Speech and Language Therapy

ABSTRACT Background: Cross-linguistic studies on the production and comprehension of wh-questions and relative clauses, have revealed selective deficits in agrammatism with better performance observed in (a) subject questions and relative clauses compared to object ones; (b) object non-referential who questions compared to object referential questions; and (c) object what questions compared to object who questions. These selective deficits have been discussed within several neurolinguistic accounts (i.e., D-Linking Hypothesis, Derived Order Problem Hypothesis, and Relativised Minimality), which make different predictions. Limited research on wh-questions and relative clauses has been conducted in Greek agrammatism with inconclusive results, leaving open the question of which linguistic factors affect the agrammatic performance and which account best explains the attested patterns.

ABSTRACTCross-linguistic studies have shown that typically developing children have difficulties comprehending non-canonical structures. These findings have been interpreted within the Relativized Minimality (RM) approach, according to which local relations cannot be established between two terms of a dependency if an intervening element possesses similar morphosyntactic features. In an extension of RM, Friedmann, Belletti, and Rizzi (2009) suggested that lexical NP restriction is the source of minimality effects in non-canonical sentences. The present study aimed at investigating whether the predictions of their account can be confirmed in Greek. Our results indicate that although lexical NP restriction is a crucial factor in generating minimality effects, it is not always sufficient to account for the comprehension difficulties that young children face with non-canonical sentences, since the internal structure (i.e. the feature specification) of the moved element and of the interv...

ABSTRACT Cross-linguistic studies in agrammatic aphasia have attested asymmetries in the comprehension of semantically reversible structures with canonical vs. non-canonical argument order, with the latter compromised. Recently, 0120, 0125 and 0130 introduced the Relativized Minimality approach to locality in syntax as a possible explanation for agrammatic deficits, suggesting that minimality effects arise between an A’-moved element and its copy/trace if there is an intervener with similar morphosyntactic features. In an extension of this approach, Friedmann et al. (2009) suggested that the source of minimality effects is the presence of lexical NP restriction in the displaced and in the intervening element. The present study aimed at investigating whether the predictions within this version of RM can be confirmed by the data obtained from six Greek-speaking agrammatic individuals. Our results provide some support for Friedmann et al.’s RM approach but are not entirely compatible with it. We suggest that minimality effects in the agrammatic speakers’ comprehension can emerge even in the absence of lexical NP restriction, and that the internal structure of the A’-moved element and of the intervener crucially modulates these effects, although to a lesser extent. Last, we show that morphological case does not facilitate agrammatic speakers’ comprehension, and, thus, we conclude that morphology does not provide cues that can ‘resolve’ minimality effects in language breakdown.

ABSTRACTCross-linguistic studies have shown that typically developing children have difficulties comprehending non-canonical structures. These findings have been interpreted within the Relativized Minimality (RM) approach, according to which local relations cannot be established between two terms of a dependency if an intervening element possesses similar morphosyntactic features. In an extension of RM, Friedmann, Belletti, and Rizzi (2009) suggested that lexical NP restriction is the source of minimality effects in non-canonical sentences. The present study aimed at investigating whether the predictions of their account can be confirmed in Greek. Our results indicate that although lexical NP restriction is a crucial factor in generating minimality effects, it is not always sufficient to account for the comprehension difficulties that young children face with non-canonical sentences, since the internal structure (i.e. the feature specification) of the moved element and of the intervener affects their performance, as well.

Τhe present study investigates whether Greek-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) face difficulties in the acquisition of gender in determiner-noun contexts, as expressed via agreement οn the determiner. The results of an elicitation task with real and novel nouns showed that children with SLI (a) show difficulties primarily with masculine and feminine gender marking, and do not use prototypicality of the noun suffix, as typically developing children do, to mark the gender on the determiner in conditions with real nouns, and (b) do not use, with the same consistency as typically developing children do, the noun ending as a cue to mark the gender value on the determiner in conditions with novel nouns. It is argued that although grammatical gender is considered an intrinsic lexical property of the noun, it is not learned by children with SLI along with other lexical features of the noun. Moreover, when lexical information is not provided in the nouns, children wit...

Studies on the processing of non-active (NACT) voice have indicated that passive sentences are more difficult to comprehend and require more time to process. Children with Reading Difficulties (RDs) face problems with sentence comprehension, which are often attributed to phonological processing, working memory, syntactic awareness limitations, or a maturation delay. Using an online self-paced reading task, we investigated the effect of voice morphology and argument structure on sentence processing in 3 groups of participants; 30 children RDs, 28 Age-Matched (AM) controls without RDs, and 28 young Beginning Readers (BRs). Our results suggest that although the RDs and BR groups present similar reading times, their reading patterns differ qualitatively. Beginning Readers experienced greater processing delays when processing NACT structures, suggesting that they have not yet fully grasped the properties of the various NACT verbs. However, the RDs group presents effects not found in the ...