Lukatela K, Shankweiler D, Crain S
Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
Brain Lang. 1995 Apr;49(1):50-76. doi: 10.1006/brln.1995.1021.
It is widely believed that agrammatic aphasics have lost the ability to assign complete syntactic representations. This view stems from indications that agrammatics often fail to comprehend complex syntactic structures, as for example, some types of relative clauses. The present study presents an alternative account. Comprehension by Serbo-Croatian-speaking agrammatic aphasics was tested on four types of relative clause structures and on conjoined clauses. The relative clauses varied in type of embedding (embedded vs. nonembedded) and in the location of the gap (subject position vs. object position). There were two control groups: Wernicke-type aphasics and normal subjects. The findings from a sentence-picture matching task indicated that agrammatic aphasics were able to process complex syntactic structures, as evidenced by their well-above chance performances. The success rate varied across different types of relative clauses, with object-gap relatives yielding more errors than subject-gap relatives in all groups. Each group showed the same pattern of errors: agrammatic subjects were distinguished from Wernicke subjects and normal subjects only in quantity of errors. These findings are incompatible with the view that the agrammatics are missing portions of the syntax. Instead, their comprehension deficits reflect varying degrees of processing impairment in the context of spared syntactic knowledge.
人们普遍认为，语法缺失型失语症患者已经丧失了构建完整句法表征的能力。这种观点源于一些迹象，即语法缺失型患者常常难以理解复杂的句法结构，比如某些类型的关系从句。本研究提出了另一种解释。对说塞尔维亚 - 克罗地亚语的语法缺失型失语症患者在四种关系从句结构和并列句上的理解能力进行了测试。关系从句在嵌入类型（嵌入式与非嵌入式）以及空位位置（主语位置与宾语位置）上有所不同。有两个对照组：韦尼克型失语症患者和正常受试者。句子 - 图片匹配任务的结果表明，语法缺失型失语症患者能够处理复杂的句法结构，其表现远高于随机水平就证明了这一点。不同类型的关系从句成功率各不相同，在所有组中，宾语空位关系从句比主语空位关系从句产生的错误更多。每组都呈现出相同的错误模式：语法缺失型受试者与韦尼克型受试者和正常受试者的区别仅在于错误数量。这些发现与语法缺失型患者缺失部分句法的观点不一致。相反，他们的理解缺陷反映了在保留句法知识的背景下不同程度的加工障碍。
