Syntactic Chain Research Articles

Agrammatism in Spanish: A Case Study

This article presents a case study of a Spanish-speaking Broca′s patient with a selective deficit in syntactic production. The analysis indicates difficulties in processing certain abstract categories such as clitic pronouns without any other significant morphological errors. This pattern and the abundant use of strong pronouns in subject position are accounted as a syntactic production deficit related to the computation of phonetically null elements e that enter in a syntactic chain. At the same time, the patient shows a milder problem in the production of canonical word order at the sentence level, which is also explained in syntactic terms.

Cortex, striatum and cerebellum: control of serial order in a grooming sequence.

Rats emit grooming actions in sequences that follow characteristic patterns of serial order. One of these patterns, a syntactic chain, has a particularly stereotyped order that recurs spontaneously during grooming thousands of times more often than could occur by chance. Previous studies have shown that performance of this sequence is impaired by excitotoxin lesions of the corpus striatum. In this study we examined whether the striatum is unique in its importance to this behavioral sequence or whether control of the sequence instead depends equally upon the cortex and cerebellum. In two experiments, a fine-grained behavioral analysis compared the effects of striatal ablation to the effects of motor cortex ablation, ablation of the entire neocortex, or ablation of the cerebellum. Cortical and cerebellar aspiration produced mere temporary deficits in grooming sequences, which appeared to reflect a general factor that was nonsequential in nature. Only striatal damage produced a permanent sequential deficit in the coordination of this syntactic grooming chain. We conclude that the striatum has a unique role in the control of behavioral serial order. This striatal role may be related to a number of sequential disorders observed in human diseases involving the striatum.

Unmatched chains and the representation of plural pronouns

Plural pronouns create the possibility of overlapping reference, which does not not fit naturally into the classical GB theory of anaphora, where each NP has a single integer as its referential index. Thus, one must either complicate the indexing system used in syntax or complicate the semantic interpretation of indices. This paper argues for the former approach based on the properties of a particular comitative-like construction found in Mohawk and certain other languages. This construction is analyzed as a type of Left Dislocation where the dislocated NP forms a syntactic chain with a pronoun that it overlaps in reference with. Several unusual characteristics of such chains can be accounted for if plural pronouns have sets of integers as their indices—characteristics involving bound anaphora, ellipsis interpretation, and connectivity effects. Certain implications for the theory of chains are also discussed.

Substantia nigra 6-OHDA lesions mimic striatopallidal disruption of syntactic grooming chains: A neural systems analysis of sequence control

It has been suggested that the coordination of complex sequences of behavior requires normal nigrostriatal function. A previous study showed that kainic acid lesions of the corpus striatum can disrupt the performance of natural, untrained stereotyped sequences (syntactic chains), which occur regularly during normal rodent grooming. In this study, intranigral injections of 6-OHDA were used to destroy nigrostriatal dopamine projections in order to deplete the striatum of dopaminergic inputs. Striatal dopamine depletion was found to disrupt the effective completion of syntactic grooming chains. Syntactic chain disruption was correlated with the aphagia that follows dopamine depletion. These data were compared with those from previous studies of chain completion after striatal damage, after sensory deafferentation, and after decerebration at various levels of the brainstem. These comparisons indicated that the loss of either dopamine projections or intrinsic striatal neurons produced equivalent disruption of syntactic grooming chains. It also showed that loss of either component of the nigrostriatal system disrupted chaining to a degree equal to that produced by loss of the entire forebrain. These results suggest that the integrity of nigrostriatal systems is crucial to forebrain implementation of this stereotyped sequence.

Unity of indexing: On Safir's theory of syntactic chains

Unity of indexing: On Safir's theory of syntactic chains

Disruption of natural grooming chains after striatopallidal lesions

Actions, like words, must be ordered into coordinated sequences. Action “syntax rules” exist for natural behavior such as gooming in rats. One rule produces a highly stereotyped chain of grooming actions. We report that the loss of intrinsic neurons from the corpus striatum, after injections of neurotoxic kainic acid, disrupts execution of this syntactic chain while preserving component actions. Striatopallidal circuitry may contribute to the effective serial organization even of natural action into certain centrally generated sequential patterns.