Instrumental Verbs Research Articles

Action naming deficits in Parkinson’s disease: the role of semantic complexity

ABSTRACT Background Previous studies have suggested that individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have difficulty retrieving verbs and nouns. Among the factors that have been proposed to contribute to this verb retrieval difficulty is the semantic properties of the verbs. Aims The aim of this study was to investigate the verb and noun naming abilities in Greek speaking individuals with PD. Furthermore, the effect of semantic complexity on verb retrieval ability was explored. Specifically, two verb categories were investigated mainly, instrumental verbs as semantically heavy and non-instrumental verbs that are considered semantically light verbs. Methods and Procedures Participants were 24 non-demented individuals with PD matched for age and education with 15 healthy control participants. Word retrieval abilities for nouns and verbs were evaluated using the Greek Object and Action Test (GOAT), a picture-based assessment of single word retrieval. Outcomes and Results The results revealed that participants with PD performed significantly worse on naming verbs and nouns compared to healthy controls. Specifically, the PD group had a greater difficulty in retrieving verbs compared to nouns. In addition, a positive effect of instrumentality on verb retrieval abilities was observed. Conclusion The results of this study suggest that semantic complexity may play a critical role in verb retrieval abilities in PD. Furthermore, verbs related to upper limb movement with the inclusion of instrumental verbs may have a facilitatory effect on lexical retrieval. This finding emphasizes the need for the inclusion of the evaluation of different verb categories for naming during the initial clinical assessment of cognitive-linguistic abilities of patients with PD.

Sequential production of motor-action verb subtypes in Parkinson's disease patients.

The aim of this study was to characterize the sequential production of three subtypes of MAVs in PD patients: whole body (e.g., run), specific body part (e.g., kick), and instrumental (e.g., saw). This study also aimed to identify the production characteristics for each of the two main phases in fluency performance: selection (initial abundant item production) and retrieval (more paced and scarce production). This study involved a group of 20 nondemented, on-medication PD patients, with an average age of 66.59 years (standard deviation = 4.13), and a comparison group (CG) of 20 normal elderly individuals, matched by years of education and controlled for cognitive performance and depression. Both groups performed a classical verb fluency task. Sequential word-by-word analyses were conducted. Significant differences were found at the initial production of whole-body MAVs and the overall production of instrumental verbs (both measures were lower in the PD group). A repeated-measures analysis of variance confirmed the linear CG performance and the quadratic PD performance. PD patients present altered production of whole-body and instrumental MAVs. This proposal for the semantic sequential analysis of motor verbs deserves further investigation, as a new methodology for the evaluation of fluency performance in motor-related disease.

Distinct neural mechanisms underlying conceptual knowledge of manner and instrument verbs

Studies on the organization of conceptual knowledge have examined categories of concrete nouns extensively. Less is known about the neural basis of verb categories suggested by linguistic theories. We used functional MRI to examine the differences between manner verbs, which encode information about the manner of an action, versus instrument verbs, which encode information about an object as part of their meaning. Using both visual and verbal stimuli and a combination of univariate and multivariate pattern analyses, our results show that accessing conceptual representations of instrument class involves brain regions typically associated with complex action and object perception, including the anterior inferior parietal cortex and occipito-temporal cortex. On the other hand, accessing conceptual representations of the manner class involves regions that are commonly associated with the processing of visual and biological motion, in the posterior superior temporal sulcus. These findings support the idea that the semantics of manner and instrument verbs are supported by distinct neural mechanisms.

Uma análise sintático-semântica para os verbos de limpeza do português brasileiro

Neste artigo, tomamos como objeto de estudo os verbos de limpeza do PB com o intuito de mostrarmos que esses verbos apresentam propriedades semânticas e comportamentos sintáticos diferentes dos verbos de remoção do PB. Para isso, analisamos, com base no quadro teórico-metodológico da Semântica Lexical, 14 verbos de limpeza. Ao final, chegamos aos resultados de que os verbos de limpeza possuem aspecto lexical de atividade; não acarretam resultado; possuem a grade temática {Agente, Paciente}; têm as seguintes estruturas em decomposição de predicados: [X AFFECTY], para os verbos de maneira, e [X AFFECTY], para os verbos de instrumento; podem ter uma leitura de remoção quando ocorrem na estrutura (SN1 (SN2 P SN3)) e aceitam a alternância locativa quando têm o sentido compatível com o de remoção.

Fishing is not wrestling: Neural underpinnings of the verb instrumentality effect

Abstract Previous clinical research has shown a positive effect of instrumentality on verb retrieval in individuals with aphasia. Performance on instrumental verbs incorporating an obligatory tool into their conceptual representation (e.g., to cut) is more accurate compared to non-instrumental verbs (e.g., to tear), possibly due to more specific conceptual representations of instrumental verbs. Seeking the neural correlates of the differences between instrumental and non-instrumental verbs, we conducted an fMRI study with 16 German speakers who performed a verb-object matching task with instrumental and non-instrumental verbs. We found that an extensive neural network including but not limited to frontal and temporal language-related areas was more involved in the semantic processing of non-instrumental compared to instrumental verbs. We argue that this reflects a greater load associated with the processing of less semantically structured/restricted representations of non-instrumental verbs. The unavailability of additional neural resources needed for the processing of non-instrumental verbs in individuals with aphasia may lead to better behavioral performance on instrumental than non-instrumental verbs.

Verb–noun dissociations in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: verb effects of semantic complexity and phonological relatedness

ABSTRACTBackground: The last two decades have afforded a small but steady rise in the number of studies exposing language dysfunctions in patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS), the most common form of multiple sclerosis however, not much is known about word class naming deficits in this group of individuals.Aim: To explore whether individuals with RRMS show word class naming deficits favouring either nouns or verbs, and if verb accuracy is affected by semantic and phonological verb type.Method: A total of 31 adults with RRMS were compared to 28 demographically matched healthy controls on noun and verb production using the Greek Object and Action Test (GOAT), a picture-based assessment developed for this purpose. Different semantic categories of verbs were investigated such as conceptually/semantically “heavy” verbs (i.e., instrumental verbs, e.g., “sweeping”) compared to conceptually/semantically “weaker” verbs (i.e., non-instrumental verbs (NIVs), e.g., “sleeping”) and instrumental verbs that were phonologically related to a noun (i.e., name-related instrumental verbs, e.g., “mopping”).Outcome & results: Verbs were significantly more difficult to retrieve than nouns for the RRMS group on production tasks compared to the demographic and intelligence matched healthy participants. Moreover, there was a significant difference between instrumental and NIV production with instrumental verbs more difficult to retrieve than NIVs. In regard to phonological relatedness, non-name-related instrumental verbs were significantly more difficult to retrieve than name-related instrumental verbs. Multiple regression analyses conducted as a separate model for verbs and nouns indicated that performance on the GOAT could not be explained by any of the predictor variables (demographic, clinical, or neurocognitive performance).Conclusion: Based on the results, the grammatical distinction for Greek verbs and nouns seems to be preserved in this group of individuals with RRMS. The naming deficit is probably in the connection between the semantic lexicon and the phonological lexicon. In the case of verbs, the magnitude of the difficulty was larger because of the effects of word frequency on verb retrieval. Overall, poor performance on verb and noun naming may be a marker of incipient cognitive decline, and typical cognitive-linguistic testing is not sensitive or specific enough to capture this phenomenon.

Using instruments to understand argument structure: Evidence for gradient representation

The arguments of a verb are commonly assumed to correspond to the event participants specified by the verb. That is, drink has two arguments because drink specifies two participants: someone who drinks and something that gets drunk. This correspondence does not appear to hold, however, in the case of instrumental participants, e.g. John drank the soda with a straw. Verbs such as slice and write have been argued to specify an instrumental participant, even though instruments do not pattern like arguments given other criteria. In this paper, we investigated how instrumental verbs are represented, testing the hypothesis that verbs such as slice encode three participants in the same way that dative verbs such as lend encode three participants. In two experiments English-speakers reported their judgments about the number of participants specified by a verb, e.g. that drink specifies two participants. These judgments indicate that slice does not encode three distinct arguments. Nonetheless, some verbs were systematically more likely to elicit the judgment that the instrument is specified by the verb, a pattern that held across individual subjects. To account for these findings, we propose that instruments are not independent verbal arguments but are represented in a gradient away: an instrument may be a more or less salient part of the force exerted by an agent. These results inform our understanding of the relationship between argument structure and event representation, raising questions concerning the role of arguments in language processing and learning.

The effects of instrumentality and name relation on action naming in Russian speakers with aphasia

Background: A verb’s instrumentality and name relation to an associated instrument noun are among the factors influencing verb retrieval in speakers with aphasia. Previous data on the effects of these factors are equivocal, possibly due to language- and task-specific factors.Aims: The present study aimed to investigate the nature of the instrumentality and verb-noun name relation effects by retesting them in a large sample of Russian-speaking individuals with fluent and non-fluent aphasia.Methods & Procedures: Forty Russian-speaking individuals with aphasia (twenty with fluent and twenty with non-fluent aphasia) and twenty controls performed an action naming task. Overall accuracy scores and qualitative error types were analysed.Outcomes & Results: A positive effect of instrumentality was found in both groups of individuals with aphasia. A negative effect of verb-noun name relation was found in non-fluent aphasia and was larger for verbs with a smaller overlap with the instrument noun. In both aphasia groups, semantically related errors were more numerous for non-instrumental than instrumental verbs, whereas phonological errors were more numerous for name-related than non-name-related instrumental verbs.Conclusions: The positive effect of instrumentality on verb retrieval may be attributed to a facilitatory effect of richer conceptual representations of instrumental verbs. The negative effect of name relation on verb retrieval may be explained by interference of the phonological form of the instrument noun. These factors influence verb retrieval in aphasia and should be taken into account when developing testing/treatment materials and stimuli for experimental studies.

Does verb type affect action naming in specific language impairment (SLI)? Evidence from instrumentality and name relation

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have particular problems using verbs. However, not much is known about how children with SLI retrieve different types of verbs. In the present study, bilectal Greek-speaking children with and without SLI were assessed on naming of different verbs held constant for argument structure but manipulated for lexical-semantic and phonological-lexical features. School-aged children with SLI as well as typically developing age- and vocabulary-matched peers named 39 colored photographs representing actions in a confrontation naming task. Stimuli included actions involving an instrument (e.g., sweeping), i.e. instrumental verbs, and actions that have a name-relation with the instrument (e.g., sawing), i.e. name-related instrumental verbs as well as actions not involving an instrument (e.g., climbing), i.e. non-instrumental verbs. Instrumental verbs were significantly more difficult to retrieve than non-instrumental verbs for children with SLI and typically language-developing controls. In contrast, instrumental verbs with a name relation to the noun were significantly easier to name than instrumental verbs without a name relation for all groups. Children with SLI performed on par with vocabulary-matched peers. The results based on error types suggest that the greater difficulties children with SLI have with action naming is lexical-semantic in nature. The findings indicate a need to examine the link between the verb naming deficit in SLI to structural and functional abnormalities in Broca's area. ► Semantically complex instrumental verbs (e.g., to sew) are harder to retrieve than non-instrumental verbs (e.g., to climb). ► Instrumental verbs with a name relation to the noun (e.g., to hammer (V)-hammer (N)) are the easiest to retrieve. ► The results support a non-grammatical breakdown in verb retrieval for children with SLI.

A common mechanism in verb and noun naming deficits in Alzheimer’s patients

We tested the ability of Alzheimer’s patients and elderly controls to name living and non-living nouns, and manner and instrument verbs. Patients’ error patterns and relative performance with different categories showed evidence of graceful degradation for both nouns and verbs, with particular domain-specific impairments for living nouns and instrument verbs. Our results support feature-based, semantic representations for nouns and verbs and support the role of inter-correlated features in noun impairment, and the role of noun knowledge in instrument verb impairment.

Vacuuming with my mouth?: Children's ability to comprehend novel extensions of familiar verbs

Can 6- and 8-year-olds (and adults) comprehend common instrument verbs when extended to novel situations? Participants heard eight unusual extensions of common verbs and were asked to paraphrase the verbs’ meanings. Half of the verbs used were specified instrument verbs that include the name of the instrument used to perform the action (e.g., a vacuum is used to vacuum); the other half were open instrument verbs (e.g., write) whose function can be performed with a range of objects. Results suggest that children's ability to interpret verb extensions increases with age, that open instrument verb extensions were more difficult to comprehend than specified instrument verb extensions and that performance on verb extension correlates with scores on a standardized test of language acquisition. Verb knowledge continues to develop well beyond the preschool years.

Action naming in anomic aphasic speakers: Effects of instrumentality and name relation

Many studies reveal effects of verb type on verb retrieval, mainly in agrammatic aphasic speakers. In the current study, two factors that might play a role in action naming in anomic aphasic speakers were considered: the conceptual factor instrumentality and the lexical factor name relation to a noun. Instrumental verbs were shown to be better preserved than non-instrumental verbs in a group of anomic aphasic speakers but not in a group of Broca’s aphasic speakers. Name relation to a noun improved the performance of the anomic aphasic speakers as well. Again, no effect was found in the group of Broca’s aphasic speakers. Verbs with a name relation to a noun were better retrieved in action naming than verbs without a name relation. These findings are discussed in terms of the spreading activation theory of Dell. (Dell, G. S. (1986). A spreading activation theory of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological Review 93, 283–321.)

The influence of instrumentality and name-relation to a noun on verb comprehension in Dutch aphasic speakers

Background : Different studies have examined the effect of verb type on comprehension, generally in non-fluent aphasic speakers. The current study includes the data of fluent aphasic speakers as well and considers the effect of conceptual and phonological factors on verb comprehension. Aims : The role of the factors instrumentality and name-relation to a noun were studied. Both factors take the relation between nouns and verbs into account. Instrumentality concerns the conceptual relation between verbs and nouns, whereas name-relation expresses the phonological relation between these two. Methods & Procedures : A total of 13 non-fluent aphasic speakers and 11 fluent aphasic speakers performed a word-to-picture matching task. This task consists of 60 items: 20 target verbs are non-instrumental, 40 verbs are instrumental. Instrumental verbs are defined as verbs referring to actions for which an instrument is required in order to perform the action. Within the group of instrumental verbs, 20 are name-related to the corresponding instrument, whereas for the other 20 verbs no such relation exists. Results on the test were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Outcomes & Results : Both factors were of influence on the verb comprehension scores, but in different ways in the two subject groups. Instrumentality played a role for the non-fluent aphasic speakers: they were significantly better at comprehending non-name-related instrumental verbs as compared to the other types of verbs. Name-relation to a noun had a negative effect on the scores of the fluent aphasic speakers: they had a significantly lower score on name-related instrumental verbs, than on non-name-related instrumental verbs. Conclusions : The factors instrumentality and name-relation to a noun influenced verb comprehension, but not in the same way in both types of aphasic speakers. It is discussed that this is due to different underlying disorders that lead to verb comprehension problems.

Dynamic and static patterns in language: instrumental verbs unfolded

Our mental capacity to construe a perceived situation in different ways and the distinct modes of construal become evident when comparing various linguistic structures possible for verbalizing one and the same event. These structures can be distinguished according to a range of different features - among them quantities known from physics: state and dynamics. To demonstrate the gradual difference between static and dynamic concepts discernable in language this paper focuses on distinct presentations of a complex form of causatives - namely instrumentals. After some introductory comments in section one, section two will display the conceptual differences between plain causative constructions and instrumental construals. The third section analyzes different instrumental patterns with regard to the static-dynamic distinction and the conceptual import of these structures. Some concluding words will close the article.

Retrieval of instrumental verbs in aphasia: An explorative study

Retrieval of instrumental verbs in two conditions in two Broca and two anomic patients was studied. The instrumental verbs were divided into two classes, viz. instrumental verbs that are related in name with the instrument (e.g. to saw-a saw) and those that are not related in name (e.g. to write-a pen). The actions had to be named (a) in isolation and (b) in a sentence. Two Broca and two anomic patients were examined on both subtests. Although the raw scores on the two subtests do not reveal large differences between the four aphasic subjects, distinguishing the two classes of instrumental verbs and performing an error analysis shows that a different deficit underlies the difficulties of Broca's and anomic aphasics.

The Development of Verb Concepts: Children's Use of Verbs to Label Familiar and Novel Events

The importance of actions, results, and instruments in verb concepts was examined in four studies. Study 1 investigated how children label familiar events for which instrument, action, and result verbs were appropriate labels. In Study 2, subjects were taught novel verbs and were asked to use these verbs to label events in which the instrument, action, or result had been changed. Study 1 showed that 3-year-olds used action verbs more frequently than older children and adults, and that they preferred to use an action verb over a result verb when both verbs were appropriate labels. Instrument verbs were used most frequently as first responses to the events, and were most frequently used by older children and adults. In Study 2, subjects were least likely to use the novel verbs to label events in which the result had changed. This effect increased with age. Action changes had a moderate effect for all age groups, while instrument changes had the weakest effect. Studies 3 and 4 ruled out stimulus salience and a familiar word strategy as interpretations of these findings. The studies are discussed in terms of current theory and research on conceptual development, word-learning strategies, and the semantic organization of nouns and verbs.