Wang Honglei, Thompson Cynthia K
College of Foreign Languages, Beihang University, Beijing, China.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA; Department of Neurology, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA; Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA.
Aphasiology. 2016;30(7):815-840. doi: 10.1080/02687038.2015.1111995. Epub 2015 Nov 16.
English-speaking patients with Broca's aphasia and agrammatism evince difficulty with complex grammatical structures, including verbs and sentences. A few studies have found similar patterns among Chinese-speaking patients with broca's aphasia, despite structural differences between these two languages. However, no studies have explicitly examined verb properties, including the number and optionality of arguments (participant roles) selected by the verb, and only a few studies have examined sentence deficits among Chinese patients. In addition, there are no test batteries presently available to assess syntactically important properties of verbs and sentences in Chinese patients.
This study used a Chinese version of the (NAVS; Thompson, 2011), originally developed for English speakers with aphasia, to examine the verb and sentence deficit patterns among Chinese speakers with aphasia. As in the original NAVS, the Chinese version (NAVS-C) assessed verbs by the number and optionality of arguments as well as sentence canonicity, in the both production and comprehension.
Fifteen Chinese patients with Broca's aphasia and fifteen age-matched healthy normal controls participated in this study. All NAVS-C tests were administered, in which participants were asked either to produce or identify verbs and sentences coinciding with action pictures.
OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Despite grammatical differences between Chinese and English, the impairment caused by structural complexity of verbs and sentences was replicated in Chinese-speaking patients using the NAVS-C. Verbs with more arguments were significantly more impaired than those with fewer arguments and verbs with optional arguments were significantly more impaired than those with obligatory arguments. One deviation from English-speaking patients, however, is that the Chinese-speaking patients exhibited greater difficulty with subject relative clauses than with object relative clauses because the former, rather than the latter, involve non-canonical order in Chinese. Similar to English-speaking patients, Chinese patients exhibited more difficulty with object extracted wh-questions than with subject extracted wh-questions. Suggesting that wh-movement in Logical Form may also cause processing difficulty. Moreover, Chinese-speaking patients exhibited similar performance in both production and comprehension, indicating the deficits in both modalities.
The number and optionality of verb arguments as well as canonicity of the Agent-Theme order in sentences impacts Chinese-speaking individuals with aphasia as it does in the case of English-speaking patients. These findings indicate that the NAVS-C is a useful tool for detailing deficit patterns associated with syntactic processing in patients with aphasia cross-linguistically.
患有布罗卡失语症和语法缺失症的英语患者在处理包括动词和句子在内的复杂语法结构时存在困难。尽管这两种语言在结构上存在差异，但一些研究在患有布罗卡失语症的汉语患者中也发现了类似的模式。然而，尚无研究明确考察动词属性，包括动词选择的论元（参与者角色）数量和可选性，并且仅有少数研究考察了汉语患者的句子缺陷。此外，目前没有可用的测试套件来评估汉语患者中动词和句子在句法上的重要属性。
本研究使用了最初为失语症英语患者开发的（NAVS；汤普森，2011）的中文版，来考察失语症汉语患者的动词和句子缺陷模式。与原始的NAVS一样，中文版（NAVS-C）在产出和理解方面，通过论元的数量和可选性以及句子规范性来评估动词。
15名患有布罗卡失语症的汉语患者和15名年龄匹配的健康正常对照参与了本研究。进行了所有NAVS-C测试，要求参与者产出或识别与动作图片相符的动词和句子。
尽管汉语和英语在语法上存在差异，但使用NAVS-C在汉语患者中重现了由动词和句子结构复杂性导致的损伤。带更多论元的动词比带较少论元的动词受损更严重，带可选论元的动词比带 obligatory 论元的动词受损更严重。然而，与英语患者的一个不同之处在于，汉语患者在主语关系从句上比在宾语关系从句上表现出更大的困难，因为在汉语中前者而非后者涉及非规范语序。与英语患者类似，汉语患者在宾语提取的wh疑问句上比在主语提取的wh疑问句上表现出更多困难。这表明逻辑形式中的wh移位也可能导致加工困难。此外，汉语患者在产出和理解方面表现出相似的表现，表明两种模态均存在缺陷。
动词论元的数量和可选性以及句子中施事 - 主题顺序的规范性对失语症汉语患者的影响与对失语症英语患者的影响相同。这些发现表明，NAVS-C是一种有用的工具，可用于详细描述跨语言失语症患者与句法加工相关的缺陷模式。
