Syntactic comprehension in aphasia. An evaluation test with relative clauses in Spanish

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Syntactic comprehension in aphasia. An evaluation test with relative clauses in Spanish María E. Sánchez1*, Analí Taboh1, Martin Fuchs2, Juan P. Barreyro3, 4 and Virginia Jaichenco1 1 University of Buenos Aires, Linguistics Institute, Argentina 2 Yale University, Department of Linguistics, United States 3 University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Psychology, Argentina 4 CONICET, Argentina This work aimed to try out an instrument that can detect the sentences comprehension deficits by manipulating two types of structures with relative clauses (subject and object) in Spanish. We compare the performance between aphasic patients and their controls using a binary sentence–picture matching task. The type of structure was manipulated: El oso que patea al perro es azul [The bear that kicks the dog is blue] (subject relative clause) vs. El oso al que patea el perro es azul [The bear that the dog kicks is blue] (object relative clause). The test was administered to 151 native Spanish speakers, of 3 age groups and 3 different schooling levels, and a group of 5 aphasic patients. The results showed that in the control group there is a strong interaction between the type of sentence and the level of schooling, with more errors in the sentences with a relative object as the level of schooling decreases. Aphasic patients, as a group, did not differ from the lowest schooling groups in subject relative clauses, but did diverge from all groups in object relative clauses. Within the group of patients, we found that three patients (AG, RD and RR) did not differ from their control group in subject relative clauses, but in object relative clauses. Contrary, a patient (OV) differs significantly from their control group in the two structures, that is, it is worse in both object and subject relative clauses (although in the case of object clause, their performance is much worse). Finally, RC patient does not differ significantly in any of the two structures with their control group. The data allow establishing differences between patients with and without syntactic alterations. First, the data allow us to discuss how schooling affects the processing of these two structures in Spanish in subjects without language impairment. In addition, the evidence shows that agrammatic aphasic patients clearly have difficulties to assign the thematic roles to non-canonical structures, and this test is sensitive to detect them. References del Río, D., López-Higes, R., & Martín-Aragoneses, M. T. (2012). Canonical word order and interference-based integration costs during sentence comprehension: The case of Spanish subject and object relative clauses. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 2108–2128 Friedmann, N. (2008). Traceless relatives: Agrammatic comprehension of relative clauses with resumptive pronouns. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 21(2), 138-149. Garraffa, M. & Grillo, N. (2008). Canonicity effects as grammatical phenomena. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 21, 177-197. Grodzinsky, Y. (1989). Agrammatic comprehension of relative clauses. Brain and Language, 37, 480–499. Keywords: sentence comprehension, relative clauses, Evaluation, agrammatism, neurolinguistics Conference: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017. Presentation Type: poster presentation Topic: General Submission Citation: Sánchez ME, Taboh A, Fuchs M, Barreyro JP and Jaichenco V (2019). Syntactic comprehension in aphasia. An evaluation test with relative clauses in Spanish. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00071 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 27 Apr 2017; Published Online: 25 Jan 2019. * Correspondence: PhD. María E Sánchez, University of Buenos Aires, Linguistics Institute, Buenos Aires, Argentina, mariaelinasanchez@yahoo.com.ar Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers María E Sánchez Analí Taboh Martin Fuchs Juan P Barreyro Virginia Jaichenco Google María E Sánchez Analí Taboh Martin Fuchs Juan P Barreyro Virginia Jaichenco Google Scholar María E Sánchez Analí Taboh Martin Fuchs Juan P Barreyro Virginia Jaichenco PubMed María E Sánchez Analí Taboh Martin Fuchs Juan P Barreyro Virginia Jaichenco Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.