Vicky Nanousi, Arhonto Terzi Technological Educational Institute of W. Greece, Patras

Workshop on Advances in the Sciences of Language Disorders

University of Cyprus, June 19-20, 2015.

Passive Sentences in agrammatism:The case of Greek

1. Background

Individuals with agrammatic aphasia are known to suffer from a deficit regarding sentences with non-canonical word order. Reversible verbal passives constitute a much studied subset of them.

A prominent account of the deficit is known as the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH), proposed by Grodzinsky (1990, 1995, 2000).

TDHIn passives, the trace of the moved element is

deleted. As a result, the two cannot relate and the moved DP cannot be interpreted as a patient. It is interpreted as an agent via a non-grammar strategy.

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The boy was pushed <the boy> by the girl. #

But:Passives are not impaired in all languages in agrammatism.Impaired: English, Spanish, HebrewNot impaired: German, Dutch.Directionality of th-assignment (Grodzinsky 2006).

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Directionality of th-assignmentEnglish, Spanish, Hebrew: to the right (VO languages)German, Dutch: to the left (OV languages)

The boy was pushed <the boy> by the girl. √ German, Dutch

* English, Spanish, Hebrew

Greek: a VO languagePassives understudied in agrammatismPassives develop late in children's grammar (Terzi et al. 2014, a.o.)

Relative sentences

The same rationale for aphasic performance on relative clauses.

Trace of moved DP is deleted, affecting object relatives, (1), but not subject relatives (2). The latter are interpreted successfully via a non-grammatical mechanism.

(1) The boy that the girl pushed <the boy>.(2) The boy that <the boy> pushed the girl Recently the above facts are explained via

Relativized Minimality (Grillo 2005, 2009 via Rizzi, 1990 et seq.).

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In (1) the moved element, the boy, has no Q features in agrammatism, and crosses another element of the same type, the girl.

In (2) nothing intervenes between the moved element and its trace.

(1) The boy that the girl pushed <the boy>.(2) The boy that <the boy> pushed the girl

Sameness of intervening features is claimed to cause trouble in children too (Belletti et al. 2012).

Gender is such a feature (in languages that it is responsible for movement).

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2. The current study

The languageGreek is a VO language.

Passives are formed via the use of verbal inflection rather than the an auxiliary.

(1) I Maria sproxnete.the Mary push-nonact-3s‘Mary is pushed.’

(2) Ta pedia timorunde.the children punish-nonact-3p‘The children are punished.’

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Same morphology for middle and reflexive verbs.

MiddleAfto to vivlio diavazete efkola.this the book read-nonact-3s easily'This book reads easily.'

ReflexiveO Kostas ksirizetethe Kostas shave-nonact-3s 'Kostas shaves himself.'

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The participants a. Broca’s aphasics

b. 10 healthy controls. 2 per each aphasic, matched on age, education, gender.

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  Age

Educ.

Gender

MLU Noun-verbRatio

P1 48 12 M 1,6 1,5

P3 56 12 M -- --

P5 51 10 M 1,8 1,5

P4 65 12 M 1,9 1,25

P5 71 9 M 1,6 1,4

The tasks

1. A Past Tense (Reference) elicitation task A Sentence completion task 51 sentences/verbs. 18 sentences contained real regular verbs (Varlokosta & Koutsoubari 2006, w. minor modifications)

2. A clitics production task A picture task 10 sentences/clitics (and corresponding pictures) 4 masculine, 3 feminine, 3 neuter (Chondrogianni et al. 2010)

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Results (1) Accuracy scores

Also: Tense Reference: a few Agreement errors Clitic Production: a few Gender errors11

  Tense Reference

Clitic Production

P1 100% 80%

P3 78% 50%

P5 87,5% 60%

P4 65% 30%

P5 83,5% 50%

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The Passive tasksPassive Task 1: Short Passives

A picture-matching task consisting of 36 sentences. Tested passive and reflexive verbs, along with

Binding of pronouns and anaphors. 6 sentences with short passives, i.e., passive

sentences without the by-phrase. An example:

(3) O Giorgos sproxnete the George is-pushed ‘George is pushed.’

The same protocol was employed by Terzi et al. (2014) in an acquisition study. Typical 6:06 year-old children gave 75% correct responses on passive sentences.

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Results (2) Short Passives

All participants performed at ceiling.Participants from both groups commented that

the test was easy.Reminder: Typically developing 6;06 children

performed 75% correctly on passives.

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Passive Task 2: Long Passives

A picture-matching task consisting of 96 sentences.Tested actives and long passives, i.e., passives with

the by-phrase. It also tested subject relatives and object relatives. There were 24 sentences in each condition., i.e., 24

long passives, An example:

(4) Edo o gabros fotografizete apo tin giagia. here the groom is-photographed by the grandmother ‘Here the groom is photographed by the grandmother.’15

3. Results

Long Passives Task

Active sentencesBoth groups, aphasics and healthy controls

performed at ceiling.

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Results (cont.) - Long Passives

Accuracy scores 

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 Agrammatics

Correct Controls Correct

P1 21/24 C1 (2) 47/48

P3 22/24 C2 (2) 48/48

P5 21/24 C3 (2) 48/48

P4 23/24 C4 (2) 46/48

P5 21/24 C5 (2) 46/48

Total 108/120(90%)

Total 235/240(98%)

Results (cont.)Previous findings

Fyndanis (2012)1 agrammatic: 94% correct performance on both

actives and passives

Fyndanis et al. (2013)2 agrammatics: 39% and 50% correct performance

on passives but: 56% and 70% correct performance

on actives

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4. Conclusions - Discussion

It most probably follows that passive sentences do not constitute a selective deficit for Greek-speaking individuals with Broca’s aphasia.

Although the performance of Broca's aphasics on passives is not as good as on the corresponding actives, it is by no means impaired.

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What cannot account for this behavior?

Dirctionality of th-role assignment (Grodzinsky 2006)

No, because Greek is a VO language

Lower parts of the tree are not impaired (only higher are)

(Friedmann 2005)

No, because the Infl area, i.e., the T projection is not good.

The manner in which Greek forms passives?21

Appendix - Relatives clauses

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  Subject RelativesSame gender

Subject RelativesDiffer. gender

ObjectRelativesSame gender

Object RelativesDiffer. Gender

P1 2 0 9 1

P2 1 0 5 2

P3 0 0 5 4

P4 4 1 7 4

P5 4 1 7 7

Total 11 2 33 18

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Selected References

Caramazza, A. et al. 2005. Patterns of comprehension performance in agrammatic Broca's aphasia: A test of the Trace Deletion Hypothesis. Brain and Language 94: 43-53.

Friedmann, N. 2005. Degrees of severity and recovery in aphasia: climbing up the tree. Brain and Language 19: 1037-1051.

Grodzinsky, Y. 1990. Theoretical perspectives on language deficits. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Grodzinsky, Y. 2006. A blueprint for a brain map of syntax. In Y. Grodzinsky & K. Amunts (eds.), Broca’s Region, Oxford University Press.

Fyndanis, V. 2012. Comprehension in Greek-speaking agrammatism: a case study. In Z. Gavriilidou et al. (eds.), Proceedings of ICGL10, 265-274.

Fyndanis, V. et al. 2013. Morphosyntactic comprehension in agrammatic aphasia: Evidence from Greek. Aphasiology 27: 398-419.

Terzi, A. et al. 2014. Grammatical Abilities of Greek-Speaking Children with Autism. Language Acquisition, 21: 4-44.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund - ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program "Education and Lifelong Learning" of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) - Research Funding Program: ARCHIMEDES III. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund.

Project Title: The structure of (a)typical language:

linguistic theory and intervention

PI: Arhonto Terzi

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