Abstract
Background:
It has been shown for a number of languages that verb retrieval and
verb inflection are impaired in agrammatic speech. Several studies
showed that, while some agrammatic speakers are relatively good in verb
retrieval but poor in verb inflection, others show the inverse pattern
(Dutch: Bastiaanse & Jonkers, 1998; Italian: Rossi & Bastiaanse, 2008,
among others). However, not all languages use verb inflection to
express sentence internal and external relationships, such as agreement,
tense, and aspect; some use free-standing grammatical morphemes
instead. Standard Indonesian (SI) is such a language.
Aims:
The aim of the current study is to find out whether the production of
free-standing grammatical morphemes—which specify time frame and are
thus comparable to tense and aspect inflection in other languages—is
impaired in SI agrammatic spontaneous speech, and whether there is a
similar inverse relationship between verb retrieval and the use of these
morphemes, as suggested by findings on verb inflection in other
languages.
Methods & Procedures:
A total of 21 adult speakers of SI (6 with Broca's aphasia with mild to
moderate agrammatic speech and 15 without history of neurological
problems) participated in the study. From the speech of each participant
300 words were extracted, and the occurrence of verbal predicates,
aspectual adverbs, and lexical adverbs of time was counted. Type-token
ratios (TTR) were used to express the diversity of lexical verbs
produced, and the proportion of aspectual and temporal lexical adverbs
per verbal predicate was calculated for all participants.
Outcomes & Results:
An inverse relationship was observed between the verb variability and
the proportion of aspectual adverbs. The agrammatic participants who
used a low proportion of aspectual adverbs did not compensate with
over-production of lexical adverbs.
Conclusions:
Based on the results of the current study we propose that the inverse
relationship between lexical diversity of the verbs and the use of
aspectual adverbs reflects the same underlying deficit as the inverse
relationship between lexical diversity of verbs and verb inflection
observed in Dutch and Italian. Apparently it is difficult for agrammatic
speakers to simultaneously retrieve verbs (names of the events) and
specify the time frame in which the events take place. This has some
important clinical implications.
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