Lise Menn - US grants

The long-term objective of this research is to contribute to the understanding of the output language processing deficits which underlie the symptoms observed in the speech of aphasic patients (both in the classical syndromes and in the 'mixed' cases that constitute at least a plurality of the clinical population). This goal in turn serves two more remote ones: 1) the eventual understanding of normal language processing mechanisms and their brain representations, and 2) the refinement of clinical diagnostic and remediation procedures. The proposed project focuses on certain syntactic problems in the production of conversational and elicited narrative speech in Japanese and English-speaking patients. The specific aims are: 1) to determine the syntactic structures used by patients in expressing semantic action relations which do not fit the canonical 'animate agent-active verb - inanimate object' schema; 2) to characterize the lexical, syntactic and pragmatic differences across diagnostic categories; 3) to account for variations in the syntactic structures and error types found in conversation vs. elicited narrative; and 4) to arrive at a formulation of the way in which patients' syntactic resources are limited--a formulation which will be equally applicable to English and Japanese in spite of the great differences in the grammars of these languages.l Such a formulation (in psycholinguistic processing terms) can then be further tested against data from aphasic patients speaking other languages. A fifth aim is to make all the raw data available in computerized form for further analysis by other aphasiologists. The findings will be compared to the hypotheses of Bates & Wulfeck (in press) and of Kolk et al. (1985) concerning the relations between fluent and non-fluent output and between conversation and elicited narrative. The data will be examined to see whether the background and preliminary findings about the importance of canonical word order are borne out. If they are, a language production model will be constructed which will have an explicit role for the canonical word order. In addition to the elicited conversation and narrative, full standard test protocols for comprehension and production will be used for individual characterization of the patients, and also neurological reports, in order to address syndrome definition and localization issues. Fifteen Japanese subjects and twenty to twenty-five English-speaking patients will be studied.l The patients will include representatives of the major diagnostic subcategories,k and will also include patients who do not fall into the classical syndromes. All patients will have had single left- hemisphere injuries and be free of complicating factors such as alcoholism; patients with CVA's will be used to the extent possible, and etiology will be treated as a variable. The patients will be matched for age, sex, time post onset, and aphasia type. Ten control subjects will be tested in each language.

9411172 This grant will support a working conference entitled "Specific Language Impairment and Williams' Syndrome: A Double Dissociation of Language and Cognition?", that will bring together linguists, neurolinguists, and clinicians for an intensive week-long working session. The conference is to be held in conjunction with the Linguistic Institute of the Linguistic Society of America, which will be held at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, during July 1995. The Working Conference on "Specific Language Impairment and Williams' Syndrome: A Double Dissociation of Language and Cognition?", will focus on the theoretical implications and clinical realities of two sharply contrasting developmental disorders, Williams' Syndrome and Specific Language Impairment. It is designed to present current results on these disorders to a much wider audience of linguists, and to bring those linguists into contact with the first-hand knowledge of clinical researchers.

9411208 A research Workshop on The Interaction of Morphosyntax and Lexicon in the Acquisition of Narrative Discourse will be held at the 1995 LSA Linguistic Institute at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The objectives of the workshop are: (I) to bring together experienced researchers who have done cross-linguistic work on the development of the functions of morphosyntax in narrative in order to compare findings across languages and methodology across studies; (2) to enable less-experienced researchers and students to work with these experts, to become familiar with the current issues, learn the state-of-the-art analysis techniques, and carry out summer-long collaborative projects; (3) to facilitate the formation of new interdisciplinary research collaborations which will extend beyond the summer. In summary, the workshop will provide a seminar setting for leaders, less-experienced researchers, and students to compare their analyses across languages, with the goal of testing and improving current theories of the acquisition of lexical and grammatical devices used in narrative discourse. The workshop will be led by Ruth Berman and Dan Slobin, and will focus on children's gradual mastery of the uses of the morphosyntax of their languages to convey complex narrative information, primarily utilizing the 'frog story' elicitation paradigm. The workshop will be open to all institute faculty, affiliates and students; those interested in the cross-language comparison of morphosyntax in aphasia and in developmental language disorders will especially be encouraged to participate.

Menn, Jurafsky, Ramsberger, Holland
98-18827

ABSTRACT

Frequency and Structure in Aphasic Language Production: Data
Base and Experimental Studies

The proposed work will create a data base of English verbs and the 'frames' they occur in, and start to study whether the properties of those verbs can help to explain some of the problems of people with aphasia (language impairment after brain damage).

Most action verbs occur in frames where subject is the agent ('She sang'); for others, the subject undergoes the action ('The apple fell'); for others, the role of the subject depends on whether the verb is transitive ('He melted the chocolate'), intransitive ('The chocolate melted'), or passive ('The chocolate was melted'). To understand a sentence, a hearer must understand not only the meanings of the words, but also the roles played by the subject noun and any objects of the verb. The data base will list the frames for several hundred verbs and the frequency of each frame in spoken and written text.

People with aphasia have difficulty understanding and/or producing spoken and written language. If we understood these disorders, we would know more about how the brain stores and processes language, and we might also be able to help people with aphasia. The data base will be used in designing studies of how people with normal and impaired language understand and create sentences.