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Biomedical subjects

E B Zurif

Publications and source records attributed to E B Zurif.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Semantic operations in aphasic comprehension: implications for the cortical organization of language.

We provide data on the neurological basis of two semantic operations at the sentence level: aspectual coercion and complement coercion. These operations are characterized by being purely semantic in nature; that is, they lack morphosyntactic reflections. Yet, the operations are mandatory (i.e., they are indispensable for the semantic well formedness of a sentence). Results indicate that, whereas Broca's patients have little or no trouble understanding sentences requiring these operations (performance was above chance for all conditions), Wernicke's patients performed at normal-like levels only for sentences that did not require these operations. These findings suggest that sentence-level semantic operations rely very specifically on the integrity of the cortical area associated with Wernicke's aphasia, but not on the region corresponding to Broca's aphasia. In the context of other findings from lesion and imaging studies, this evidence allows a view of the cortical distribution of language capacity that is drawn along a linguistic line, one which distinguishes syntactic from semantic operations.

Aged↗
PubMed1999

The existence of comprehension patterns in Broca's aphasia.

Berndt and Caramazza (1999) claim that Grodzinsky, Piñango, Zurif, and Drai (1999) were able to show a canonical-noncanonical difference (e.g., actives vs. passives) in the comprehension of Broca's aphasic patients only because of a patient selection bias. We show that the canonical-noncanonical comprehension pattern exists apart from any such bias, and that this pattern bears importantly on our understanding of the neuroanatomical organization of comprehension capacity at the sentence level.

Aphasia, Broca↗
PubMed1998

The neurological organization of some aspects of sentence comprehension.

I briefly review 25 years of aphasia research directed to uncovering the neurological organization of sentence comprehension capacity. I provide a description of aphasic comprehension disorders offered along syntactic lines, and I connect the syntactic limitation (revealed in this description) to the disruption of cortically localizable processing resources.

Aphasia↗
PubMed1990

Predicate-argument structure as a link between linguistic and nonlinguistic representations.

We present a study wherein a severe Broca's aphasic patient was trained to learn symbols representing both pure transitive and dative predicates--predicates differing in argument structure--in a visually based artificial language (c-ViC). We found a decrease in performance when two symbols, rather than one, were used to depict these "verbs." However, this decrease in performance was more pronounced for symbols representing pure transitive verbs--those that allow only one argument structure--than for symbols representing dative verbs--those that allow two different argument structures. Also, dative "verbs" yielded better performance when they were inserted in more complex, three-argument "sentences" than when they were inserted in two-argument "sentences." The opposite pattern was found for pure transitives. These results are discussed in terms of our claim that argument structure serves as a point of connection between linguistic information and non-linguistic visual information and in terms of the possibility that argument structure entries are shaped by the form in which visual information is parsed.

Aged↗
PubMed1989

Verb processing during sentence comprehension: contextual impenetrability.

This paper examines verb processing during sentence comprehension. We describe two experiments that assess the interaction between verb complexity and the structural information contained in a sentence. Verb complexity is defined in terms of a verb's possible argument structure arrangements--linguistic information arrayed against a verb's entry in the mental lexicon. Normal subjects had to perform a secondary task presented in the immediate vicinity of the verb while listening to a sentence for meaning. Reaction times to this secondary task show that all of a verb's possible argument structures are momentarily and exhaustively activated in the vicinity of the verb, even in sentences that are structurally biased toward one particular argument structure. We thus argue that verb processing in sentences involves a contextually impenetrable subcomponent of the language comprehension system.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

The case against the case against group studies.

We challenge the position that only the analysis of single patients can allow us to infer normal function from impaired performance. We claim that the focus on group vs. single case studies is unprofitable and that a more useful question is how best to form abstractions of relevance to cognitive theory. In this context, we consider issues concerning the category of "agrammatism."

Aphasia↗
PubMed1979

Lexical semantics and memory for words in aphasia.

Aphasic and non-neurological patients were assessed on a word recognition memory task. On any one trial, some words were instances of the same superordinate category, thus presupposing a common abstract conceptual feature, and some words could be linked thematically in the sense of forming context-dependent relations. Observing the temporal order in which patients pointed to the words they recognized permitted an assessment of the extent to which they clustered their responses either in terms of superordinate categories or along thematic lines. The conceptual structures indicated by these clusters were compared with those observed in a previous task requiring judgments of word relatedness. The data suggest that verbal memory limitations in aphasia are only in part linked to constraints on the conceptual features structuring lexical knowledge; and relatedly they raise the possibility that aphasics may have a disturbance of mnemonic processing quite apart from any disruption to language.

Adult↗