Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003 – An International Conference organized by the
“Verb and Sentence Processing in Aphasia Group” at University College London & City University London
supported by ESRC Seminar Competition Grant (R451265092)
An International Conference
Verbs
held at Chandler House,
University College London, UK
on
30th April 2003
Organised by
Celia Woolf, Jane Marshall, Deborah Cairns
of University College London & City University London
and the CLaSS Unit at UCL
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003 – An International Conference organized by the
“Verb and Sentence Processing in Aphasia Group” at University College London & City University London
supported by ESRC Seminar Competition Grant (R451265092)
The Verb and Sentence
Processing in Aphasia Group
University College London & City University London
Recent years have seen a growing interest in disorders of verb and sentence
processing, which can arise in both developmental and acquired language impairments.
Such disorders are of theoretical interest, in that they offer a unique window onto
the mechanisms of normal processing.
More importantly, they have serious
consequences for the people affected, since without verb argument structures it is
very difficult to talk about the things that most interest us. By developing a better
understanding of verb impairments we should be more able to respond to the dilemma
of these individuals, and create more effective and functionally relevant therapies.
The Verb Group was set up by researchers and clinicians in University College London
and City University to pursue these issues. The group meets in the Department of
Human Communication Science at University College London. It is multidisciplinary
and intercollegiate, bringing together clinical linguists, psychologists and speech and
language therapists. In 2001 the group was awarded an ESRC Seminar Grant.
The Verb Group provides a forum for researchers from different disciplines and
clinicians with a common interest in:

modelling the normal processes that allow us to translate thoughts into words,
especially pivotal words such as verbs that determine many aspects of
sentence structure.

explaining why verbs are particularly difficult for many people with language
impairments and modelling the interaction of intact and impaired processing
that gives rise to specific patterns of performance.

developing theoretically motivated materials for the clinical assessment of
verb and sentence processing impairments

translating these materials into functionally and therapeutically useful
activities that are acceptable and enjoyable for people with language
impairments.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003 – An International Conference organized by the
“Verb and Sentence Processing in Aphasia Group” at University College London & City University London
supported by ESRC Seminar Competition Grant (R451265092)
The Group has identified several areas for discussion and collaborative research. For
instance, we have supervised a number of student projects investigating whether
noun/verb differences in aphasia are primarily syntactic or involve additional
semantic factors. Since 2001, we have also staged a programme of seminars on
themes related to verb processing.
This conference is the culmination of our seminar programme. Our contributors bring
a range of clinical and theoretical expertise to the questions of verb processing and
can address the topic from both an acquired and developmental perspective. We have
no doubt that they will provide us with an extremely stimulating and enjoyable day.
We hope that delegates are equally satisfied.
Deborah Cairns,
PhD Student, City University, London
Jane Marshall,
Senior Lecturer, Department of Language and Communication Science, City
University, London
Celia Woolf,
Clinical Tutor/PhD Student, University College London
Members of the “Verb and Sentence Processing in Aphasia Group”
at University College London & City University, London and Co-ordinators of the
“Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems” Conference
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
PROGRAMME & PRESENTERS
An International Conference
Verbs:
Properties, Processes and Problems
30th April 2003
Programme
9.15
Registration
9.40
Welcome: Jane Maxim, Head of Department, HCS, UCL
9.45
Key Note Speaker: Argye Beth Hillis
10.45
"Grammatical relations in the acquisition of British Sign Language”
11.15
Coffee
11.45
Key Note Speaker: Dedre Gentner
12.45
“The crucial role of tense in verb production”
1.15
Lunch
2.15
Poster Session
2.45
“Verb problems in fluent aphasia”
“On Saying and Writing Sleigh versus Slay and Rite versus Write”
Gary Morgan, Isabelle Barriere and Bencie Woll
“Some Interesting Differences between Nouns and Verbs II”
Erin Carroll & Judit Druks
Clare McCann & Susan Edwards
3.15
“Attentional procedures in event processing: Drawing some
conclusions”
Carol Sacchett
3.45
4.15
Tea
“Effects of therapy targeted at verb retrieval and the
realisation of the predicate argument structure: A case
study”
Janet Webster, Julie Morris & Sue Franklin
4.45
Key Note Speaker: Maria Black
5.30
Close
"Current theories of event structure: how can they help clinical
practice?"
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
PROGRAMME & PRESENTERS
An International Conference
Verbs:
Properties, Processes and Problems
30th April 2003
Platform presenters
Key Note Speakers:
 Argye Beth Hillis, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology,
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
 Dedre Gentner, Professor of Psychology, Director of the Cognitive
Science Program, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
 Maria Black, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Department of Human
Communication Science, University College London & Convenor of the
Verb and Sentence processing in Aphasia Group
Presenters:
Gary Morgan, Department of Language and Communication Science, Centre
for Deaf Studies and Sign Language, City University, London
Isabelle Barriere, Johns Hopkins University & University of Hertfordshire
Bencie Woll, Department of Language and Communication Science, Centre for
Deaf Studies and Sign Language, City University, London
Erin Carroll, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL
Judit Druks, Birkbeck College, University of London
Clare McCann & Susan Edwards, University of Reading, UK
Carol Sacchett, Tavistock Research Fellow, Department of Human
Communication Science, University College London
Janet Webster, Julie Morris & Sue Franklin, School of Education,
Communication and Language Sciences, University of Newcastle
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
ABSTRACTS
KEY NOTE SPEAKERS
On Saying and Writing Sleigh
versus Slay and Rite versus Write
Argye Beth Hillis
Cases in which stroke results in impaired naming of nouns but not verbs, or the
opposite pattern, has provided evidence that some component of naming is separate
for nouns versus verbs. However, it is unclear whether semantic representations or
phonological and/or orthographic representations are accessed independently for
nouns versus verbs. I will review studies of stroke and dementia that address this
question. First, patients with chronic stroke have been reported who have selectively
impaired naming of verbs in a single output modality (written or oral); naming of nouns
in the affected modality, and naming both nouns and verbs in the other modality were
spared. More recently, longitudinal studies of patients with nonfluent primary
progressive aphasia show deterioration in oral naming of verbs, before deterioration
in oral naming of nouns, and before deterioration in written naming of either. In
contrast, fluent primary progressive aphasic patients opposite pattern: deterioration
in written naming of nouns, before written naming of verbs and before oral naming
either. These cases together provide evidence that some mechanism for accessing
orthographic and phonological representations for output is separate for nouns versus
verbs.
It is unclear from these studies what brain regions are devoted specifically to nouns
or verbs. Therefore, we have recently studied written and oral naming and
comprehension of nouns and verbs in acute stroke, identifying regions of
hypoperfusion (dysfunction) associated with disruption in access to orthographic,
phonologic, and semantic representations of verbs. In these studies, hypoperfusion
of frontal regions was associated with impaired access to phonological and
orthographic representations of verbs, while hypoperfusion of middle temporal gyrus
was associated with impaired access to nouns. In contrast, hypoperfusion of left
superior temporal gyrus was associated with impaired access to semantic
representations of nouns and verbs. These results provide evidence that networks of
brain regions recruited in naming nouns versus verbs are only partially overlapping: a
frontal component is specific to verbs, a middle temporal component is more essential
for nouns.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
ABSTRACTS
KEY NOTE SPEAKERS
Some Interesting Differences
between Nouns and Verbs II
Dedre Gentner
This talk explores phenomenological differences between nouns and verbs in cognitive
processing. I will review evidence that verbs differ from nouns across a wide range of
phenomena, including memory recall, translatability, semantic mutability, linguistic
borrowing, and acquisitional patterns. Based on these differences, I make the
following theoretical claim: the open-class -- closed-class distinction is more usefully
seen as a continuum with nouns at the open end, grammatical terms at the closed end,
and verbs and spatial prepositions in the middle. A further claim is that referential
patterns are more variable cross-linguistically for relational terms than for object
terms, even in perceptual domains. Thus the meanings of spatial propositions and
motion verbs are more linguistically shaped than the meanings of concrete nouns.
One corollary is that object names should form the initial point of entry in language
acquisition, because concrete nouns can be learned piecemeal, by attaching individual
object concepts to words, whereas verbs and other relational terms – including verbs
of motion and spatial prepositions -- must be learned as part of a semantic system. A
further implication is that verbs should be more closely related to grammar in neural
organization than should nouns.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
ABSTRACTS
KEY NOTE SPEAKERS
Current theories of event structure:
How can they help clinical practice?
Maria Black
The meaning of verbs and other relational terms has often been said to consist of a
“core” and a “relational” component (see Marshall, Black and Byng 1999).
In this
paper, I will argue that we need to revise how we think about “relational meaning”
and how we represent it. I will then examine the clinical implications of such a
shift.
“Relational meaning” has traditionally been represented in terms of list of arguments
or thematic roles associated with the verb – its thematic or predicate-argument
structure. This conception has been shown to be theoretically inadequate and there
is converging evidence from both generative and cognitive linguistics that it should be
changed (see Tenny and Pustejovsky 2000; McKoon and Macfarland 2002 among
others).
.
I will claim that “event schemas” or “templates” provide a psycholinguistically and
clinically more relevant way of understanding and representing relational meaning
(Black & Chiat 2003; McKoon & Macfarland 2002 ). I will argue that event structure
is the semantic scaffolding that supports many aspects of sentence processing. In
particular, event schemas allow for:

a better fit with both syntactic structure and non-linguistic event
conceptualization, thus throwing new light on the dynamics of sentence production
and its impairments.

a basis for thinking about linguistic meaning as an attention guiding system, with
different patterns and strengths of attention (Black and Chiat, 2003; Langacker
1998; Talmy 2000) - an aspect of meaning that is almost entirely neglected in
clinical practice.

a better integration of sentence-level and discourse processes. I will give some
specific examples of how event structure and syntactic structure provide "a
frame for organizing and managing cognitive costs" (Du Bois 2003) for speakers
and listeners.
contd/
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
ABSTRACTS
References
o
Black M and Chiat S (2003) Linguistics for Clinicians. London: Arnold Publishers.
o
In M Tomasello (ed) The New Psychology of
Language Vol 2: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structure. Mahwah, New
Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 47-87.
o
McKoon G & MacFarland T (2002) Event templates in the lexical representation of verbs.
Cognitive Psychology 45, 1-44.
o
Du Bois J W (2003) Discourse and Grammar.
Marshall J, Black M and Byng S (1999) Working with sentences: a handbook for aphasia
In J. Marshall, M.Black, S. Byng (eds) The Sentence Processing Resource Pack.
London: Winslow Press.
therapists.
o
Langacker, R.W. 1998: Conceptualization, symbolization, and grammar. In Tomasello, M. (ed.),
The New Psychology of Language Vol 1: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language
Structure. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1-39.
o
Talmy, L. (2000) Toward a cognitive semantics: Vol 1.
Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.
o
Events as Grammatical Objects: The Converging
Perspectives of Lexical Semantics, Logical Semantics, and Syntax. Stanford, CA: CSLI
Tenny C and Pustejovsky J. (2000)
Publications
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
Concept structuring systems.
ABSTRACTS
Grammatical relations in the acquisition
of British Sign Language
Gary Morgan, Isabelle Barriere & Bencie Woll
Current models of the acquisition of grammatical relations are polarized around two
positions. According to those who have proposed bootstrapping hypotheses children’s
expression of grammatical relations is best described as productive in that it does
not reflect lexically-based learning. In contrast, according to Tomasello (1992, 2000),
children’s early multi-word utterances provides evidence for an item-by-item verbspecific expression of grammatical relations This study addresses this issue by
investigating the development of verb production by a native British Sign Language
(henceforth BSL) signer who has been exposed since infancy to BSL from his parents
and older siblings.
The aim of the main analysis was to investigate whether the early expression of
grammatical expressions by this BSL learner exhibited any evidence of lexicallybased learning versus semantic or syntactic rules. The study of the acquisition of
BSL can significantly contribute to this debate: the semantic distinction between
eventive and stative meaning in BSL verbs interacts with the transitive/intransitive
verb pattern. Transitive eventive verbs (such as ASK, GIVE, PUSH, BITE, HIT) can
be inflected for both subject/object agreement while transitive stative verbs
(KNOW, LIKE WANT, BELIEVE) cannot.
A detailed analysis of the data was developed and each verb was coded for a)
presence or absence of agreement marker, b) the semantic relation expressed by the
verb, c) the presence and absence of obligatory and optional arguments, d) the
thematic roles assigned to the arguments and the semantic features which
characterize them, and e) the order in which arguments appear.
Our results are discussed in light of the Verb-Island Hypothesis proposed by
Tomasello (1992) and cross-linguistics findings obtained on other signed and spoken
languages.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
ABSTRACTS
The crucial role of tense in verb production
Erin Carroll & Judit Druks
The spontaneous speech of agrammatic patients often lacks in verbs and this
observation had led to the suggestion that the unavailability of verbs may be the
primary cause of their sentence production deficits (Saffran, 1982). Alternatively,
the scarcity of verbs is the consequence of these patients’ grammatical deficits and
due to verbs being a grammatically complex category in so far that they determine
the number and type of noun phrases around them and are marked for tense and
agreement. Only the first hypothesis implies a deficit in verb production in single
word tasks too.
The present study explores the relationship between action naming and sentence
production of an agrammatic patient, who, in connected speech, instead of lexical
verbs, uses almost exclusively the copula is while he produces many semantically rich
nouns, adjectives and adverbials. Although his action picture naming is significantly
worse than his object picture naming (62% vs 76%), it seems unlikely that this degree
of single verb production deficit could account for the total lack of lexical verbs in
his speech. We also show that the patient is able to generate grammatically correct
sentences using the present progressive form when provided with a verb or an action
picture as cues. This, and his insertion of the copula in most utterances, either in
grammatically correct copula constructions, or as (ungrammatical) rudimentary verb
substitutes, we think, is evidence that some aspects of his grammar, including the
requirement that sentences need verbs is preserved.
In a series of experiments we demonstrate that the patient has lost all knowledge
related to tense marking not only in production but also in comprehension and
grammaticality judgement (while plural production and judgement of argument
structure violations remain preserved). We argue that the reason for the lack of
verbs in his speech is the unavailability of tense features, including abstract ones
that mark morphologically unmarked tense forms in English. This might be because
verbs within sentences unmarked for tense would create major ungrammaticality.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
ABSTRACTS
Verb problems in fluent aphasia
Clare McCann & Susan Edwards
A group of nine subjects with fluent aphasic speech participated in a study
investigating production and processing of verbs in fluent aphasia. Six of the nine
subjects had clear Wernicke’s profiles on the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination
while the profiles of the other three resembled anomic aphasia. Procedures used in
the study included testing single verb comprehension, single word production,
sentence comprehension and a grammaticality judgement taken from the Verb and
Sentence Test (Bastiaanse, Edwards and Rispens 2002). Additional tests of verb
production and sentence judgement, including tests of verb event structure,
constructed by the first author, were used to probe additional features of event
structure associated with a set of verbs.
Results showed a number of apparent anomalies. All subjects had superior
understanding of single verbs compared with their ability to produce verbs as single
words. Comprehension of verbs as single words was superior to comprehension of
sentences. Most strikingly, subjects showed different levels of ability in detecting
violations associated with verbs. They were reasonably accurate when asked to
identify violations of thematic roles but were poor when asked to identify event
structure violations.
This series of tests confirmed that verb deficits are complex and, as yet, only partly
understood. Despite relatively good comprehension of verbs and an ability to identify
thematic role violations, this group of fluent aphasic speakers had difficulties judging
whether the telicity required by a verb was correctly given in a sentence. These
findings highlight a property of verbs that has not, to date, been explored in aphasic
speakers and highlight an area of investigation where it is possible to look at the
semantic-syntactic interface within the lexical properties of verbs. By teasing apart
the components of verb comprehension we gain further understanding of verb
deficits in aphasia.
References
Bastiaanse, R., Edwards, S. and Rispens, J. (2002) The Verb and Sentence Test.
Harlow: Thames Valley Test Company.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
ABSTRACTS
Attentional procedures in event processing:
Drawing some conclusions
Carol Sacchett
This paper is concerned with the relationship between the conceptualisation and
communication of certain kinds of events in people with aphasia and normal-language
controls. People with aphasia typically have problems with the language of events,
both in production and comprehension. Do their event processing problems extend to
the non-linguistic domain?
An experiment was designed to compare performance on a task which involves
linguistic encoding: drawing events from a spoken description, and one in which no
overt linguistic encoding is required: drawing events from a visual stimulus. The event
types selected for investigation were Caused change of position and Caused change of
possession.
This paper describes the results of a control study, the purpose of which was to
identify some of the attentional factors and procedures used to “package” the events
for communication in drawing from the two input modalities. The results revealed
differences in performance in the verbal and visual conditions.
In addition
differences in performance were found in response to the two event types and these
differences varied across the two input modalities.
These results suggest that the influencing factors that guide attention and
foregrounding decisions in communicating events in drawing vary according to the
input modality used. In the verbal condition order of mention was the strongest
influencing factor, whilst in the visual condition foregrounding depended on the
interaction of a number of perceptual factors.
Results obtained from two of the participants with aphasia are discussed in the light
of the above findings and reveal differences in performance, both in comparison with
the controls and with one another.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
ABSTRACTS
Effects of therapy targeted at verb retrieval
and the realisation of the predicate argument
structure; a case study
Janet Webster, Julie Morris & Sue Franklin
The paper will describe the therapy carried out with a client NS. The outcome of
therapy in relation to his performance on formal and informal measures and his
spontaneous speech production will be discussed. NS was a 49 year old gentleman who
was 6 years post-onset when he was referred to the Newcastle Aphasia Clinic. His
spontaneous speech was hesitant and characterised by incomplete, fragmented
sentences and a reliance on sentences produced around the copular verb. Detailed
assessment showed a significant impairment in verb retrieval and in the realisation of
the predicate argument structure (PAS). Therapy aimed to improve NS’s sentence
production by:- a) Improving his retrieval of verbs b) Increasing his awareness of the
relationship between nouns and verbs and c) Improving his production of one, two and
three argument structures. Therapy resulted in a significant improvement in his
retrieval of treated verbs but no generalisation to untreated verbs. His sentence
production more generally showed several changes:- improved realisation of the nouns
within the PAS, reduced argument omission and a greater variety of argument
structures within his connected speech. Therapy seemed to result in a greater
awareness of the role of the verb within a sentence and a strategy for producing a
PAS frame. This resulted in improved sentence production although verb retrieval
difficulties were still evident. The implications of the results will be discussed.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
NOTES
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
NOTES
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
NOTES
POSTERS
An International Conference
Verbs:
Properties, Processes and Problems
30th April 2003
Poster presentations
 “A morphological perspective on the acquisition of Argument Structure
alternation”
Isabelle Barriere & Marjorie Lorch, Dept. of Cognitive Science, Johns
Hopkins University, USA & University of Hertfordshire, UK and Applied
Linguistics, Birkbeck College, London, UK
 “Verb movement and gap-filling in Dutch on-line sentence processing”
Dieuwke de Goede, Femke Wester, Roelien Bastiaanse, D. den
Ouden, University of Groningen, Graduate school for Behavioural and Cognitive
Neurosciences, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, E. Maas, L.
Shapiro, San Diego State University, E. Maas & D. Swinney, University of
California, San Diego
 “Verb morphology in developmental dyslexia: An ERP study”
Judith Rispens, Pieter Been & Frans Zwarts, University of Groningen,
Graduate school for Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences, The Netherlands
 “Verb deficit treatment in acquired aphasia: the effect on language
processing and production”
Kate Tucker & Susan Edwards, School of Linguistics & Applied Language
Studies, University of Reading, UK
 “Verb lexicons in SLI: some experimental data from Greek”
Stavroula Stavrakaki, Centre for Developmental Language Disorders &
Cognitive Neuroscience, Dept. Human Communication Science, University College
London
 “The meaning and syntax of object-nouns and action-verbs”
Gabriella Vigliocco & David Vinson, Department of Psychology, University
College London, UK
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
POSTERS
A morphological perspective on the acquisition of
Argument Structure alternation
Isabelle Barriere & Marjorie Lorch
The early literature on the acquisition of Argument Structure Alternation
(henceforth ASA) has demonstrated that lexically realized arguments are not
systematically assigned appropriate thematic roles by children (Bowerman, 1974,
1982, 1990; Lord, 1979, Figueira, 1984, among others). However when investigating
languages in which the valency of the verb is morphologically marked, most
researchers have implicitly assumed that the thematic role assignment applied to the
(sometimes ambiguous) morphological markers by children is appropriate (see Allen,
1996, among others).
Thus children’s overgeneralizations have typically been
classified into two categories: increased valency and decreased valency (Figueira,
1984; Allen, 1996). This classification fails to consider instances of unadult-like
mapping between appropriate thematic role assignment and the inappropriate valencymarking morphological pattern associated with a verb which children have been shown
to apply (see Allen, 1996 for examples in Inuktitut and Pye, 1988 & 1994 for Quiche).
In light of this problem, we propose an alternative classification which includes an
additional category -*Maintained Valency- which refers to instances when the
thematic role assignment of the verb is maintained while the valency-marking
morphological pattern associated with the verb is inappropriate.
The consideration of these issues and the application of this new classification
require the use of complementary research strategies when investigating the
acquisition of AS. We illustrate our argument by presenting a study on ASA by
French speaking children which relies on a range of methodological procedure (speech
production, comprehension and grammaticality judgments, using real and nonce-verbs)
and enable us to investigate children’s assignment of thematic roles to
morphologically ambiguous constructions.
The implications for theories on the acquisition of Argument Structure which have
typically emphasized children’s reliance on semantic cues (Semantic Bootstrapping,
Pinker, 1989) or syntactic cues (Gleitman, 1990), the re-interpretation of crosslinguistic findings and clinical populations are discussed.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
POSTERS
Verb movement and gap-filling
in Dutch on-line sentence processing
D. de Goede, F. Wester, R. Bastiaanse, E. Maas,
D. den Ouden, L. Shapiro & D. Swinney
We examined verb activation in Dutch matrix clauses during on-line sentence
comprehension. The canonical word order in Dutch is SOV, but in matrix clauses the
finite verb appears in the second position (SVO) (Koster, 1975). Thus, in Dutch
matrix sentences the verb is not in its canonical position.
Evidence for the relative complexity of V2 is found in neurolinguistic studies. For
Dutch-speaking individuals with Broca's aphasia, finite verbs in second position are
more difficult to produce than those in clause-final position (Bastiaanse & van
Zonneveld, 1998; Bastiaanse et al., 2002a). The same holds for young children with
and without language impairments (Bastiaanse et al., 2002b; De Jong, 1999). This
supports the idea that the clause final position is the basic position of the verb, and
that the word order in matrix clauses is more complex.
It is now well established that in non-canonical structures, a noun that is displaced
from its canonical position is reactivated on-line at that position (e.g. Love & Swinney
1996). It is unknown, however, whether displaced verbs will be similarly reactivated
at their canonical positions. If they are, then a stronger case can be made for the
possibility that listeners attempt to recover canonical word order on-line whenever
they encounter a structure that is non-canonical.
We studied the on-line activation pattern of verbs in Dutch matrix clauses by using
the Cross-Modal Lexical Priming task: participants listened to sentences and at a
specific point during each sentence, they had to make a lexical decision (word/nonword) to a probe that appeared on a screen. The word-probes that we used were
verbs either related or unrelated to the displaced verb in the matrix clause. If the
verb is activated at a particular point in a sentence, reaction times are expected to
be faster for related than for unrelated probes (priming). We used sentences as in
(1), embedded with two-argument verbs, and tested for priming at three probepoints: directly after the verb, 700 milliseconds downstream from the verb, and at
the offset of the complementizer (the point where the parser unambiguously knows
that there was a gap).
Contd/
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
POSTERS
1. De wanhopige verslaafden beroven [1] eenzaam wande[2]lende bejaarden, omdat [3]
bejaarden vaak een makkelijke prooi vormen.
= The desperate seniors rob [1] lonely stro[2]lling seniors, because [3] seniors are
often easy to attack.
The results are presented in Table 1. Summarizing, we observed significantly faster
reaction times to related probes relative to control probes (priming) both directly
after the verb and 700 milliseconds downstream from the verb. Yet, we found no
priming - no evidence for activation of the verb - at its 'canonical' position.
Table 1. Mean reaction times (in msec) and standard deviations per probe-point and
probe-type (subject-based analysis)
control probe
related probe
difference
probe-point 1
643 (77)
627 (74)
16*
probe-point 2
645 (73)
628 (71)
17*
probe-point 3
634 (77)
632 (83)
2
* p<.01 (one tailed, paired t-test)
This pattern suggests that verbs behave differently from nouns; compared to the
literature on gap-filling, verbs remain activated longer than nouns and they do not
appear to be reactivated at the gap. In our experiment the third probe position
occurred after the second argument. We suggest therefore that verbs remain active
to 'find' their arguments to theta-mark them. Once thematic roles are discharged,
we assume that activation for the verb will dissipate.
In a second experiment we are taking a closer look at the temporal aspects of verb
activation in Dutch matrix clauses. In this experiment we included a probe-point at
the offset of the object head noun (the canonical position of the verb). Furthermore
we lengthened the sentences and placed probe-point 2 at 1500 milliseconds
downstream from the verb. We will present preliminary data at the conference.
References:
Bastiaanse, R., Bol, G., Mol, van, S. & Zuckerman, S. (2002b). Verb movement and finiteness in language
impairment and language development. In: Fava, E. (ed). Clinical linguistics. Theory and applications
in speech pathology and therapy. pp. 119-130.
contd/
Bastiaanse, R., Hugen, J., Kos, M. & Zonneveld, R. van (2002a). Lexical, morphological and syntactic
aspects of verb production in agrammatic aphasics. Brain and Language, 80, 142-159.
Bastiaanse, R. & Zonneveld, R. van (1998). On the relation between verb inflection and verb position in
Dutch agrammatic aphasics. Brain and Language, 64, 165-181.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
POSTERS
Jong, J. de (1999). Specific language impairment in Dutch: Inflectional morphology and argument
structure. University of Groningen: PhD thesis.
Koster, J. (1975). Dutch as an SOV language, Linguistic Analysis, 1, 111-136.
Love, T. & Swinney, D. (1996). Coreference processing and levels of analysis in object-relative
constructions: demonstration of antecedent reactivation with the cross-model priming paradigm,
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 25 (1), 5-24.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
POSTERS
Verb morphology in developmental dyslexia:
An ERP study
Judith Rispens, Pieter Been & Frans Zwarts
Developmental dyslexia refers to impaired acquisition of reading and writing skills,
despite average intelligence and educational opportunity. Converging evidence
suggests that these literacy difficulties stem from a language disorder which
critically affects the phonological domain of language. However, recent data have
demonstrated that the language deficit may go beyond phonological problems,
affecting vocabulary and syntactic skills. For example, dyslexic children showed
delayed acquisition of inflectional verb morphology at pre-school age (Scarborough,
1990). Older dyslexic children were found to be less sensitive to verb agreement
morphology compared to normally developing children (Rispens & Koster, 2002).
Neuroimaging studies (MEG/EEG), undertaken to find neurophysiological correlates
of language deficits, suggest weaker and delayed neuronal activation for adult
dyslexic readers when processing semantic information (Helenius et al., 1999, 2002).
The present study investigates cortical activation in response to morphosyntactic
information in adult dyslexics, using Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs), focusing
on the presence and properties of the P600 component which reflects syntactic
repair/revision.
Grammatical sentences and sentences containing subject-verb agreement violations
were presented auditorily to Dutch speaking dyslexic and normal reading participants.
Detection of agreement errors was unimpaired for the dyslexic subjects, as
demonstrated by a grammaticality judgement task. The ERP data, however, showed
differences between the two groups. The distribution of the P600 was more
restricted to the right posterior brain region for the dyslexic subjects, in contrast
with the control subjects who showed a significant P600 in the left, right and
centroparietal region. In addition, the peak of the P600 component was delayed for
the dyslexic subjects in comparison with the controls.
In conclusion, the results demonstrate more restricted and delayed neuronal
activation engaged in processing verb morphology information in dyslexic subjects.
These data are in accordance with findings for semantic activation and underline the
language basis of developmental dyslexia.
Contd/
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
POSTERS
References
Helenius, P., Salmelin, R., Service, E., Connolly, J., Leinonen, S., & Lyytinen, H. (2002). Cortical
activation during spoken-word segmentation in nonreading-impaired and dyslexic adults. The Journal of
Neuroscience, 7, 2936-2944
Helenius, P., Salmelin, R., Service, E., & Connolly, J. (1999). Semantic cortical activation in dyslexic
readers. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11, 535-550.
Rispens, J. E., & Koster, C. (2002). Subject-verb agreement in children with developmental dyslexia.
Paper presented at the Euro conference: Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics. The syntax of
normal and impaired language. Corinth (Greece), June 1-6.
Scarborough, H. (1990). Very early language deficits in dyslexic children. Child Development, 61, 17281743.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
POSTERS
Verb deficit treatment in acquired aphasia:
the effect on language processing and production
Kate Tucker & Susan Edwards
This paper will report on preliminary results from an investigation into the
effectiveness of verb therapy in aphasia. Verbs are the target of therapy as a)
people with aphasia find accessing verbs difficult and b) verbs are central to
sentence structure as they carry essential semantic and syntactic information. It is a
multiple single subject study that uses an A1 B A2 design.
In the first stage, subjects are given a series of repeated assessment over a 3month period. Repeated base-line measures are taken in order to gauge the stability
of the language status. Measures include standardised assessments and continuous
speech data, namely, conversational and monologic samples. A set of 100 verbs is
used, 50 of which will be used in the therapy and 50 for control measures. Further
control measures are included in the base-line phase where improvements are not
predicted.
The second stage is the treatment stage. Therapy is given in hourly sessions, twice a
week using target verbs for four months. Subjects are required to practise at home
for 20 minutes each day. Performance is logged for each session and records of home
practice are kept. Therapy tasks are ranked from sentence completion, to naming
from description to picture naming. A hierarchy of cues are used to aid error-free
learning.
The third stage is the follow-up assessment stage. Multiple testing is repeated at
monthly intervals to reveal a) therapy effects and b) maintenance of therapy effects.
Appropriate statistical tests are used to compare pre and post-therapy scores.
Analyses of continuous speech data are made following Thompson et al’s procedures.
Improvement in verb naming will demonstrate the effectiveness of therapy but an
improvement in verb naming, sentence generation and grammatically well-formed
continuous speech will demonstrate the key role of verbs in sentence production and
the importance of treating verbs in aphasia therapy.
Reference:
Thompson, C., Shapiro, L., Li, L. and Schendel, L. (1995) Analysis of verbs and verb-argument structure:
a method for quantification of aphasic language production. Clinical Aphasiology 23, 121-140.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
POSTERS
Verb lexicons in SLI:
some experimental data from Greek
Stavroula Stavrakaki
The aim of this study is to investigate the verb production and comprehension in
Greek speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). There were two
groups of children participated in the experimental part of the study: one group of 4
SLI children and one control group of 12 normally developing children matched on
chronological age. Two experiments were carried out; in the first one a picture
description task was used while in the second one a picture-pointing task was used.
The first experiment indicated that the SLI children used a limited verb lexicon
comprising a considerable number of light verb constructions (LVCs) that were often
used in a non-adult fashion. Despite the apparent differences between the
performance of the SLI children and the control group on verb production, it is
argued that the SLI children even when they produce non-adult LVCs follow the rules
of the adult verb system in Greek. The second experiment indicated that there were
no significant differences between the two groups in the comprehension of verbs. It
is suggested that the SLI children’s problems with verb production can be attributed
to difficulties in verb retrieval rather than to completely impaired lexical
representations. The SLI children compensate for these difficulties by relying on a
limited verb lexicon and exploiting the rules of LVCs formation in Greek.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
POSTERS
The meaning and syntax
of object-nouns and action-verbs
Gabriella Vigliocco & David Vinson
We will address two basic questions. First, can we capture important aspects of the
semantic representations of words referring to objects and words referring to
actions using the same tools? Second, does the distinction between nouns and verbs
arise, in general, as a result of the underlying distinction between objects and
actions, which is highly correlated to grammatical class?
We will present modeling and experimental evidence compatible with a view in which
the same tools can in fact be used to represent the meanings of both types of words,
but crucially, in which the syntactic distinction (between nouns and verbs) and the
semantic distinction (between objects and actions) are strictly separate.
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
CONTACT DETAILS
Platform & Poster Presenters
Email
Isabelle
Barriere .......................................................... barriere@cogsci.jhu.edu
Roelien
Bastiaanse .................................................. y.r.m.bastiaanse@let.rug.nl
Maria
Black ...................................................................... maria.black@ucl.ac.uk
Deborah
Cairns .................................................................... D.K.Cairns@city.ac.uk
Erin
Carroll ................................................................... erin.carroll@ucl.ac.uk
Dieuwke
de Goede ............................................................. D.de.Goede@let.rug.nl
Judit
Druks ........................................................................... j.druks@bbk.ac.uk
Susan
Edwards ..................................................... S.I.Edwards@reading.ac.uk
Sue
Franklin ................................................................. s.e.franklin@ncl.ac.uk
Dedre
Gentner .......................................................gentner@northwesternedu
Argye Beth
Hillis.................................................................................. argye@jhmi.edu
Marjorie
Lorch ........................................................................... m.lorch@bbk.ac.uk
Jane
Marshall ................................................................. j.marshall@city.ac.uk
Clare
McCann......................................................... c.m.mccann@reading.ac.uk
Gary
Morgan .....................................................................g.morgan@city.ac.uk
Julie
Morris ..................................................................Julie.morris@ncl.ac.uk
Judith
Rispens ................................................................. J.E.Rispens@let.rug.nl
Carol
Sacchett ................................................................c.sacchett@ucl.ac.uk
Stavroula
Stavrakaki ..........................................................s.stavrakaki@ucl.ac.uk
Kate
Tucker ........................................................... k.m.tucker@reading.ac.uk
Gabriella
Vigliocco ................................................................. g.vigliocco@ucl.ac.uk
David
Vinson ........................................................................... ucjtdpv@ucl.ac.uk
Janet
Webster ..........................................................janet.webster@ncl.ac.uk
Femke
Wester ................................................................... F.Wester@let.rug.nl
Bencie
Woll................................................................................. B.woll@city.ac.uk
Celia
Woolf ............................................................. celia@phonetics.ucl.ac.uk
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
NOTES
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
NOTES
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
NOTES
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
NOTES
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
NOTES
Verbs: Properties, Processes and Problems 30th April 2003
VENUE: UCL, Dept. of Human Communication Science,
2 Wakefield Street, London WCIN IPF, UK
Contact: Cristina Gardini, CLaSS Unit, UCL,
Tel.(020)7679 4204/3, email: c.gardini@ucl.ac.uk,
Conference website. www.hcs.ucl.ac.uk/class
NOTES