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Syntactic and Semantic Factors of Auditory Sentence Comprehension in Aphasia
Abstract
A review of the literature on language comprehension in general and on auditory sentence comprehension in particular reveals the complexity of the processing assumed to be involved in understanding of sentences. In psycholinguistic terms (cf. Cairns & Cairns, 1976; Clark & Clark, 1977; Swinney, 1981), comprehension of sentences by normal subjects is considered to be a complex, active, and constructive process in which the listener simultaneously and/or successively1 makes use of linguistic knowledge (phonological, semantic/lexical, and syntactic information), knowledge of the world (pragmatic information), and, stemming from these knowledge sources, a set of “strategies” to induce the meaning of a particular sentence.
An ambidextrous agrammatic patient with diffuse cerebral infarction in the right hemisphere, showing notable “telegraphic speech,” was investigated for the production of case-marking particles through two kinds of picture-description tasks. The first task was an ordinary picturedescription, in which most of the patient's responses conformed to the subject-object order, thus suggesting his relatively preserved ability to construct so-called “cannonical word orders.” On the second task, in which the patient described pictures using predetermined “sentence-frames” specifying the constructions of sentences to be produced, he made substantial errors in particles when the sentence-frames were those with non-cannonical noun phrase (NP) orders or those which contained only object NP's. The latter result suggested that the patient would rely on the information of NP order in selecting particles. The patterns of errors in the responses in the two tasks suggested that not only separate particles but also “plausible sequences” of particles which would correspond to cannonical NP orders might be preserved, and that such particle sequences could be erroneously activated through utilizing NP-sequence information. The main disturbance in the patient seemed to consist in selecting precise particles and/or in suppressing plausible but inappropriate particles, while he was able, if not accurately, to select particles relying on NP-sequence and/or semantic cues. From these data, it appeared that the grammatical function of precise selection of particles might be localized in the right hemisphere in the patient, whose language lateralization could be anomalous as suggested by his ambidextrosity.
In diesem Beitrag wird die ‘ELA -Photoserie’ (‘Erfahrungen aus dem Leben des Alltags’ bzw. ‘Everyday Life Activities’) dargestellt. Zuerst werden die wesentlichen Bedingungen, die ein Sprachtest und Sprachtherapiematerial erfüllen sollten, erläutert. Anschließend wird der Aufbau des ELA-Materials beschrieben, und zwar die linguistischen Charakteristika und die Übungstypen, welche anhand des Materials durchgeführt werden können. Es wird gezeigt, wie dieses Material einen intensiven, individuellen und auch vielseitigen und kreativen Einsatz sowohl bei der Diagnose als auch in der Therapie der verbalen, paraverbalen und nichtverbalen Fähigkeiten ermöglicht. Diese vielseitige Anwendung auf allen linguistischen Ebenen wird durch a) die große Anzahl der Stimuli (n = 3000) und b) deren Differenziertheit und c) die bildlich dargestellte Alltagsrelevanz gewährleistet. Das Spektrum der Anwendungsmöglichkeiten reicht von der lexikalischen bis zur Text- bzw. Diskursebene und Pragmatik.
Even though human speech is, by default, filled with ambiguity, competent speakers of a natural language generally manage to communicate with each other without having to request clarification after every second sentence. In fact, most linguistic ambiguity is not even noticed by speakers of a language, unless they are made explicitly aware of it or are asked to clarify some particular point, possibly by a less competent speaker of the language in question. In certain situations, linguistic ambiguity can cause headaches for people, but it does not make human communication impossible. Context, knowledge of the world, and common sense generally make it clear which interpretation of an ambiguous statement is appropriate. While the word "bank" in the statement "I've got some money in the bank" is lexically ambiguous - a "bank" in English can be a financial institution, the land alongside a river or a lake, or an airplane manoeuvre - semantics only allow for one interpretation. People suffering from aphasia - the partial loss of language skills due to brain damage - have to deal with more linguistic ambiguity than others. Aphasia affects people's capability to correctly interpret morphology and syntax, stripping away the much needed context competent speakers of a language need to correctly interpret human language. This paper details the handling of ambiguity in text simplification software aimed at patients of this illness.
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