Biomedical subjects

R Bastiaanse

Publications and source records attributed to R Bastiaanse.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Verb inflection and verb diversity in three populations: agrammatic speakers, normally developing children, and children with specific language impairment (SLI).

The present study focuses on the relation between a grammatical and a lexical-semantic aspect of verb production. The spontaneous speech of three different populations (normally developing children, agrammatic aphasics, and children with a specific language impairment) has been analyzed with respect to the proportion of finite clauses and the diversity of the produced lexical verbs. The group results show that in the three populations both the proportion of finite verbs and the variability of the lexical verbs is low. When the individual scores are considered, differences between the normally developing children and the language-impaired subjects show up. Whereas in normally developing children verb finiteness and verb variability go hand-in-hand, the reverse relationship between these variables is observed in the agrammatic aphasics and the children with a specific language impairment. Given this reverse relationship, it is probable to assume two separate disorders. We therefore suggest an impairment at the interface level where lexical information and syntactic structure are integrated during sentence production.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Verb movement in acquisition and aphasia: same problem, different solutions-evidence from Dutch.

This paper focuses on verb movement in agrammatism and child language. We present data from a sentence completion experiment with 6 Dutch agrammatic aphasics and 21 Dutch-speaking children. The experiment compares completion of matrix clauses (which require verb movement) and embedded clauses (where such movement is not required) in these two populations. The results reveal a clear asymmetry: Both agrammatics and children do very well with embedded clauses but fail in 50% with the matrix clauses. It is concluded that the problem which both populations are facing is one of verb movement rather than verb inflection. An error analysis of the responses reveals that, although both agrammatics and children try to avoid movement, they apply different strategies to achieve this goal.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Case assignment in agrammatism.

Agrammatic speech is characterized by the omission and substitution of grammatical morphemes. Some recent papers suggest that certain patterns of omission and substitution are ruled by linguistic, that is, syntactic processes (e.g., Hagiwara, 1995; Friedmann & Grodzinsky, 1997; Bastiaanse & Van Zonneveld, 1998). In the present paper, the omission pattern of case markers in the spontaneous speech of Dutch and German speakers with agrammatic aphasia is analyzed within the framework of Chomsky's (1986) case theory, which says that every phonetically realized NP must receive (abstract) case. The inflected verb (I) assigns nominative case to the subject in the sentence, and the verb (V) assigns dative and accusative case to the indirect and direct object, respectively. This, in combination with the knowledge that verbs and verb inflections are notoriously difficult for speakers with agrammatism, served as the basis for this study. We hypothesize that, if no case assigner is produced, the noun will receive nominative case by default or the case marking morpheme (i.e., the determiner) will be omitted. This hypothesis has been tested and was supported by the data.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

On the relation between verb inflection and verb position in Dutch agrammatic aphasics.

This study focuses on the relation between verb position and verb inflection in the speech production of Dutch agrammatic patients. In Dutch, the finite verb is moved to second position in the matrix clause (de jongen leest een boek: the boy reads a book), but remains in its base generated, that is final, position in the embedded clause (ik zie dat de jongen een boek leest: lit. I see that the boy a book reads). Nonfinite verbs (infinitives and participles) are always in clause final position. Spontaneous speech analysis shows that agrammatics are sensitive to this relation between finiteness and structural position, although they are reluctant to produce finite verbs. Experimental data shows that verb inflection as such is not the problem: these patients are perfectly able to produce a finite verb in final position in an embedded clause; this is not more difficult than producing a nonfinite verb in the same position. If the finite verb has to be produced in Verb Second position in the matrix clause, however, the patients' performance drops dramatically.

Aged↗

PubMed1995

Broca's aphasia: a syntactic and/or a morphological disorder? A case study.

The patient described here suffers from Broca's aphasia without a comprehension disorder. She is unique, since she has two speech styles available and she shifts between them spontaneously. One style is characterized by a mild syntactic disorder and the other by a quite severe morphological and syntactic disorder. None of the current theories about the underlying disorder in Broca patients without comprehension deficits can account for the fact that two linguistically different speech styles can occur in one patient, except the adaptation theory. It will be argued that both styles can be explained by the assumption of an impairment to the grammatical encoder (a processor which transforms the preverbal message into a surface structure, Levelt, 1989). This view suggests that the distinction between syntactic and morphological agrammatism could be a matter of strategy, rather than of impairment.

Adult↗

PubMed1993

The Auditory Language Comprehension Programme: a description and case study.

The Auditory Language Comprehension Programme is a Dutch therapy programme at the word level, especially developed for severely aphasic patients. The programme consists of 420 items divided over three parts. Each item consists of a target word and three distractors. One spoken target word at a time is presented to the patient who has to choose one out of four pictures. The number of related distractors is varied: each part starts with items in which the distractors bear no resemblance to the target; later on, one, two and then all three distractors are related to the target. The nature of relatedness is dependent on the different levels in the programme. In part 1, the phonological level, there is a correspondence in sound; in part 2, the semantic level, a correspondence in meaning; in part 3, the complement, there is a phonological correspondence, a combination of phonological and semantic correspondence, or a lexical-morphological correspondence. The levels are hierarchically built, according to the principles of programmed instruction. In order to show how a therapist may apply this programme, a case study is presented. The patient, who developed aphasia after traumatic brain injury, was trained on the semantic level. Both his performance and our therapy methods will be described and evaluated.

Adult↗

PubMed1989

Spontaneous speech in aphasia: a correlational study.

Seventeen spontaneous speech measures and scores on a naming test, employed to characterize the expressive performance of 121 aphasics, were subjected to a factor analysis. Five factors were obtained: (1) Syntactic ability, (2) Phonological paraphasia, (3) Neologistic paraphasia, (4) Articulatory impairment, and (5) Vocabulary. Relationships of the factors to naming error types were examined in order to elucidate the nature of some of the factors. Also, the relationships of the expressive factors to auditory comprehension tests were explored, such an exploration being relevant to the issue of the overlap between expressive and receptive functions.

Anomia↗