in non-canonical order (in generative grammar, the consequence of syntactic movement). The

fact that this effect was found in control participants as well as patients with aphasia strongly

suggests that it reflects the processing demands of these sentences, not an aphasia-specific deficit

in processing certain structures. As noted above, the patients tested here did not have an

agrammatic or Broca’s type of aphasia; it is possible that disturbances affecting comprehension

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of these sentences arise for different reasons in the present patients than in those with

agrammatic or Broca’s aphasia.

Finally, no relationship was found between the effect of argument structure on action

naming and the effect of movement on comprehension, nor was there a significant correlation

between the effect of argument structure on sentence production and the effect of movement on

comprehension. This is consistent with the view that these factors largely affect these tasks in

different ways.

In summary, across all tasks, unaccusative verbs were associated with decreased

performance relative to non-movement constructions. In naming and sentence-picture matching

tasks, however, this difference was present in age-matched controls as well as participants with

aphasia. Thus, the results of this experiment did not point to an aphasia-specific deficit in the

representation or processing of movement chains. Instead, they supported the hypothesis that

deficits in aphasic comprehension and production are at least in part a reflection of reduced

processing capacity. The difficulties seen with unaccusative verbs affected all tasks, but they

were not correlated across tasks. This suggests that the effects of unaccusativity differ in the

separate contexts of action naming, sentence production, and sentence comprehension. More

work is needed to understand the mechanisms that underlie the effects of a verb expressing a

non-canonical thematic structure across these various tasks. Finally, this study involved only a

limited sample of patients characterized mostly by mild, fluent aphasia, whereas claims about

movement deficits are generally specific to agrammatic aphasia. It may be the case that more

severely affected patients, or patients with a particular type of aphasia such as agrammatism,

have specific deficits affecting these structures. There is thus a need to extend the investigation

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to a larger sample of patients to determine whether any individuals with aphasia might exhibit

across-task deficits in the representation of movement.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by a grant from NIDCD (DC 00942) to David Caplan.

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Table 1. Patient Data

Pt. Age Sex

Handedness

Education (years)

Years Post-

Stroke Etiology Classification

FN 37 M R 16 1 LH CVA Mild/Fluent RH 57 F R 19 14 LH CVA Mild/Fluent JA 74 M R 14 2 LH CVA Mild/Fluent MG 93 M R 18 6 LH CVA Mild/Fluent

LO 55 F R 12 1 LH CVA

Mild-moderate cognitive-linguistic deficits with relatively intact comprehension

CP 43 M R 12 29 LH CVA Mild/Fluent LK 50 M L 16 6 RH CVA Mild/Nonfluent CB 69 F R 18 6 LH CVA Mild/Fluent

HV 80 F R 16 4 LH CVA

Initial diagnosis Broca’s/nonfluent, resolved to mild/ fluent production

BD 56 M R 17 8.5 LH CVA Moderate fluent with moderately impaired comprehension

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Table 2. Results (Mean accuracy/RT; standard deviation in parentheses)

A. Single-Word Naming, Percent Correct Responses

Unaccusative Unergative

Control 86 (35) 94 (24)

Patient 63 (49) 80 (40)

B. Sentence Production, Percent Correct Responses

Unaccusative Unergative

Control 96 (21) 97 (18)

Patient 83 (38) 96 (21)

C. Sentence-Picture Matching, Percent Correct Responses

Intransitive

Unaccusative

Transitive

Unaccusative Passive Active

Control 92 (27) 98 (13) 96 (19) 98 (13)

Patient 86 (35) 99 (10) 92 (27) 98 (15)

D. Sentence-Picture Matching, RT (msec)

Intransitive

Unaccusative

Transitive

Unaccusative Passive Active

Control 2089 (1735) 1468 (1066) 1531 (1112) 1492 (1112)

Patient 3596 (2889) 2684 (2594) 2953 (2746) 3235 (3320)

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Figure Captions

Figure 1: Sample Picture Stimuli

Figure 1A. Stimuli used in picture-naming and sentence production tasks

Figure 1B. Stimuli used in sentence-picture matching task: Unaccusative

Figure 1C. Stimuli used in sentence-picture matching task: Active-Passive

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Figure 1.

A.

B.

C.

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Appendix A. Target Verbs for Production Tasks

Unaccusative Unergative

1. bounce 1. cry

2. burn 2. jump

3. break 3. laugh

4. melt 4. run

5. explode 5. pray

6. float 6. sit

7. crash 7. sneeze

8. roll 8. swim

9. sink 9. crawl

10. tear 10. wink

11. wilt

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Appendix B. Sentence-Picture Matching Stimuli

Intransitive Unaccusative Transitive Unaccusative

1. The man is collapsing. 1. The man is collapsing the blocks.

2. The girl is shaking. 2. The girl is shaking the juice.

3. The man is hanging. 3. The man is hanging the towel.

4. The boy is choking. 4. The boy is choking the girl.

5. The girl is bouncing. 5. The girl is bouncing the ball.

6. The boy is floating. 6. The boy is floating the boat.

7. The dog is rolling. 7. The dog is rolling the ball.

8. The robot is breaking. 8. The robot is breaking the vase.

9. The tank is exploding. 9. The tank is exploding the building.

10. The robot is melting. 10. The robot is melting the spaceship.

11. The robot is cracking. 11. The robot is cracking the vase.

12. The pirate ship is sinking. 12. The pirate ship is sinking the little boat.

13. The monkey is dangling. 13. The monkey is dangling the banana.

14. The woman is suffocating. 14. The woman is suffocating the man.

15. The alien is vaporizing. 15. The alien is vaporizing the spaceman.

16. The alien is freezing. 16. The alien is freezing the spaceman.

17. The woman is stretching. 17. The woman is stretching the towel.

18. The man is drowning. 18. The man is drowning the rat.

19. The man is bending. 19. The man is bending the bar.

20. The girl is spinning. 20. The girl is spinning the top.

21. The boy is swinging. 21. The boy is swinging the stick.

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Simple Transitive Active Simple Transitive Passive

1. The father is squeezing the girl. 1. The father is being squeezed by the girl.

2. The boy is biting the girl. 2. The boy is being bitten by the girl.

3. The boy is kicking the horse. 3. The boy is being kicked by the horse.

4. The grandmother is kissing the boy. 4. The grandmother is being kissed by the boy.

5. The child is hugging the mother. 5. The child is being hugged by the mother.

6. The boy is pinching the teacher. 6. The boy is being pinched by the teacher.

7. The policeman is hitting the thief. 7. The policeman is being hit by the thief.

8. The boy is scratching the girl. 8. The boy is being scratched by the girl.

9. The girl is tickling the father. 9. The girl is being tickled by the father.

10. The man is pushing the woman. 10. The man is being pushed by the woman.

11. The girl is following the cat. 11. The girl is being followed by the cat.

12. The girl is tapping the mother. 12. The girl is being tapped by the mother.

13. The boy is punching the girl. 13. The boy is being punched by the girl.

14. The teacher is poking the girl. 14. The teacher is being poked by the girl.

15. The girl is tripping the boy. 15. The girl is being tripped by the boy.

16. The man is tackling the boy. 16. The man is being tackled by the boy.

17. The boy is chasing the dog. 17. The boy is being chased by the dog.

18. The mother is touching the baby. 18. The mother is being touched by the baby.

19. The boy is pulling the grandfather. 19. The boy is being pulled by the grandfather.

20. The girl is teasing the boy. 20. The girl is being teased by the boy.

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Appendix C. Scoring Codes for Single-Word Naming

Categories receiving a score of 0 (no credit) shaded gray. Response Type Code Description Example

Target Word TW Target word in an acceptable form.

jump jump, jumping, jumped

Target Word—Participial TWP Target word in an

unambiguously participial form. break broken

Target Word—Sentence TWS Target word in a phrase or

sentence context. crawling baby is

crawling

Acceptable Substitution AS

Substitution that shares the structure of the target and is

judged semantically appropriate. wilting drooping

Structure-Preserving

Substitution SPS

Substitution that does not change the structure of the target but is

not judged semantically appropriate.

crying trying

Structure-Changing

Substitution SCS

Substitution that does not match the target verb syntax,

independent of semantic content. floating playing

No Action Word NoAct

Participant does not produce a verb as a response. Includes

inappropriate use of a noun with verbal morphology.

crashing accident burning firing

Gesture or Nonword

Vocalization Ges Participant substitutes a gesture

or sound effect for target verb. laughing ha ha ha

Circumlocution Circ Participant expresses the

semantic content of the target in a multi-word circumlocution.

bounce She’s throwing it down and it comes up in the air

Frozen form Froz Target is produced in the context of a fixed/idiomatic phrase

breaking Broken Arrow (movie title)

No Response NR Participant attempts to respond but fails.

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Appendix D. Scoring Codes for Sentence Production

Categories receiving a score of 0 (no credit) shaded gray. Response Type Code Description Example Target Response

Target Sentence TS All obligatory arguments present in target order. swim U The girl is

swimming.

Target Sentence—Participle/Gerund/

Nominal Form TSP

Participial, nominal or gerund form of target with preserved theta structure.

rip I

The kite was ripped from landing in the tree. (JA)

No verb/incorrect nominalization of

target verb. Nom

Gives no evidence of knowledge of target verb’s

thematic structure. break I

The breaking is from the trees. (BD)

Valency increase, added subject V+S

Intransitive pictorial context described with non-

depicted subject. break I

Someone broke a branch. (LO)

Valency increase, added object V+O Direct object used where

intransitive expected. wink U The man winked his left eye. (KL)

Valency decrease, subject omission V-SO Subject omission in

violation of theta criterion. bounce T Bounce the ball. (BD)

Valency decrease, object omission V-OO Object omission in

violation of theta criterion. float T The man is floating. (LK)

Valency decrease, unexpressed obj. V-UO Object omission without

theta violation. crash T The man crashed into the tree.(CP)

Valency decrease, PP substitution. V-PP Direct object is realized

incorrectly as PP. explode T We exploded from the school. (BD)

PP selection error PP Verb occurs with non-subcategorized PP. burn I The books burned

into the fire. (CP)

Inverted Subject InvS Subject appears in postverbal position. burn I Burning up

papers. (LO)

Nontarget theta-role assignment Theta Inappropriate θ-assignment

for verb or picture. rip I The kite was ripping through the trees. (CB)

Frozen form Froz Target appears in fixed or idiomatic phrase. fall IN The sun also

rises. (CB)

Fragment Frag Response cannot stand as a matrix clause. crawl U

Cute little baby crawling along. (LO)

Agreement or tense error Agr/T Error in agreement or tense

morphology. jump U The boy jump over the wall.(RH)

Other grammatical error Other Any grammatical error not

explicitly coded. cry U Girl is crying. (HV)

Lexical Retrieval LR Omission or inappropriate

substitution of NP arguments depicted.

melt I

The man melted the 3-pronged not pronged the uh... (RH)

33