Much research on agrammatism has indicated that verbal morphology has been shown to be particularly vulnerable in individuals with agrammatic aphasia. Nevertheless, only limited studies have discussed the asymmetry between the subcategories of agreement, i.e., person, number and gender (Hartsuiker, Kolk, & Huinck, 1999; Janssen & Penke, 2002). The present study investigates the production of subject-verb (SV) agreement morphology by investigating two grammatical features in Turkish necessary for SV- agreement marking: (a) person and (b) number. In Turkish, SV-agreement is marked by affixes on the verb, which encode the morphosyntactic features person (π) and number (#). In Harley and Ritter's (2002) feature-geometry model, the Participant (Part) node and its dependents, Addressee (Addr) and Speaker, are used to represent person (1), and the Individuation (Ind) node and its dependents, Group and Minimal (Min), are used to represent number feature. (1) Person a. 1P : [π [Part]] b. 2P : [π [Part] Addr] (2) Number a. SG : [# [Ind]] b. PL : [# [Ind] Group] Since Speaker (1P) is the default person and feature Min (singular) the default number, these features need not to be explicitly represented in the geometry (Harley & Ritter 2002). Therefore Turkish exhibit a 2P > 1P and PL > SG hierarchy. If paired with person and number, the agreement hierarchy is: 2PL > 1PL = 2SG > 1SG. Since 1P forms include only [Part] feature without the [Addr] feature, it is predicted that agrammatic participants will perform more accurately on 1P forms compared to the 2P forms. Since singular forms are represented by the projection of the [Ind] feature without the [Group] feature, it is predicted that agrammatic participants will perform more accurately on 1SG singular than on 1PL, as well as on 2SG than on 2PL form. Sixteen Turkish individuals with Broca’s aphasia (mean age: 54.8; SD: 14.0; 10 male/6 female; 6 university/10 below university level graduates) and 16 age-matched (t(30)= -.026, p=.97) individuals with no language impairment history (mean age: 54.9; SD:13.1; 11 male/5 female; 3 university/13 below university level graduates) participated in the study. The aphasia type was established with the standardized tests of The Test of Language Assessment in Aphasia (Maviş & Toğram, 2009), Gülhane Aphasia Test (Tanrıdağ, 1993) and, the clinical judgments of the speech therapist. In the study, four conditions, 1SG (-m), 2SG (-n), 1PL (-k), 2PL (-n+Iz) were tested, by using a sentence completion test. There were 15 sentences per condition. The patients’ task was to complete the sentence with a verb (3). (3) Primer : Biz muz-u soy-du-k we banana-ACC peel-PAST-1PL ‘We peeled the banana’. Target : Ben muz-u … I banana-ACC … ‘I … banana’ Results suggest that (a) second person was more difficult to produce than first person irrespective of singular or plural number (1SG
Aygüneş, M. (2013). Türkçede uyum özelliklerinin olaya ilişkin beyin potansiyelleri çerçevesinde incelenmesi, PhD Thesis, Ankara University.
Carminati, M. N. (2005). Processing reflexes of the Feature Hierarchy (Person> Number> Gender) and implications for linguistic theory. Lingua, 115(3), 259-285.
Harley, H., & Ritter, E. (2002). Person and number in pronouns: motivating a feature-geometric analysis. Language 78, 482–526.
Hartsuiker, R. J., Kolk, H. H., & Huinck, W. J. (1999). Agrammatic production of subject–verb agreement: The effect of conceptual number. Brain and Language, 69(2), 119-160.
Janssen, U., & Penke, M. (2002). How are inflectional affixes organized in the mental lexicon?: Evidence from the investigation of agreement errors in agrammatic aphasics. Brain and Language, 81(1), 180-191.
Maviş, İ. & Toğram, B. (2009). Afazi Dil Değerlendirme Testi (ADD) kullanım yönergesi Ankara: Detay Yayınları.
Tanrıdağ, O. (1993). Afazi. Ankara: GATA Basımevi
Keywords: Broca’s aphasia, Subject verb agreement, verb inflection., syntax, agrammatism
Conference: 54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting, Llandudno, United Kingdom, 16 Oct - 18 Oct, 2016.
Presentation Type: Platform Sessions
Topic: Academy of Aphasia
Citation: Aydın Ö, Kurada HZ and Yarbay- Duman T (2016). Subject–Verb Agreement in Turkish Agrammatic Broca’s Aphasia: Comparison of Person and Number Features. Front. Psychol. Conference Abstract: 54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2016.68.00043
Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
Received: 20 Apr 2016; Published Online : 15 Aug 2016.
* Correspondence: Prof. Özgür Aydın, Ankara University, Linguistics Department, Ankara, Türkiye, ozguraydin66@gmail.com