Agrammatism
Encyclopedia
Agrammatism is a form of expressive aphasia
that refers to the inability to speak in a grammatically
correct fashion. People with agrammatism may have telegraphic speech
, a unique speech pattern with simplified formation of sentences
(in which many or all function word
s are omitted), akin to that found in telegraph messages. Deficits in agrammaticism are often language-specific, however—in other words, "agrammaticism" in speakers of one language may present differently than in speakers of another.
Errors made in agrammatism depend on the severity of aphasia. In severe forms language production is severely telegraphic and in more mild to moderate cases necessary elements for sentence construction are missing. Common errors include errors in tense, number, and gender. Patients also find it very hard to produce sentences involving "movement" of elements, such as passive sentences, Wh questions or complex sentences.
Agrammatism is seen in many brain
disease syndromes, including Broca's aphasia and traumatic brain injury
.
and inflectional morpheme
s, all of these generating a speech production with extremely rudimentary grammar. Agrammatism, today seen as a symptom of the Broca's syndrome (Tesak & Code, 2008), has been also referred as 'motor aphasia
' (Goldstein, 1948), 'syntactic aphasia' (Wepman & Jones, 1964), 'efferent motor aphasia' (Luria, 1970), and 'non-fluent aphasia' (Goodglass et al., 1964).
The early accounts of agrammatism involved cases of German
and French
participants. The greater sophistication of the German school of aphasiology at the turn of the 20th century and also the fact that both German and French are highly inflected languages, might have been triggers for that situation (Code, 1991). Nowadays, the image has slightly changed: grammatical impairment has been found to be selective rather than complete, and a cross-linguistic perspective under the framework of Universal Grammar
(UG) together with a shift from morphosyntax to morphosemantics is à la page. Now the focus of study in agrammatism embraces all natural languages and the idiosyncrasies scholars think a specific language has are put in relation to other languages so as to better understand agrammatism, help its treatment, and review and advance in the field of theoretical linguistics
.
From a cross-linguistic perspective under the framework of Universal Grammar (UG), grammatical impairment in agrammatism has been found to be selective rather than complete. Under this line of thought, the impairment in tense production for agrammatic speakers is currently being approached in different natural languages by means of the study of verb inflection for tense in contrast to agreement (a morphosyntactic approach) and also, more recently, by means of the study of time reference (which, in a sense, should be seen closer to morphosemantics). The type of studies this paper should be related with are those dealing with tense impairment under the framework of time reference. Prior to explaining that, to help understand the goals of such research, it is good to give a taste of the shift from morphosyntax to morphosemantics the study of agrammatism is undergoing.
for tense has been found to be problematic in several languages. Different scholars have come up with different theories to explain it: Friedman & Grodzinksy (1997) introduced the so-called Tree Pruning Hypothesis (TPH) from the study of Hebrew, Arabic, and English
; the same hypothesis has been proved by Gavarró & Martínez-Ferreiro (2007) for what they called Ibero-Romance (that is, Catalan
, Galician
, and Castillian); Wenzlaff & Clahsen (2004; 2005) introduced the Tense Underespecification Hypothesis (TUH) for German, and by the same time Bruchert et al. (2005) introduced the Tense and Agreement Underespecification Hypothesis (TAUH) for the same language; and Lee et al. (2008), and Faroqi-Shah & Dickey (2009) introduced a morphosemantic hypothesis, arguing that the diacritic
tense features are affected in English agrammatism.
Interestingly enough, Bastiaanse (2008) did not find such dissociation for Dutch
but rather that reference to the past is more impaired regardless of verb inflection or agreement. Her research found that finite verb
s are more difficult than non-finite verb
s, but both within the finite verbs and within the nonfinite verbs, the forms referring to the past (third person singular past tense and participle respectively) are more difficult than their counterparts referring to the present (third person singular present tense and infinitives). None of the hypotheses on verb forms aforementioned (TPH, TUH, and TAUH) can account for these results, ever since participles in Dutch are not inflected for tense and agreement nor do they check their features in the left periphery. Similar findings have been also reported for Greek and for English respectively in a re-analysis of Nanousi et al.'s (2006) and Lee et al.'s (2008) data, and also for Turkish
in Yarbay, Duman & Bastiaanse (2009). In any case, the conclusion of Bastiaanse (2008) was that an additional hypothesis expressing that agrammatic speakers have difficulty making reference to the past was needed. In that same paper she unveiled two possible answers: (a) it could be that representations of events in the past are semantically more complex, possibly because there are two time periods of relevance. (b) It might also be the case that it is not so much reference to the past as such that is difficult for agrammatic speakers, but to express this reference by verb inflection.
Probably Bastiaanse et al. (subm.) hold the key. In their study, one reads that both tense and aspect are impaired and, most importantly, that reference to the past is selectively impaired both through simple verb forms (such as simple present in English) and through periphrastic
verb forms (such as the present perfect in English). Bastiaanse et al. (subm.) argued that reference to the past is discourse linked and reference to the present and future is not. This is in line with Avrutin (2000) who suggests discourse linking is impaired in Broca’s aphasia.
The notion of discourse linking is originally due to Pesetsky (1987) and should be seen in regard to discourse presupposition which is a basic notion in linguistics and, more concretely, in semantics and pragmatics (for further information: Stalnaker, 1973). To the extent it involves language, discourse linking should be seen in contrast to a local binding relation. A clear example of a binding relation can be found in a sentence like 'The boyi is washing himselfi' where the pronoun 'himself' refers to 'the boy' within the same sentence. An example of discourse linking is found in a sentence like 'The boyi is washing himj' where the pronoun 'him' refers to someone not mentioned in the sentence (it is extra-sentential information) and, therefore, for the pronoun to be understood there is a requirement to access to previously provided information. Similar examples of such relations can be found in which-questions and, with relevance to this study, in tense and agreement. Avrutin (2000) argued that agreement is a purely morphosyntactic system, with no discourse operations involved and, therefore, it establishes a binding relation whereas tense requires access to the discourse representation and, therefore, it establishes a discourse linking relation. Zagona (2003) reasoned that present tense indicates simultaneity between evaluation time and event time (binding relation). Past tense, on the other hand, lacks this simultaneity and indicates a need for establishing a relation between speech time and an earlier event (discourse linking).
Although Bastiaanse's et al. (subm.) conclusions are not as broad as Avruitin's (2000) and do not strictly look at tense but at time reference, they are supported by several findings: Bastiaanse et al., (2009) and Faroqi-Shah & Dickey (2009) found more problems with verb forms and aspectual adverbs referring to the past in agrammatic aphasic individuals; Jonkers et al., (2007) and Faroqi-Shah & Dickey (2009) reflected longer RTs in non-brain-damaged
individuals; and Dragoy et al. (in preparation) are about to present an ERP and an RT experiment of tense violations in Dutch where they have found higher error rates and longer reaction times for the violations by a past tense verb in contrast with present tense.
Bastiaanse et al. (subm.), formulated the PAst DIscourse LInking Hypothesis (PADILIH) with the aim of testing three predictions: (1) selective impairment of grammatical morphology is used for reference to the past, while reference to the present and future are relatively spared (2) this impairment is language–independent; (3) this impairment will occur in both production and comprehension. In order to do so, their research puts into practice the Test for Assessing Reference of Time (TART; Bastiaanse et al., unpub.) in Chinese, English and Turkish agrammatic speakers. The results demonstrate that both English and Turkish agrammatic speakers show the hypothesized selective deficit for reference to the past, despite the great typological
difference between the languages. The Chinese agrammatic speakers are poor in producing reference to the past as well by producing grammatical morphology, but reference to the present and future are also severely affected. The results on the subtest for comprehension are strikingly similar for the three languages: reference to the past is impaired. These results confirm the PADILIH: reference to the past is discourse linked and, therefore, grammatical morphology used for reference to the past is impaired in agrammatic aphasia, whether this is done through tense and / or aspect markers.
The most updated studies should be found in the work of Martínez-Ferreiro (2009). The work of Martínez-Ferreiro is under the so-called Tree Pruning Hypothesis (TPH) Friedmann & Grodzinksy (2007). Such a hypothesis is somewhat lagging behind after the findings in Bastiaanse (2008) have been and are being proved by means of a re-analysis of Nanousi et al.'s (2006) and Lee et al.'s (2008) data, the work of Yarbay Duman & Bastiaanse (2009) and, specially, Bastiaanse et al. (subm.).
Other rather updated work for Agrammatism in Catalan should be found in Martínez-Ferreiro in collaboration with Gavarró (2007), in Gavarró herself (2008, 2003a, 2003b, 2002), Balaguer et al. (2004),in Peña-Casanova et al. (2001), and in Sánchez-Casas (2001).
Aphasia
Aphasia is an impairment of language ability. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write....
that refers to the inability to speak in a grammatically
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
correct fashion. People with agrammatism may have telegraphic speech
Telegraphic speech
Telegraphic speech, according to linguistics and psychology, is speech during the two-word stage of language acquisition in children, which is laconic and efficient....
, a unique speech pattern with simplified formation of sentences
Sentences
The Four Books of Sentences is a book of theology written by Peter Lombard in the twelfth century. It is a systematic compilation of theology, written around 1150; it derives its name from the sententiae or authoritative statements on biblical passages that it gathered together.-Origin and...
(in which many or all function word
Function word
Function words are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker...
s are omitted), akin to that found in telegraph messages. Deficits in agrammaticism are often language-specific, however—in other words, "agrammaticism" in speakers of one language may present differently than in speakers of another.
Errors made in agrammatism depend on the severity of aphasia. In severe forms language production is severely telegraphic and in more mild to moderate cases necessary elements for sentence construction are missing. Common errors include errors in tense, number, and gender. Patients also find it very hard to produce sentences involving "movement" of elements, such as passive sentences, Wh questions or complex sentences.
Agrammatism is seen in many brain
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
disease syndromes, including Broca's aphasia and traumatic brain injury
Traumatic brain injury
Traumatic brain injury , also known as intracranial injury, occurs when an external force traumatically injures the brain. TBI can be classified based on severity, mechanism , or other features...
.
Early History
Agrammatism was first coined by Adolf Kussmaul in 1887 to explain the inability to form words grammatically and to syntactically order them into a sentence. Later on, Goodglass defined the term as the omission of connective words, -auxiliariesAuxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
and inflectional morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s, all of these generating a speech production with extremely rudimentary grammar. Agrammatism, today seen as a symptom of the Broca's syndrome (Tesak & Code, 2008), has been also referred as 'motor aphasia
Aphasia
Aphasia is an impairment of language ability. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write....
' (Goldstein, 1948), 'syntactic aphasia' (Wepman & Jones, 1964), 'efferent motor aphasia' (Luria, 1970), and 'non-fluent aphasia' (Goodglass et al., 1964).
The early accounts of agrammatism involved cases of German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
participants. The greater sophistication of the German school of aphasiology at the turn of the 20th century and also the fact that both German and French are highly inflected languages, might have been triggers for that situation (Code, 1991). Nowadays, the image has slightly changed: grammatical impairment has been found to be selective rather than complete, and a cross-linguistic perspective under the framework of Universal Grammar
Universal grammar
Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have.Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and manifest themselves without being taught...
(UG) together with a shift from morphosyntax to morphosemantics is à la page. Now the focus of study in agrammatism embraces all natural languages and the idiosyncrasies scholars think a specific language has are put in relation to other languages so as to better understand agrammatism, help its treatment, and review and advance in the field of theoretical linguistics
Theoretical linguistics
Theoretical linguistics is the branch of linguistics that is most concerned with developing models of linguistic knowledge. The fields that are generally considered the core of theoretical linguistics are syntax, phonology, morphology, and semantics...
.
From a cross-linguistic perspective under the framework of Universal Grammar (UG), grammatical impairment in agrammatism has been found to be selective rather than complete. Under this line of thought, the impairment in tense production for agrammatic speakers is currently being approached in different natural languages by means of the study of verb inflection for tense in contrast to agreement (a morphosyntactic approach) and also, more recently, by means of the study of time reference (which, in a sense, should be seen closer to morphosemantics). The type of studies this paper should be related with are those dealing with tense impairment under the framework of time reference. Prior to explaining that, to help understand the goals of such research, it is good to give a taste of the shift from morphosyntax to morphosemantics the study of agrammatism is undergoing.
Verb Inflection
Verb inflectionInflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
for tense has been found to be problematic in several languages. Different scholars have come up with different theories to explain it: Friedman & Grodzinksy (1997) introduced the so-called Tree Pruning Hypothesis (TPH) from the study of Hebrew, Arabic, and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
; the same hypothesis has been proved by Gavarró & Martínez-Ferreiro (2007) for what they called Ibero-Romance (that is, Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, Galician
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
, and Castillian); Wenzlaff & Clahsen (2004; 2005) introduced the Tense Underespecification Hypothesis (TUH) for German, and by the same time Bruchert et al. (2005) introduced the Tense and Agreement Underespecification Hypothesis (TAUH) for the same language; and Lee et al. (2008), and Faroqi-Shah & Dickey (2009) introduced a morphosemantic hypothesis, arguing that the diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
tense features are affected in English agrammatism.
Interestingly enough, Bastiaanse (2008) did not find such dissociation for Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
but rather that reference to the past is more impaired regardless of verb inflection or agreement. Her research found that finite verb
Finite verb
A finite verb is a verb that is inflected for person and for tense according to the rules and categories of the languages in which it occurs. Finite verbs can form independent clauses, which can stand on their own as complete sentences....
s are more difficult than non-finite verb
Non-finite verb
In linguistics, a non-finite verb is a verb form that is not limited by a subject and, more generally, is not fully inflected by categories that are marked inflectionally in language, such as tense, aspect, mood, number, gender, and person...
s, but both within the finite verbs and within the nonfinite verbs, the forms referring to the past (third person singular past tense and participle respectively) are more difficult than their counterparts referring to the present (third person singular present tense and infinitives). None of the hypotheses on verb forms aforementioned (TPH, TUH, and TAUH) can account for these results, ever since participles in Dutch are not inflected for tense and agreement nor do they check their features in the left periphery. Similar findings have been also reported for Greek and for English respectively in a re-analysis of Nanousi et al.'s (2006) and Lee et al.'s (2008) data, and also for Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
in Yarbay, Duman & Bastiaanse (2009). In any case, the conclusion of Bastiaanse (2008) was that an additional hypothesis expressing that agrammatic speakers have difficulty making reference to the past was needed. In that same paper she unveiled two possible answers: (a) it could be that representations of events in the past are semantically more complex, possibly because there are two time periods of relevance. (b) It might also be the case that it is not so much reference to the past as such that is difficult for agrammatic speakers, but to express this reference by verb inflection.
Probably Bastiaanse et al. (subm.) hold the key. In their study, one reads that both tense and aspect are impaired and, most importantly, that reference to the past is selectively impaired both through simple verb forms (such as simple present in English) and through periphrastic
Periphrasis
In linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or grammatical relationship is expressed by a free morpheme , instead of being shown by inflection or derivation...
verb forms (such as the present perfect in English). Bastiaanse et al. (subm.) argued that reference to the past is discourse linked and reference to the present and future is not. This is in line with Avrutin (2000) who suggests discourse linking is impaired in Broca’s aphasia.
The notion of discourse linking is originally due to Pesetsky (1987) and should be seen in regard to discourse presupposition which is a basic notion in linguistics and, more concretely, in semantics and pragmatics (for further information: Stalnaker, 1973). To the extent it involves language, discourse linking should be seen in contrast to a local binding relation. A clear example of a binding relation can be found in a sentence like 'The boyi is washing himselfi' where the pronoun 'himself' refers to 'the boy' within the same sentence. An example of discourse linking is found in a sentence like 'The boyi is washing himj' where the pronoun 'him' refers to someone not mentioned in the sentence (it is extra-sentential information) and, therefore, for the pronoun to be understood there is a requirement to access to previously provided information. Similar examples of such relations can be found in which-questions and, with relevance to this study, in tense and agreement. Avrutin (2000) argued that agreement is a purely morphosyntactic system, with no discourse operations involved and, therefore, it establishes a binding relation whereas tense requires access to the discourse representation and, therefore, it establishes a discourse linking relation. Zagona (2003) reasoned that present tense indicates simultaneity between evaluation time and event time (binding relation). Past tense, on the other hand, lacks this simultaneity and indicates a need for establishing a relation between speech time and an earlier event (discourse linking).
Although Bastiaanse's et al. (subm.) conclusions are not as broad as Avruitin's (2000) and do not strictly look at tense but at time reference, they are supported by several findings: Bastiaanse et al., (2009) and Faroqi-Shah & Dickey (2009) found more problems with verb forms and aspectual adverbs referring to the past in agrammatic aphasic individuals; Jonkers et al., (2007) and Faroqi-Shah & Dickey (2009) reflected longer RTs in non-brain-damaged
Brain damage
"Brain damage" or "brain injury" is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors...
individuals; and Dragoy et al. (in preparation) are about to present an ERP and an RT experiment of tense violations in Dutch where they have found higher error rates and longer reaction times for the violations by a past tense verb in contrast with present tense.
Bastiaanse et al. (subm.), formulated the PAst DIscourse LInking Hypothesis (PADILIH) with the aim of testing three predictions: (1) selective impairment of grammatical morphology is used for reference to the past, while reference to the present and future are relatively spared (2) this impairment is language–independent; (3) this impairment will occur in both production and comprehension. In order to do so, their research puts into practice the Test for Assessing Reference of Time (TART; Bastiaanse et al., unpub.) in Chinese, English and Turkish agrammatic speakers. The results demonstrate that both English and Turkish agrammatic speakers show the hypothesized selective deficit for reference to the past, despite the great typological
Linguistic typology
Linguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the common properties and the structural diversity of the world's languages...
difference between the languages. The Chinese agrammatic speakers are poor in producing reference to the past as well by producing grammatical morphology, but reference to the present and future are also severely affected. The results on the subtest for comprehension are strikingly similar for the three languages: reference to the past is impaired. These results confirm the PADILIH: reference to the past is discourse linked and, therefore, grammatical morphology used for reference to the past is impaired in agrammatic aphasia, whether this is done through tense and / or aspect markers.
Agrammatism in Catalan
There is little written about Agrammatism in Catalan. The beginnings of the field should be encountered in the work of Peña-Casanova & Bagunyà-Durich (1998), and Junque et al. (1989). These papers do not describe case reports, they are rather concerned in more general topics such as lesion localization or rehabilitation of agrammatic patients.The most updated studies should be found in the work of Martínez-Ferreiro (2009). The work of Martínez-Ferreiro is under the so-called Tree Pruning Hypothesis (TPH) Friedmann & Grodzinksy (2007). Such a hypothesis is somewhat lagging behind after the findings in Bastiaanse (2008) have been and are being proved by means of a re-analysis of Nanousi et al.'s (2006) and Lee et al.'s (2008) data, the work of Yarbay Duman & Bastiaanse (2009) and, specially, Bastiaanse et al. (subm.).
Other rather updated work for Agrammatism in Catalan should be found in Martínez-Ferreiro in collaboration with Gavarró (2007), in Gavarró herself (2008, 2003a, 2003b, 2002), Balaguer et al. (2004),in Peña-Casanova et al. (2001), and in Sánchez-Casas (2001).