1. Disorders of Syntax and Morphology
Ling 411 – 08
Disorders of Syntax and Morphology
Goodglass 1993: Chapter 6

2. Major Language Areas Supramarginal gyrus (Goldstein’s area)
Angular gyrus
(Geschwinds’s area)
Wernicke’s area
Exner’s area
Broca’s area
Superior parietal lobule

3. Agrammatism Usually associated with Broca’s aphasia
Generally present in Broca’s aphasia
But other aphasics also have grammatical dysfunctions
Paragrammatism – common in Wernicke aphasia
A lot of variation among different patients

4. Agrammatism vs. Paragrammatism
Paragrammatism – too much speech
Normal or excessive fluency
Use of inappropriate words
Neologisms
No lack of function words and inflections
But not always used appropriately
Common in Wernicke’s aphasia
Agrammatism – not enough speech
Lack of fluency
Omission (NOT deletion!) of function words and inflections
Common in Broca’s aphasia

5. Omission vs. Deletion Goodglass (106):
Sentences with a deleted main verb (“Joan and I Coffee”) may continue to appear.
. . . misuse or deletions of morphology . . .
Is he talking about deletion or omission?
Deletion implies that it was first there, and then removed
Omission – it wasn’t put in at all
Goodglass is following a practice that was common among linguists at the time he wrote the book

6. Broca’s Aphasia Damage to frontal lobe Largely intact comprehension
Mainly, inferior frontal gyrus
Largely intact comprehension
Nonfluent, agrammatic speech
“Telegraphic speech” –
Abundance of content words (e.g., nouns)
Lack of function words (e.g. prepositions)
Impaired verb processing
Bates, Chen, Tzeng, Li & Opie, 1991; Damasio & Tranel, 1993; Daniele, Giustolisi, Silveri, Colosimo & Gainotti, 1994; Lamb & Zhang, 2010; Shapiro & Caramazza, 2003

7. Verbal short-term memory deficit (in Broca aphasia)
Patients can readily point to individual objects or body parts named by the examiner
But when asked to point to the same items in a specific sequence they often fail at the level of only two or three items
Benson & Ardila 124
How to explain?

8. Subtypes of Broca aphasia
Type I
A.k.a. little Broca aphasia
Milder defects
Less extensive damage
Better prognosis
Type II
Symptoms worse
More extensive damage
These are not distinct, but variations
Two spans along a scale

9. Agrammatism: an early observation (1819)
Deleuze (1819), referring to a French-speaking patient: The patient “used exclusively the infinitive of verbs and used no pronouns. … She produced absolutely no conjugated verb.”
Goodglass 1993: 104

10. Example of agrammatic speech
Examiner: Can you tell me about why you came back to the hospital?
Patient: yes … eh … Monday … eh … dad … Peter Hogan and dad … hospital.
Er … two … er … doctors … and … er … thirty minutes … and ... er … yes … hospital. And … er … Wednesday … Wednesday. Nine o’clock. And … er … Thursday, ten o’clock … doctors … two … two … doctors… and … er … teeth … fine.
E: Not exactly your teeth … your g-
P: Gum … gum …
E: What did they do to them?
P: And er … doctor and girl … and er … and er gum …
Goodglass 1993: 107

11. Some features of agrammatism
Telegraphic speech
Short utterances
Omission of grammatical functors
Relative abundance of substantives
Verbs are uncommon, rare in some patients
When present, uninflected or –ing form
For French aphasics, infinitive form
Use of word order is generally spared
Comprehension is impaired for complex sentences

12. Problems in the study of agrammatism
Must be distinguished from paragrammatism
Grammatical aberrations – even among Broca aphasics – vary from patient to patient
Linguistics has not (yet) provided clear answers to important basic questions:
What normal grammatical functions are
How they operate

13. Syntax
First, we need to dispel the notion that syntax is one capacity, that can be lost (or spared) as a unit
Syntax can be understood as a set of constructions
Learned by children (and others) one by one
Like vocabulary
Some can be lost, others spared, in aphasia
It is a label of the grammarian for multiple things
Word order is often spared in Broca’s aphasia while a lot of syntax is lost

14. Stability of word order in agrammatism
Agrammatic patients can usually handle word order in both production and comprehension
Evidence (comprehension)
passive sentences misconstrued
The horse was kicked by the dog
Broca’s aphasic: horse as kicker
Passive marker not apprehended
Canonical word order guides the interpretation
Possibly aided by conceptual knowledge

15. Reading and writing in agrammatism
Agrammatic difficulties are also seen in
Oral reading
Writing to dictation
Repetition
But:
Some patients are agrammatic in speech but not in writing (Goodglass 1993: 110)
Some can repeat correctly
How to explain?
Menn & Obler (1990) describe some patients who are less agrammatic in oral reading than in spontaneous speech (Goodglass 1993:111)

16. Variation among agrammatics (Goodglass 1993:107)
Syntax and morphology (study of agrammatic French aphasics)
Some patients have fairly good syntax but defective morphology
Some patients have fairly good morphology but defective syntax
Both types of patients fail to use inflected verb forms
Gleason et al. observations (1975)
Some patients use –s plural marker but not articles
Other patients use articles but not –s plural marker

17. Loss of the use of relational markers in receptive agrammatism (118)
E.g. father’s sister
Ex: Is “my father’s sister” a man or a woman?
Patient answers randomly
Unable to grasp the relational function of –’s
Command given in testing:
Ex: Touch the comb with the pencil
Patient may touch the pencil with the comb
Perhaps picks up comb because the word comb comes first in the instruction
Locative relations somewhat less fragile
in back of/in front of, over/under, before/after

18. Linguistic structure in the cortex: What we learn from agrammatism
Agrammatism is generally associated with Broca’s aphasia
Therefore, the grammatical skills lost in Broca’s aphasia must be supported at least in part by either
Broca’s area, or
Area(s) adjacent to Broca’s area
In other words: There must be something in or near Broca’s area that is essential for correct grammatical production
And grammatical comprehension –
Receptive agrammatism

19. Receptive processing in Broca’s aphasia?
Problem:
Broca’s area is in frontal lobe
Frontal lobe is supposed to be for motor production
Motor production is top-down processing
Receptive functions involve bottom-up processing
Comprehension involves sensory processing
in frontal lobe?
Bottom-up (receptive) processing in frontal lobe?

20. Receptive agrammatism in Broca’s aphasia Two avenues to explanation
The role of short-term memory, and Broca’s area in short-term memory
Maybe the frontal lobe can have receptive function
To explore this possibility we must first examine the phenomenon of imagery

21. For perspective, A related problem: Imagery
Types of sensory imagery
Visual
Auditory
Somatosensory
Cf. Motor imagery

22. Visual Imagery Visual images of people, buildings, etc.
What is a visual image?
What does it consist of?
Is it a little picture?
If so, where are the eyes to see it?
What is it drawn on?
Where is the visual perception system to interpret it?
If not, what?

23. Auditory Imagery Auditory images of words, music, etc.
We can hear things in our heads
What is an auditory image?
What does it consist of?
Sound?
There is no air inside the head to vibrate
What hears it?
Little ears inside the head?

24. How Imagery Operates
It’s unlikely that visual imagery uses some mechanism independent of that for vision
Therefore, it must use (some of) the same neural connections used in perception
For visual imagery, pathways in the occipital lobe
For auditory imagery, pathways in the temporal lobe
For tactile imagery, pathways in the parietal lobe
Imagery is activation of some of the same neural pathways that get activated upon receiving input from sense organs

25. Anatomical consequences
Consequences of imaging explanation
Top-down processing in perceptual areas
Perceptual pathways must have parallel pathways of opposite direction
Why are imagined scenes less vivid than those resulting from input to the eyes?

26. Bidirectional Processing
Imagery requires top-down processing
Using pathways that typically operate bottom-up
Therefore, perceptual pathways must generally be bidirectional
Anatomical evidence supports the hypothesis
Reciprocal pairs of cortico-cortical axons

27. Bidirectional Connections
Most corticocortical connections are
bidirectional
An established finding from neuroanatomy
It’s not because the connecting nerve
fibers (axons) are themselves bidirectional
It’s because we find different but roughly
parallel fibers going in opposite directions

28. Bidirectional Processing in Frontal Lobe?
Frontal lobe processing: typically top-down
But there is a large amount of uniformity in cortical structure
Hypothesis: Bottom-up processing also in frontal lobe
From perceptual (i.e. posterior) areas to locations in frontal lobe
We already have seen evidence: the arcuate fasciculus

29. Bidirectional connections in frontal lobe
Would explain how Broca’s area is involved in receptive grammatical processing
Would account for the finding that interpretation of prepositions and verbs is a frontal lobe function
Finding from the study of agrammatism

30. Attempts to explain agrammatism
Many theories have been proposed
Cf. Goodglass 1993:111ff
Some intriguing ideas
Loss of relational use of words (Jakobson, Luria)
Difficulty with markers of such relationships
Impairment of inner speech (Luria)
Hence, impairment of auditory working memory
Difficulty with unstressed words (Goodglass, Kean)
Substantive words are commonly stressed
Functors are generally unstressed

31. Caution in interpreting
Agrammatism may not be just one phenomenon
Syntax is not one structure but several
All agrammatics and probably all Broca’s aphasics are deficient in use of verbs
Other phenomena of agrammatism show more variability
The problem (or part of the problem) may not be grammar as such:
Short-term memory – the inner speech loop
Phonology: stressed vs. unstressed words

32. Phonological factors Function words are (in general) unstressed
Maybe the difficulty is in production of unstressed words
Intriguing finding of Goodglass et al.
Function words
May be produced after a stressed word
But almost never produced initially
Production starts with stressed word
Even with repetition
Open the door > Open the door
The door is open > Door is open

33. More evidence on relational markers (119f)
Grammatical particles that do not mark relations are exempt from omission
and
Japanese clause-final particles
Emphatic yo
Question marker ka
Confirmation-seeking particle ne
Verbs always have a syntactic implication
I.e. relationship to one or more nouns
Menn & Obler: Impairment affecting grammatical elements that mark relationships within the sentence

34. Nouns and Verbs: Back Brain & Front Brain (?)
“A Neurolinguistic Universal” –E. Bates
Verb deficit in Broca’s aphasia
Noun deficit in Wernicke’s aphasia
Suggests that
Verbs are represented in frontal lobe
Nouns are represented in or near temporal lobe – angular gyrus and/or supramarginal gyrus) and/or middle temporal gyrus
Supports what we derive from the proximity principle

35. Proceed with Caution!
We already know that a noun or a verb has a complex cortical representation
Therefore it is not in a single location
Rather, a functional web
So what are we talking about?
The cardinal node of the functional web of a noun
The cardinal node of the functional web of a verb

36. A patient with non-fluent aphasia
Patient ROX (McCarthy & Warrington 1985)
Impaired production and comprehension of verbs
Excellent production and comprehension of nouns
Had no difficulty imitating common actions
But had difficulty in performing same actions in response to verbal commands
E.g., confused open and close
In action-naming test, sometimes substituted nouns for verbs or omitted verbs:
“chairing” for sitting
“The man is a sack of potatoes” for a man carrying a sack of potatoes

37. Verb deficit and agrammatism: Why?
Syntactic hypothesis
Verbs are by their nature syntactically complex
Nouns are not complex – they can stand alone
Semantic hypothesis – using proximity
Verbs represent processes and processes are managed by the frontal lobe
Nouns represent things, and things are known mainly through perception, which is managed by the occipital, temporal, and parietal lobes

38. Noun-Verb vis-à-vis Speech & Writing (908b)
Patient S.J.D.
Written naming of verbs defective
But oral naming okay
Nouns okay for both writing and speaking
Patient H.W.
Oral naming of verbs defective
But written naming okay
Comparable results independently of mode of stimulus – picture naming, reading, writing to dictation
(More, next slide..)

39. Inputs: pictures, oral dictation, reading
More on H.W. & S.J.D. Noun-Verb vis-à-vis Speech-Writing (Rapp & Caramazza 908-9)
Inputs: pictures, oral dictation, reading
Tasks: (1) speaking, (2) writing
Example:
There’s a crack in the mirror (crack as n.)
Don’t crack the mirror (crack as v.)
S.J.D.
crack as n. correctly produced, both modalities
crack as v. correct only in spoken modality
H.W. – the opposite modality effect
Data from Caramazza & Hillis (1991)

40. Broca’s Area: A closer look

41. Subdivisions of Broca’s area
Broca’s area includes two different (but adjacent) Brodmann areas
BA 44 – Pars Opercularis
BA 45 – Pars Triangularis
(Some people also include the Pars orbitalis, just inferior to the pars triangularis)

42. Frontal Operculum Operculum: little cover
The part of the frontal lobe that covers (part of) the Sylvian fissure and anterior insula
Adjacent to and inside the anterior portion of Sylvian fissure
Opposite it (across Sylvian fissure) in temporal lobe is the temporal operculum

43. Subdivisions of Broca’s area
Another view

44. Major Language Areas Supramarginal gyrus (Goldstein’s area)
Angular gyrus
(Geschwinds’s area)
Wernicke’s area
Broca’s area
Superior parietal lobule
Brodmann area 37

45. Left hemi-sphere, showing middle cerebral artery
Frontal
Operculum

46. A closer look at Broca’s aphasia
Broca’s original patient
Lesion was extensive
Not just Broca’s area but also
Adjacent areas
Subjacent white matter
A tradition has followed Broca
Broca’s area held responsible for symptoms of Broca’s aphasia
Confounding factor:
Broca’s area is only part of the area of damage with Broca’s aphasia

47. More recent findings Modern imaging methods help
Some patients have damage restricted mainly or entirely to just Broca’s area
They have less severe symptoms that typically associated with Broca’s aphasia
Influential paper: Alexander et al. 1990
Examined Broca patients with different areas of damage
Cast doubts on importance of Broca’s area in Broca’s aphasia

48. Broca’s area and Broca aphasia
Maybe it’s not just Broca’s area damage that is responsible for some of the symptoms of “Broca’s aphasia”
Maybe some of them result instead from damage to neighboring areas
Alexander et al. (1990) propose distinguishing 3 subtypes

49. Three subtypes in Alexander study
Impaired speech initiation
Symptom traditionally attributed to transcortical motor aphasia
Area of damage: frontal operculum
Disturbed articulatory function
Area of damage: lower primary motor cortex
The classical Broca’s aphasia syndrome
More extensive damage

50. To be continued …
(Later)

51. end