Abstract
For this study, sentence comprehension was tested in Swahili–English bilingual agrammatic speakers. The sentences were controlled for four factors: (1) order of the arguments (base vs. derived); (2) embedding (declarative vs. relative sentences); (3) overt use of the relative pronoun “who”; (4) language (English and Swahili). Two theories were tested: the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH; [Grodzinsky, Y. (1995). A restrictive theory of agrammatic comprehension. Brain and Language, 50, 27–51]) that assumes a representational deficit in agrammatic aphasia and the Derived Order Problem Hypothesis (DOP-H; Bastiaanse & Van Zonneveld, 2005), which is a processing account. Both theories have the same predictions for sentences in derived order. The difference is that the TDH predicts chance level performance for sentences in which the arguments are not in base order, whereas the DOP-H predicts poorer performance when processing demands increase. The results show that word order influences performance, in that sentences in which the arguments are in derived order are harder to comprehend than sentences in which the arguments are in base order. However, there is a significant interaction with the factor “embedding”: sentences with an embedding are harder to comprehend than simple declaratives and this influence is larger in derived order sentences. There is no effect of language nor of the use of a relative pronoun. These results are correctly accounted for by the DOP-H.
Highlights
Individuals with agrammatic Broca’s aphasia are generally assumed to produce slow and effortful speech, with short phrases consisting of mainly content words, and to have a relatively intact language comprehension ability
The present study examined the comprehension of sentences with base and derived order of the arguments with and without embedding by bilingual agrammatic individuals
The results show that sentences in the derived order condition are more difficult to comprehend than those in base order and that there is an interaction effect for embedding
Summary
Individuals with agrammatic Broca’s aphasia are generally assumed to produce slow and effortful speech, with short phrases consisting of mainly content words, and to have a relatively intact language comprehension ability. According to Ashton (1982), Swahili, like many other Bantu languages, is a highly agglutinating and mostly prefixing language with a fairly fixed base word order (subject/ agent–verb–object/theme: SVO), where the agent precedes the verb and the theme (see 1a and b). The second illustration (1b) is a subject relative clause, the agent and theme maintain the base order. Sentences with derived order of the arguments, such as passives (subject/theme–verb–prepositional phrase/agent), object relatives (object/theme– subject/agent–verb) with and without complimentizer are possible. These we call “derived order sentences.” In derived order sentences, the arguments are no longer in their base positions as exemplified in (2a and b)
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