Explore the vast range of titles available.

Introduction Recent studies on agrammatic aphasia by Fyndanis et al. (2012, 2017) reported evidence against the cross-linguistic validity of unitary accounts of agrammatic morphosyntactic impairment, such as the Distributed Morphology Hypothesis (DMH) (Wang et al., 2014), the two versions of the Interpretable Features’ Impairment Hypothesis (IFIH-1: Fyndanis et al., 2012; IFIH-2: Fyndanis et al., 2018b), and the Tree Pruning Hypothesis (TPH) (Friedmann & Grodzinsky, 1997). However, some of the features/factors emphasized by the accounts above (i.e. involvement of inflectional alternations (DMH), involvement of integration processes (IFIH-1), involvement of both integration processes and inflectional alternations (IFIH-2), position of a morphosyntactic feature/category in the syntactic hierarchy (TPH)) may still play a role in agrammatic morphosyntactic production. These features may act in synergy with other factors in determining the way in which morphosyntactic production is impaired across persons with agrammatic aphasia (PWA) and across languages. Relevant factors may include language-independent and language-specific properties of morphosyntactic categories, as well as subject-specific and task/material-specific variables. The present study addresses which factors determine verb-related morphosyntactic production in PWA and what is their relative importance. Methods We collapsed the datasets of the 24 Greek-, German-, and Italian-speaking PWA underlying Fyndanis et al.’s (2017) study, added the data of two more Greek-speaking PWA, and employed machine learning algorithms to analyze the data. The unified dataset consisted of data on subject-verb agreement, time reference (past reference, future reference), grammatical mood (indicative, subjunctive), and polarity (affirmatives, negatives). All items/conditions were represented as clusters of theoretically motivated features: ±involvement of integration processes, ±involvement of inflectional alternations, ±involvement of both integration processes and inflectional alternations, and low/middle/high position in the syntactic hierarchy. We included 14 subject-specific, category-specific and task/material-specific predictors: Verbal Working Memory (WM), (years of formal) Education, Age, Gender, Mean Length of Utterance in (semi)spontaneous speech (Index 1 of severity of agrammatism), Proportion of Grammatical Sentences in (semi)spontaneous speech (Index 2 of severity of agrammatism), Words per Minute in (semi)spontaneous speech (Index of fluency), Involvement of inflectional alternations, Involvement of integration processes, Involvement of both integration processes and inflectional alternations, Position of a given morphosyntactic category in the syntactic hierarchy (high, middle, low), Item Presentation mode (cross-modal, auditory), Response mode (oral, written), and Language (Greek, German, Italian). Different machine learning models were employed: Random Forest, C5.0 decision tree, RPart, and Support Vector Machine. Results & Discussion Random Forest model outperformed all the other models achieving the highest accuracy (0.786). As shown in Figure 1, the best predictors of accuracy on tasks tapping morphosyntactic production were the involvement of both integration processes and inflectional alternations (categories involving both integration processes and inflectional alternations were more impaired than categories involving one or neither of them), verbal WM capacity (the greater the WM capacity, the better the morphosyntactic production), and severity of agrammatism (the more severe the agrammatism, the worse the morphosyntactic production). Results are consistent with IFIH-2 (Fyndanis et al., 2018b) and studies highlighting the role of verbal WM in morphosyntactic production (e.g., Fyndanis et al., 2018a; Kok et al., 2007).

Time reference, which has been found to be selectively impaired in agrammatic aphasia (e.g., Bastiaanse et al., 2011), is often interwoven with grammatical aspect. Dragoy and Bastiaanse (2013) investigated the relationship between time reference/tense and aspect focusing on Russian aphasia and found that the two interact: past reference was less impaired when tested within perfective aspect (compared to when tested within imperfective aspect), and reference to the nonpast was less impaired when tested within imperfective aspect (compared to when tested within perfective aspect). To account for this pattern, Dragoy and Bastiaanse (2013: 114) claimed that “perfectives primarily refer to completed, past events while imperfectives prototypically describe ongoing, non-past events”. This study explores the relationship between time reference and aspect focusing on Greek aphasia. In Greek, verb forms referring to the past and future encode the perfective-imperfective contrast. Dragoy and Bastiaanse (2013) would make predictions PR1–PR4 for Greek. (PR1) past reference within perfective aspect > past reference within imperfective aspect; (PR2) future reference within perfective aspect < future reference within imperfective aspect; (PR3) perfective aspect within past reference > imperfective aspect within past reference; (PR4) perfective aspect within future reference < imperfective aspect within future reference. Methods Eight Greek-speaking persons with agrammatic aphasia (PWA) and eight controls were administered a sentence completion task consisting of 128 experimental source sentence (SS)-target sentence (TS) pairs. There were eight subconditions, each of which consisted of 16 items: past reference within perfective aspect; past reference within imperfective aspect; future reference within perfective aspect; future reference within imperfective aspect; perfective aspect within past reference; imperfective aspect within past reference; perfective aspect within future reference; imperfective aspect within future reference. Participants were auditorily presented with a SS and the beginning of the TS, and were asked to orally complete the TS producing the missing Verb Phrase. We fitted generalized linear mixed-effect models and employed Fisher’s exact tests to make within-participant comparisons. Results Overall, the aphasic group fared significantly worse than the control group (p < 0.001). At the group level, none of the four relevant comparisons (see PR1–PR4) yielded significant differences for PWA (Table 1). Four PWA (P1, P3, P7, P8) exhibited dissociations, with three of them making up a double dissociation: P1 performed better on imperfective aspect-future reference than on perfective aspect-future reference (p < 0.001), and P7 and P8 exhibited the opposite pattern (p = 0.016 and p < 0.001 for P7 and P8, respectively). Discussion Results are not consistent with Dragoy and Bastiaanse’s (2013) findings, which challenges the idea of prototypical and non-prototypical associations between time reference and aspect. The double dissociation that emerged in the aspect condition indicates that a given time reference-aspect combination may be relatively easy to process for some PWA but demanding for some others. Thus, studies investigating tense/time reference in aphasia should ensure that this grammatical/semantic category is not confounded by aspect.

Significant variability in the language performance of children with cochlear implant (CI) is widely recognized in the literature, particularly concerning morphosyntactic (MS) skills. The perceptual limitations of the CI, which can lead to phonological difficulties, may be responsible for this increased vulnerability in grammatical abilities. In this context, the present study focuses on the morphophonemic processing of items distinguished by nasal and oral vowels in the French language - the feature of vowel nasality being known as challenging for the CI population. Links between these performances with chronological/auditory ages and phonological and grammatical production skills will also be explored. Nineteen children with CIs and 47 children with typical hearing (TH) were assessed for phonological skills through a picture-naming task, perceptual skills through a task involving the sentence/word-picture matching task with word target containing nasal vs. oral vowels, and morphosyntactic production skills through narrative productions. Various measures of linguistic complexity [Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), verbs/utterances (V/U)] and lexical diversity (D index) were evaluated among our groups and linked to perceptual and productive phonological performances. Chronological and auditory ages as well as phonological accuracy and vocabulary levels as been studied as covariates. Children with CIs displayed significantly lower morphosyntactic (MS) performance compared to peers with TH of the same chronological age, particularly in measures such as MLU in morphemes, complexity of function words, and processing of morphemes carried by nasal and oral vowels. However, when controlling for auditory age or phonological/lexical levels, these differences were no longer significant, suggesting a potential for compensation when similar auditory or linguistic experiences are achieved. Despite this, CI users showed distinct patterns of function word use, with fewer complex forms and more frequent errors, likely reflecting the perceptual challenges linked to CI. Additionally, a specific strong relationship between MS skills and phonological accuracy was observed in the CI group, potentially accounting for the marked inter-individual variability in MS development. The perceptual limitations of the CI have a significant impact on the linguistic development of children with CI and contribute to the widely documented variability in performance.

The current study investigated the contribution of multiple verbal and working memory (WM) skills to morphosyntactic prediction in Turkish-speaking 4- to 8-year-old children. In a visual world eye-tracking experiment, 76 children were presented with verb-final sentences with nominative and accusative case markers on the initial noun (e.g., the fast rabbitnominative … the carrotaccusative eatfuture vs. the fast rabbitaccusative … the foxnominative eatfuture) while they were looking at a visual display with three objects (e.g., rabbit, carrot, and fox). Importantly, the case markers on the initial noun could be used to predict the second noun in these sentences. The results revealed that when children’s early productive vocabulary and language production skills were higher, the better and faster they were in predicting the upcoming noun. The episodic buffer, a component of WM, was also positively associated with children’s morphosyntactic prediction abilities. The implications of these results for the mechanisms of linguistic prediction are discussed.

The present study examined elicited written English as a foreign language (EFL) narratives produced by 6th grade Hebrew and Arabic speakers in their 4th year of learning EFL. We examined the use of correct verb morphology and morphosyntactic structures, in relation to supporting L1/EFL skills. Fifty-eight pupils (29 Arabic speakers) participated in this study. Assessment tasks included Hebrew and Arabic (L1) morphological awareness (MA), EFL vocabulary, MA and reading comprehension (RC). Arabic speakers were also tested in second language (L2) Hebrew MA. English written narratives were coded for total words, verbs, nouns, correct and complex sentences, and use of verb morphology (past tense, present progressive, 3rd person singular, copula) in obligatory context. Both groups found 3rd person singular the most challenging, despite between group differences in EFL proficiency. Neither group showed crosslinguistic transfer of MA from L1 to EFL, however, Arabic speakers showed strong associations between HMA and EMA, suggesting possible indirect crosslinguistic influence. Hebrew speakers had strongest associations between EFL RC and MA with all aspects of EFL morphosyntactic use, while Arabic speakers relied on English MA for all aspects of correct morphosyntactic production. Regression analyses showed Hebrew speakers relied solely on English RC for verb and sentence production, whereas Arabic speakers drew on English MA. Results have theoretical and practical implications regarding typological considerations in cross-linguistic transfer, as well as point to specific difficulties and patterns in acquisition of EFL morphosyntax among speakers of Semitic languages, highlighting the role of L1 and EFL contributors to EFL written output.

The current study investigates cross-linguistic influence of second language (L2) learning on native language (L1) processing of morphosyntactic variation in proficient L2 learners immersed in their L1. Despite Spanish pre- and postverbal clitic pronoun positions being grammatical in complex verb phrases, preferences of use have been well attested in naturalistic language production. To examine whether those preferences obtain for comprehension in monolinguals, as well as how those preferences might be modulated by learning an L2 with fixed pronoun positions, we administered a self-paced reading experiment to 20 Spanish monolinguals as well as 22 proficient learners English (L1 Spanish). The results of a Bayesian mixed effects regression analysis suggest that preferences in production are echoed in comprehension—but only for the monolingual group. We find support for facilitation in the bilingual group precisely where both languages overlap, as well as evidence that bilinguals may not use clitic position as a reliable cue at all. We interpret the results as evidence that learning an L2 that lacks variation for a particular feature may lead to reduced sensitivity to that feature as a cue in an analogous L1 structure. We situate these results in an experience-based, shared-syntax account of language processing.

Horizontale sowie vertikale Variation adnominaler Possessivkonstruktionen in ländlichen Gebieten Österreichs werden im vorliegenden Beitrag auf Basis eines Korpus bestehend aus „freieren“ und „kontrollierteren“ Daten untersucht. Wie erwartet, zeigt sich, dass die Wahl der Konstruktionsvarianten maßgeblich durch sprachinterne sowie sprachexterne Parameter gesteuert wird. Unter anderem erweisen sich Substantivklasse, Situation sowie Region als entscheidende Faktoren für die Variation. This paper investigates horizontal as well as vertical variation of adnominal possessive constructions in rural areas in Austria. The analyses are based on a corpus consisting of (more) “free” and (more) “controlled” data. As expected, intra- as well as extralinguistic parameters control the choice of construction variants. Among other factors, the nominal realisation of the possessor, the situational context and the region turn out to be decisive factors of variation.

Horizontale sowie vertikale Variation adnominaler Possessivkonstruktionen in ländlichen Gebieten Österreichs werden im vorliegenden Beitrag auf Basis eines Korpus bestehend aus „freieren“ und „kontrollierteren“ Daten untersucht. Wie erwartet, zeigt sich, dass die Wahl der Konstruktionsvarianten maßgeblich durch sprachinterne sowie sprachexterne Parameter gesteuert wird. Unter anderem erweisen sich Substantivklasse, Situation sowie Region als entscheidende Faktoren für die Variation. This paper investigates horizontal as well as vertical variation of adnominal possessive constructions in rural areas in Austria. The analyses are based on a corpus consisting of (more) “free” and (more) “controlled” data. As expected, intra- as well as extralinguistic parameters control the choice of construction variants. Among other factors, the nominal realisation of the possessor, the situational context and the region turn out to be decisive factors of variation.

Purpose: The authors set out to determine (a) whether African American children's spontaneous spoken language met use criteria for a revised minimal competence core with original and added morphosyntactic patterns at different geographical locations, and (b) whether pass/fail status on this core was differentiated on other criterion measures of language maturity. Method: The authors used a common set of activities and stimuli to elicit spontaneous speech samples from Head Start students, age 3;0 (years; months). The 119 participants were distributed at a northern (Lansing, MI) and a southern (Baton Rouge, LA) location. Results: More than 80% of the children at each location met criteria for 10 core competencies. They included sentence length, type, complexity, and morphosyntactic elaborations of sentences at the lexical, phrasal, and clausal levels. The 2 most significant predictors of pass/fail outcomes in a regression analysis were (a) clinical referral status and (b) the number of different words (NDW[subscript 100]) spoken in a speech sample. Conclusion: A minimal competence core analyses of spontaneous oral language samples may help to identify delayed spoken grammars in African American children. (Contains 8 tables.)

Purpose: Prior work (Guo, Owen, & Tomblin, 2010) has shown that at the group level, auxiliary \"is\" production by young English-speaking children was symmetrical across lexical noun and pronominal subjects. Individual data did not uniformly reflect these patterns. On the basis of the framework of the gradual morphosyntactic learning (GML) hypothesis, the authors tested whether the addition of a theoretically motivated developmental measure, tense productivity (TP), could assist in explaining these individual differences. Method: Using archival data from 20 children between age 2;8 and 3;4 (years;months), the authors tested the ability of 3 developmental measures (TP; finite verb morphology composite, FVMC; mean length of utterance, MLU) to predict use of auxiliary \"is\" with different subject types. Results: TP, but not MLU or FVMC, significantly improved model fit. Children with low TP scores produced auxiliary \"is\" more accurately with pronominal subjects than with lexical subjects. The facilitative effect of pronominal subjects on the production of auxiliary \"is,\" however, was not found in children with high TP scores. Conclusion: The finding that the effect of subject types on the production accuracy of auxiliary \"is\" changed with children's TP is consistent with the GML hypothesis.