Pronominal and anaphoric reference in agrammatism

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Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 423–444

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Pronominal and anaphoric reference in agrammatism

Susan Edwardsa, Spyridoula Varlokostab,�

aSchool of Psychology and Clinical Language Studies, The University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AL, UKbDivision of Linguistics, Department of Mediterranean Studies, University of the Aegean,

1 Demokratias Ave, 85100 Rhodes, Greece

Received 10 October 2006; received in revised form 25 January 2007; accepted 14 March 2007

Abstract

Subjects with Broca’s aphasia have been shown to display difficulties in on-line and off-line tasks

involving personal pronouns and reflexives. Off-line tasks have indicated more errors with pronouns

than with reflexives while the reverse has been found in on-line studies. In the present off-line study,

the comprehension of sentences containing personal pronouns and reflexives is examined in a group

of 10 agrammatic participants. Results indicate that subjects had difficulties with both pronouns and

reflexives, particularly with reflexives in sentences that contained a quantificational antecedent, as

well as with pronouns in exceptional case marking constructions. It is argued that the low

performance that subjects exhibited as a group in pronouns and reflexives indicates two distinct

impairments, one that concerns coreference and one that concerns A-dependencies, the latter being a

manifestation of a general processing failure to link positions. Poor performance on exceptional case

marking constructions compared to simple transitive sentences is claimed to be interpreted within

theories for reference assignment that distinguish between the two sentence types.

r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Agrammatism; Binding; Coreference; Pronouns; Reflexives; A-dependencies

1. Introduction

The apparent good comprehension of individuals with Broca’s aphasia is known to bevulnerable for certain syntactic structures such as passives, object clefts and relatives, aswell as some wh-questions (Grodzinsky, 2000; Hickock & Avrutin, 1995; Thompson, Tait,

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dresses: [email protected] (S. Edwards), [email protected] (S. Varlokosta).

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ARTICLE IN PRESSS. Edwards, S. Varlokosta / Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 423–444424

Ballard, & Fix, 1999). A common factor in these structures is that an element has beenmoved and that the grammatical operation of co-indexing between the moved element andthe gap, that is vital for interpretation of the sentence, is not available. Grodzinsky (1995,2000) has argued that poor comprehension of sentences containing moved verb argumentsis the consequence of trace deletion. If a trace (a phonologically silent yet syntacticallyactive category) is deleted, the listener is not able to co-index the moved constituent andassign a theta role. In sentences where the NPs are interchangeable (the boy was kissed by

the girl), the listener is unable to use the relatively preserved lexical semantics to help intheta assignment. Grodzinsky argues that the aphasic listener then uses a non-linguisticheuristic, assigning Agent to the first NP in the sentence (the boy). However, the second NP(the girl) is also assigned Agent by the passive morphology, thus the listener processes thesentence to have two Agents. In sentence–picture matching tasks where the subject isrequired to select a picture to match a sentence, the aphasic listener has two possibleinterpretations of the sentence, one where ‘the boy kisses the girl’ and the other where ‘thegirl kisses the boy’. The listener guesses and chance performance results.This pattern of sentence deficit has been confirmed by a large number of studies

although exceptions are also reported and the explanation contested (see, for example,Berndt, Mitchum, & Handiges, 1996). There are alternative explanations for thesephenomena. For example, Nicol and Love (2000) argue that because performance ofagrammatic subjects is better on plausibility judgment tasks than picture-matching tasks,agrammatic listeners must be able to process function words, semantically interpret phrasestructures and represent trace (our emphasis). Their explanation involves the reduction ofthe ability to rehearse sentences that is required by some but not all experimental tasks.Other researchers (Martin & Gupta, 2004; Miyake, Carpenter, & Just, 1994) claim thatreduction in working memory can explain the agrammatic pattern of sentencecomprehension, or that both deficits in working memory and sentence comprehensionshare a common underlying deficit. Once more, there is much disagreement (see Smith &Geva, 2000 for a discussion of the issues). It makes sense to think of a multi-facetedexplanation of the observed phenomena with perhaps some factors being more importantthan others according to exact site, extent of lesion sustained and domain of language/sentence type under investigation. Many agrammatic individuals do have reduced workingmemory although this alone cannot account for the pattern of sentence comprehensiondeficit, as Smith and Geva (2000) point out. Equally, the slow lexical activation found inmany studies may also contribute to poor performance on comprehension tasks (seeSwinney, Prather, & Love, 2000 for an overview). It would be neat, although remarkable,if one explanation such as trace deletion alone was responsible. Indeed, further studiesinvestigating the comprehension of sentences with moved constituents have demonstratedthat the predicted pattern does not always hold.Some wh-questions also have non-canonical structure. The trace deletion hypothesis

predicts that for sentences where there is a moved constituent and co-indexing required,the same agrammatic pattern of comprehension deficit should be found. The data forquestion comprehension has proved to be more complex. The predicted pattern has beenfound for which non-canonical questions such as which bear did the lion kick, but not forquestions such as who did the lion kick (Avrutin, 2000; Edwards & Salis, 2005; Hickock &Avrutin, 1995; Salis, 2006; Thompson et al., 1999). Additional explanatory factors areneeded to explain why only certain moved constituents should be problematic.Explanations to account for these findings stretch beyond a syntactic explanation to

ARTICLE IN PRESSS. Edwards, S. Varlokosta / Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 423–444 425

include pragmatics, discourse (Avrutin, 2000) and set features (Edwards & Salis, 2005;Salis, 2006). Grodzinsky’s original trace deletion hypothesis was modified to take accountof some of these findings. The trace-based account (Grodzinsky, 1995) has two parts:(a) trace deletion: traces in theta position are deleted from agrammatic representation and(b) a referential strategy: assign a referential NP a role by its linear position if it has notheta role. The need to look beyond syntactic operations may also be necessary when weexamine agrammatic comprehension of pronouns and reflexives.

Subjects with Broca’s aphasia have difficulties in on-line and off-line tasks involvingpersonal pronouns and reflexives. However, in off-line tasks, they have been shown tomake more errors with pronouns than with reflexives (Grodzinsky, Wexler, Chien,Marakovitz, & Solomon, 1993) while the reverse has been found in an on-line study (Love,Nicol, Swinney, Hickok, & Zurif, 1998). In a preliminary off-line study, Varlokosta andEdwards (2003) found that listeners with Broca’s aphasia had problems with reflexivesrather than pronouns, as in the Love et al. (1998) study. In the next section, we review thefindings and basic claims of the off-line and on-line studies on the interpretation ofpersonal pronouns and reflexives in Broca’s aphasia.

2. The interpretation of pronouns and reflexives in Broca’s aphasia

2.1. Off-line studies

The comprehension of pronominals and anaphors in Broca’s aphasic individuals hasbeen assessed in Grodzinsky et al. (1993). Grodzinsky et al. (1993) showed that six English-speaking agrammatic individuals performed at chance level in conditions that involvedpersonal pronouns with a referential antecedent (1) but above chance level in otherconditions, that is, in conditions that involved personal pronouns with quantificationalantecedents (2) or conditions that involved reflexives (3 and 4):

Papa Beari covered himj=ni ðcoreferential interpretation 56% of the timeÞ (1)

Every beari covered himj=ni (2)

Papa Beari covered himself i=nj (3)

Every beari covered himself i=nj (4)

The pattern observed with agrammatic individuals by Grodzinsky et al. (1993) is similarto that found for young children, known as the Delay of Principle B Effect (DPBE)(Avrutin & Wexler, 1992; Chien & Wexler, 1990 among others). The DPBE in childlanguage is attributed by a number of researchers to an asymmetry between syntax andpragmatics, specifically between binding and coreference (Chien & Wexler, 1990;Grodzinsky & Reinhart, 1993). This is also the line of explanation put forward byGrodzinsky et al. (1993) for Broca’s aphasia.

In the Government and Binding Approach (Chomsky, 1981, 1986), the interpretation ofreflexives and personal pronouns is regulated by two structural principles, Principle A andPrinciple B of the Binding Theory. Principle A states roughly that reflexives must be locallybound, whereas Principle B specifies that pronouns must not be locally bound. According


to Chomsky (1981, p. 188), the two binding principles are formulated as follows:

Principle A : An anaphor is bound in its governing category:

Principle B : A pronominal is free in its governing category: ð5Þ

Binding is defined in terms of c-command1 and co-indexation (i.e. same referential index).Governing category is defined as the minimal domain (i.e. the minimal IP for our purposeshere) that contains the anaphor/pronominal, its governor and an accessible subject. Thesetwo conditions account for the standard cases of anaphora in (6):

½IP Johni thinks that ½IP Billj likes himself ni=j ��. (6a)

½IP Johni thinks that ½IP Billj likes himi=nj��. (6b)

In (6a), himself must be bound by Bill and cannot be bound by John, since only Bill isinside the governing category of the reflexive (i.e. the lower IP). On the other hand, him in(6b) cannot be bound by Bill, because Bill is inside the pronoun’s governing category (i.e.the lower IP again), but may be coreferential with John, which is outside the governingcategory of the pronoun.For Chomsky (1981, 1986), pronominals fall under Principle B regardless of the nature

of their antecedent. Thus, Principle B imposes restrictions on the interpretation of personalpronouns that co-occur with referential (7) as well as quantificational antecedents (8):

John likes him

ðaÞ Johni likes himj ðJohn likes BillÞ:

ðbÞ �Johni likes himi ðJohn likes JohnÞ: ð7Þ

No president hates him

ðaÞ No Presidenti hates himj ðNo President hates George BushÞ.

ðbÞ �No Presidenti hates himi ðNo President hates himselfÞ. ð8Þ

Reinhart (1983, 1986), on the other hand, argues that binding and coreference aregoverned by different modules of the grammar and that pronouns fall under Principle Bwith respect to their bound variable interpretation (8) but not with respect to theircoreferential reading (7). Coreference relations are constrained by a pragmatic principle,Rule I:

Rule I : Intrasentential coreference ðGrodzinsky & Reinhart; 1993Þ,

NP a cannot corefer with NP b if replacing it with g; g a variable,

A�bound by b; yields an indistinguishable interpretation: ð9Þ

According to Rule I, intrasentential coreference with a c-commanding antecedent ispossible only when it yields an interpretation that can be distinguished from the co-indexedrepresentation (i.e. the bound variable reading) of the same string. This is not the case in(7). If we replace the NP him with the A-bound variable himself, the resultinginterpretation is indistinguishable from the coreferential one (i.e. truth conditionally, they

1c-command: A node A c-commands a node B, iff:

(i) A does not dominate B, and B does not dominate A.

(ii) The first branching node that dominates A, also dominates B.


mean the same thing, namely that ‘John has the property of self-liking’). But there isalways an alternative representation with John and him contra-indexed. However,coreference can be established between two counter-indexed elements. In other words,two counter-indexed elements can still be co-valued (i.e. have the same semantic value) andPrinciple B can still be respected. Rule I says that coreference can be established if it yieldsan interpretation that is distinguishable from the co-indexed one. But this is not the case in(7). However, coreference can be licit in appropriate pragmatic contexts like (10). In thesecases, a bound variable representation yields the proposition that ‘even Bill has theproperty of self-hating’ or ‘Bill has the property of self-adoring’. However, this propositionis truth conditionally distinct from the proposition that ‘even Bill hates the same man, Bill’or ‘Bill adores the same man, Bill’.

ðaÞ Everybody hates Bill: Even Bill hates him ðhim ¼ BillÞ.

ðbÞ I know what Bill and Monica have in common:Monica adores Bill

and Bill adores him too ðhim ¼ BillÞ. ð10Þ

Grodzinsky & Reinhart (1993) argue that the DPBE in contexts with pronouns andreferential antecedents, like (1), is due to young children’s processing incapability toexecute Rule I. A similar explanation is proposed by Grodzinsky et al. (1993) foragrammatic individuals’ failures in these conditions. The explanation goes like this. Toapply Rule I, a listener must maintain two structural representations in memory at thesame time, one with the interpretation of the pronoun as reflexive (the bound variable one)and one with an interpretation of the pronoun as non-reflexive (the coreferential one). Dueto limitations on working memory, some children and agrammatic speakers cannotmaintain the two representations in memory long enough to decide which is the intendedone, so they adopt a guessing strategy about the coreference relation between the pronounand the local antecedent, which leads them to chance level performance.

Grodzinsky et al.’s (1993) claim that agrammatic performance regarding thecomprehension of pronouns and reflexives reflects a processing failure that arises whenagrammatic individuals have to compute non-syntactic, discourse-related principles isfurther supported by Pinango and Burkhardt (2001). Pinango and Burkhardt (2001) used across-modal lexical decision interference task on two Broca’s aphasic individuals andfound that they showed longer delay in processing logophoric (11) than non-logophoricreflexives (12):

The girli hid a present behind herself i, (11)

The lawyeri who was young defended herself i. (12)

The reflexive herself and its antecedent the lawyer in (12) are co-arguments of the samepredicate, the predicate defend. In contrast, the reflexive herself and its antecedent the girl

in (11) are not co-arguments of the same predicate; the antecedent is an argument of thepredicate hid while the reflexive is an argument of the predicate behind. According toReinhart and Reuland (1993), the interpretation of the former (i.e. the non-logophoricreflexive) is obtained on purely syntactic grounds while the interpretation of the later (i.e.the logophoric reflexive) needs in addition access to discourse principles. Since theprocessing of logophors requires access to more than one levels of representation (syntaxand discourse), it places an extra computational load to the system. According to Pinangoand Burkhardt (2001), the comprehension deficit in Broca’s aphasia is due to an inability


to construct syntactic structure on time, thus interpretative processes that depend on fullyformed syntactic representations, such as logophoricity, are not carried out in time.However, there is counter evidence to Grodzinsky et al.’s (1993) claim. Varlokosta and

Edwards (2003) conducted a study which did not replicate the results reported inGrodzinsky et al. (1993), although the methodology used was similar. The three (3)agrammatic English-speaking subjects tested by Varlokosta and Edwards (2003) did notexhibit chance level performance in the referential pronoun condition (1) but providedcorrect responses 89% of the time. In contrast, the subjects’ performance in conditions thatinvolved reflexives was worse, with 72% target-like responses for the reflexive conditionwith a referential antecedent (3) and 50% for the reflexive with a quantificationalantecedent (4). Varlokosta and Edwards (2003) argue that the poor performance of theirsubjects in reflexive conditions is due to a deficit in forming A-dependencies and, therefore,could simply be a different manifestation of the same deficiency as the one observed in thecomprehension of passive sentences (Bastiaanse & Edwards, 2004; Caplan, Waters, &Hildebrandt, 1997; Grodzinsky, 1995, 2000). Varlokosta and Edwards (2003) examined alsothe interpretation of pronouns in so-called exceptional case marking (ECM) constructions,such as (13), a condition that was not examined in the Grodzinsky et al. (1993) study2;

The motheri saw herni=j dance: (13)

The three agrammatic subjects tested in the study showed below chance levelperformance for the mismatch ECM condition (33% correct responses).3

In a more recent study, Ruigendijk, Vasic, and Avrutin (2006) used a sentencecomprehension task to examine the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives in simpletransitive sentences and in ECM constructions. Ruigendijk et al. (2006) tested sevenDutch-speaking aphasic individuals and found no asymmetry between the interpretationof pronouns and reflexives in simple transitive sentences. Their agrammatic speakersachieved high performance on reflexives (8/105 incorrect responses) but also on pronouns(8/104 incorrect responses), although they performed worse on these sentences comparedto the non-brain-damaged controls. However, the interpretation of pronouns in ECMconstructions was more difficult for the agrammatic subjects than the interpretation ofpronouns in simple transitive sentences. Their performance on ECM sentences was atchance level, with 42/102 incorrect responses. Ruigendijk et al. (2006) argue that theseresults can be interpreted within theories for reference assignment that can distinguishbetween the two sentence types (simple transitive sentences and ECM sentences), such asReinhart and Reuland’s (1993) Reflexivity Theory or Reuland’s (2001) Primitives ofBinding account. Ruigendijk et al. (2006) attribute the difference in performance betweentheir subjects and Grodzinsky et al.’s (1993) subjects, as far as the interpretation ofpronouns in simple transitive sentences, to the different methodologies used in the twostudies. Grodzinsky et al. (1993) used a truth value judgment task, whereas Ruigendijk etal. (2006) employed a picture selection task, which, according to the authors, is much easiersince subjects are not forced to evaluate the acceptability of a specific interpretation of asentence, as depicted in a picture, but can choose an interpretation (i.e. a picture) that

2In ECM constructions, like (13), the subject of the embedded non-finite clause is assigned accusative case by

the matrix verb, as if it were its object.3Their performance on the match ECM condition was poor too, although better compared to the mismatch

(67% correct responses).


matches the sentence best. Nonetheless, Varlokosta and Edwards (2003) used a truth valuejudgment task, similar to that used in the Grodzinsky et al. (1993) study, and found closeto target-like performance in the conditions with pronouns in simple transitive sentences.This indicates that the different results in the above studies cannot be due to the differentmethodologies used but perhaps to the heterogeneity of the agrammatic population. Wereturn to this point in the discussion.

2.2. On-line studies

The interpretation of personal pronouns and reflexives in Broca’s aphasia has also beenassessed in an on-line experiment by Love et al. (1998). Love et al. (1998) used a cross-modallexical decision task in which subjects heard a sentence that contained a pronoun or areflexive and its antecedent. After they heard the pronoun/reflexive, a letter string (eithersemantically related to the antecedent or not) was flashed on the computer screen. Thereaction time to this letter string (i.e. the time it took for the subjects to indicate whether itwas a word or not) for the semantically related words was compared to that of thesemantically unrelated words. When the reaction time for the semantically related words waslower than for the semantically unrelated ones, Love et al. (1998) concluded that subjects hadidentified the antecedent of the pronoun/reflexive. Three (3) Broca’s aphasics were examinedin two conditions: (a) correct vs. aberrant antecedent; (b) pronoun vs. reflexive. For example,in the sentence The boxeri said that the skierj in the hospital had blamed himi/*j/himselfj/*i for

the recent injury, the letter string that was flashed on the screen represented a wordsemantically related to skier when the ‘correct antecedent’ condition of reflexive binding wasassessed, but in the ‘aberrant antecedent’ condition, the letter string would represent a wordsemantically related to boxer. Love et al.’s (1998) subjects exhibited no priming for reflexivesand only aberrant priming for pronouns (i.e. priming for the wrong antecedent).

It seems, therefore, that the off-line and on-line studies present quite controversialfindings. The off-line study by Grodzinsky et al. (1993) indicates problems with referentialpronouns while the on-line study by Love et al. (1998) reveals problems with reflexivesrather than pronouns. Can these controversial findings be due to the differentmethodologies used? The results of the off-line study by Varlokosta and Edwards (2003)do not support a methodology-based explanation, since more errors were found withreflexives in this study than with referential pronouns.

A serious shortcoming of the previous studies is that they are based on a small numberof subjects: six in the Grodzinsky et al. (1993) study, two in the Pinango and Burkhardt(2001) study, three in the Love et al. (1998) study and three in the Varlokosta and Edwards(2003) study. In the present off-line study, we examine the comprehension of sentencescontaining personal pronouns and reflexives in a larger group of participants with Broca’saphasia and we compare results across two groupings of participants.

3. Methodology

3.1. Participants

Ten (10) English-speaking agrammatic subjects are included in this study. Seven (7)of them were new subjects (MC, JW, PH, AH, PT, AF, RW) and three (3) of them (GH,RB, TP) are the subjects used in Varlokosta and Edwards (2003). There were two selection

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Table 1

Participant information: Agrammatic participants and VAST scores for agrammatic subjects and controls

Initial Sex D.O.B.: Age Date referred VAST Score

Canonical (%) Non-canonical (%)

MC M 19.12.51: 51 January 1999 85 45

JW M 20.07.23: 79 October 2001 65 60

PH M 11.11.20: 82 October 1998 80 70

AH M 10.04.28: 74 August 1996 65 60

PT M 24.04.30: 62 February 2002 45 50

AF F 30.11.39: 63 July 2001 65 60

RW F 06.11.18: 84 February 1993 95 60

GH F 05.11.73: 30 August 1998 75 50

RB M 06.04.25: 77 July 2003 90 65

TP M 09.02.39: 63 October 1994 90 75

Total 755 595

Average (%) Mean age: 66.5 yrs 75.5 59.5

Control data (%) 31 M Mean age: 55.5 yrs 99 99

48 F

S. Edwards, S. Varlokosta / Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 423–444430

criteria used. Subjects had to exhibit the typical Broca’s spoken output and theircomprehension of canonical sentences had to be better than that of non-canonical in theverb and sentence test (VAST—Bastiaanse, Edwards, & Rispens, 2002). As a group, oursubjects showed well above chance comprehension for canonical sentences and close tochance for non-canonical ones. Canonical sentences were better comprehended than non-canonical sentences by all subjects except PT. Control data for the sentence comprehensiontest are given in the VAST while control data for the pronoun/reflexive test was collectedseparately for this study. Table 1 lists the agrammatic participants’ details and results ofthe sentence comprehension test for the agrammatic participants and for a group of 79controls. Table 2 provides details of the controls used for the pronoun/reflexive test.

3.2. Materials and procedure

A version of the truth value judgment task with pictures (Chien & Wexler, 1990) wasused in the experiments (Varlokosta, 2002). This task is used to investigate the possibilitythat the subjects’ grammar permits them to assign to a sentence a meaning that is ruled outby a grammatical constraint (in this case, Principles A and B of the Binding Theory) (Crain& McKee, 1985; Crain & Thornton, 1998). Subjects were presented with meaning–utter-ance pairs and asked to decide if each pair was true or false according to a cartoon picturethey saw. The participants were expected to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ if they could, or to point toeither a smiling face or a frowning face drawn on a sheet of paper in front of them (at leastthose that had severe speech production difficulties).The test conditions were: sentences containing a pronoun with a referential antecedent

(14), sentences containing a reflexive with a referential antecedent (15), sentencescontaining a pronoun with a quantificational antecedent (16), sentences containing areflexive with a quantificational antecedent (17) and ECM constructions with a pronoun(18). The last type was included because it has been shown that children display a stronger

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Table 2

Information on control participants for the pronoun/reflexive test

Initial Sex D.O.B. Age

AE F 25.09.75 31

HM F 20.05.66 40

SB F 11.07.54 52

JB F 26.11.50 56

AO F 09.01.40 66

ED F 19.03.18 88

PL M 23.03.79 37

IO M 25.11.50 56

JB M 25.01.46 60

PS M 17.04.35 71

Mean age 55.7 years

S. Edwards, S. Varlokosta / Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 423–444 431

DPBE in these constructions in languages like English or Dutch (Philip & Coopmans,1996). Moreover, children display a DPBE in ECM constructions even in languages likeSpanish or Greek, where no DPBE is present in simple transitive sentences with clitics, asshown by Baauw, Escobar, & Philip (1997) and Varlokosta (1999/2000).

Is the father drawing him? ðPRONÞ: (14)

Is the father drawing himself? ðRFLÞ: (15)

Is every father drawing him? ðQNT PRONÞ: (16)

Is every father drawing himself? ðQNT RFLÞ: (17)

Does the father see him dance? ðECMÞ: (18)

Each test sentence followed an introductory (context building) sentence that set thecontext from which pronouns and reflexives would obtain their reference. For example, atest sentence like (14) was prefaced by an introductory sentence like: ‘‘This is a pictureabout drawing. Here we have a father and a boy’’. Every test condition was presented intwo occasions: one where the true reading matched the picture depicted (the match) (e.g.condition (14) was presented with a picture where ‘a father was drawing a boy’) and onewhere the picture was reversed, thus resulting in a false reading (the mismatch) (e.g.condition (14) was presented with a picture where ‘a father was drawing himself’) (seeAppendix for examples of the pictures used for the mismatch reading of each condition).The verbs used were: dry, cover, touch, draw, look at, and hug. There were six trials forconditions (14)–(17) for each reading (the match and the mismatch) and four trials for eachreading of condition (18). The total number of test sentences was 56. Sentence delivery wasrandomised. A preliminary screen was carried out to ensure that subjects understood themeaning of the verbs and quantifiers used. The screen included sentences like (19) thatassessed understanding of the meaning of the verbs and of the specific sentence structureused in the task, sentences like (20) that assessed knowledge of the quantifier in question,and sentences like (21), to ensure that any effect in the sentences containing quantifiers


were not due to the choice of quantifier used (see also Grodzinsky et al., 1993).

Is the father drawing the boy? (19)

Is every father drawing the boy? (20)

Are all the fathers drawing him? (21)

4. Results

Our control subjects scored 97–100% correct in the first four conditions and slightlylower, 93% correct, in the fifth condition, the ECM sentences. Two of the controls (AOand PS) made three errors each; ED made two errors; three controls (HM, SB, IO) madeone error and the remaining four controls made no error. Table 3 presents the distributionof scores for the 10 control participants. All aphasic participants made considerably moreerrors and it is on these performances that we will focus. Table 4 presents the distributionof scores for the 10 agrammatic participants and Table 5 presents correct responses foreach agrammatic participant.Subjects performed better in the match than in the mismatch conditions overall. By

using a z-test, we examined the difference between the percentage of match and mismatchconditions in confidence level 5% (a ¼ 0.05) and we found it significant (|Z| ¼ 7.71541.96 ¼ Za/2). Moreover, performance was better on the match than on the mismatch con-ditions for each sentence type (PRON: |Z| ¼ 3.8841.96 ¼ Za/2; QNT PRON: |Z| ¼ 3.3741.96 ¼ Za/2; RFL: |Z| ¼ 2.79741.96 ¼ Za/2; QNT RFL: |Z| ¼ 5.04841.96 ¼ Za/2; ECM:|Z| ¼ 2.6841.96 ¼ Za/2).We will thus focus our discussion on performance in the mismatch conditions, where

difficulties are revealed. A first observation is that our subjects display difficulties with allsentence types. They performed at around chance level in the PRON (p-value ¼ 0.18),QNT PRON (p-value ¼ 0.448) and RFL condition (p-value ¼ 0.312) and below chance inthe QNT RFL (p-value ¼ 0.187) and ECM condition (p-value ¼ 0.177).4 Although there isno statistically significant difference between the fourth and the fifth condition, i.e.between QNT RFL and ECM (|Z| ¼ 0.304408o1.96 ¼ Za/2), there is a statisticallysignificant difference between each of these two conditions and the other three, that is,PRON, QNT PRON and RFL (QNT RFL and PRON: |Z| ¼ 2.20991441.96 ¼ Za/2;QNT RFL and QNT PRON: |Z| ¼ 2.08341.96 ¼ Za/2; QNT RFL and RFL:|Z| ¼ 2.41031441.96 ¼ Za/2; ECM and PRON: |Z| ¼ 2.97938141.96 ¼ Za/2; ECM andQNT PRON: |Z| ¼ 2.60177541.96 ¼ Za/2; ECM and RFL: |Z| ¼ 2.4494941.96 ¼ Za/2).As far as the effect of the antecedent, although there is no statistically significant differencebetween pronouns and reflexives when the antecedent is referential (PRON vs. RFL:|Z| ¼ 0.224o1.96 ¼ Za/2), performance fell significantly for reflexives when the sentencecontained a quantificational antecedent (QNT PRON vs. QNT RFL: |Z| ¼ 2.08341.96 ¼ Za/2). We observe that the presence of a quantificational antecedent has an effect onthe subjects’ performance although not statistically significant in the case of pronouns

4On the other hand, performance on the match conditions was above chance for PRON (p-value ¼ 0.002),

QNT PRON (p-value ¼ 0.002), RFL (p-value ¼ 0.002) and QNT RFL (p-value ¼ 0.002), but not for ECM

(p-value ¼ 0.503).

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Table 3

Distribution of scores for the 10 controls on the five sentence types of the pronoun/reflexive test

Sentence Mismatch correct Match correct

Raw score % Raw score %

PRON 58/60 97 60/60 100

QNT PRON 60/60 100 59/60 98

RFL 60/60 100 58/60 97

QNT RFL 60/60 100 60/60 100

ECM 37/40 93 37/40 93

Table 4

Distribution of scores for the 10 agrammatic subjects on the five sentence types of the pronoun/reflexive test

Sentence Mismatch correct Match correct

Raw score % Raw score %

PRON 37/60 62 55/60 92

QNT PRON 34/60 57 51/60 85

RFL 36/60 60 50/60 83

QNT RFL 23/60 38 50/60 83

ECM 14/40 35 26/40 65

Table 5

Number of correct responses for each agrammatic participant in the mismatch conditions of the pronoun/reflexive

test

PRON QNT PRON RFL QNT RFL ECM

MC 1/6 0/6 3/6 0/6 0/4

JW 2/6 4/6 5/6 3/6 1/4

PH 5/6 4/6 4/6 3/6 3/4

AH 2/6 3/6 3/6 2/6 0/4

PT 3/6 0/6 2/6 0/6 2/4

AF 4/6 3/6 1/6 2/6 0/4

RW 4/6 6/6 5/6 4/6 4/4

GH 6/6 5/6 5/6 3/6 2/4

RB 5/6 4/6 3/6 2/6 1/4

TP 5/6 5/6 5/6 4/6 1/4

Total 37/60 34/60 36/60 23/60 14/40

S. Edwards, S. Varlokosta / Journal of Neurolinguistics 20 (2007) 423–444 433

(pronouns: |Z| ¼ 0.557o1.96 ¼ Za/2; reflexives: |Z| ¼ 2.41031441.96 ¼ Za/2). Last, theagrammatic speakers’ performance was worse in contexts where the pronoun wasembedded in an ECM sentence as compared to simple transitive contexts (|Z| ¼2.645941.96 ¼ Za/2).


Table 5 shows that individual performance varied; subject MC was the lowest performerwith only four correct responses across all mismatch conditions while subject RW had 23total correct responses in the mismatch conditions. Four subjects (JW, AH, PT, AF) hadlow performances in the condition that involved reflexives with a quantificationalantecedent, although for each of these subjects there was one other condition where anequally low score or a lower score was gained. Table 5 also reveals that the condition thatinvolved reflexives with a quantificational antecedent was the hardest one even for subjectsthat performed well in the other conditions (PH, GH, RB, TP). If we look carefully at theindividual data, we can isolate a group of four participants (PH, GH, RB, TP) that displaythe opposite pattern than that observed by Grodzinsky et al. (1993), i.e., they display goodperformance in the condition that involves pronouns with referential antecedents but atrend to lower performance in the conditions that involve pronouns with quantificationalantecedents as well as reflexives with referential antecedents, and chance level performancein the condition that involves reflexives with quantificational antecedents. Although thedifference in performance between PRON and QNT PRON, as well as between PRONand RFL is not statistically significant (|Z| ¼ 1.339068o1.96 ¼ Za/2 and |Z| ¼1.567747o1.96 ¼ Za/2, respectively), the difference in performance between PRON andQNT RFL is significant (|Z| ¼ 2.71198141.96 ¼ Za/2) for these four participants.

5. Discussion

We will discuss first the simple transitive cases, i.e. the first four conditions (PRON,QNT PRON, RFL, QNT RFL). Our study did not replicate the results reported inGrodzinsky et al. (1993). Unlike Grodzinsky et al.’s (1993) subjects, the agrammaticindividuals that participated in our study exhibited low performance in the mismatchcondition that involved not only pronouns but reflexives as well. Moreover, our subjectsscored very low on those conditions that involved quantificational antecedents,particularly in sentences with reflexives, again in contrast to the results reported inGrodzinsky et al. (1993). Therefore, our data reveals a global impairment that affects bothpronouns and reflexives with referential as well as with quantificational antecedents.Furthermore, our data reveals a significant problem with the condition that involvesreflexives with quantificational antecedents, where performance dropped below chance.If we look at the individual responses on Table 5, we observe that none of our subjects

showed the DPBE pattern found in Grodzinsky et al. (1993) and that those subjects thatperformed very low on the PRON condition (pronouns with referential antecedents) alsoperformed low on either all other conditions (MC, AH, PT) or on some of them (JW).Moreover, all participants in our study scored over 80% correct at the screen sentences,showing that they understood the meaning of the verbs and quantifiers used in the task.Two questions arise given the discrepancy between Grodzinsky et al.’s data and ours.

Why do the two studies produce different results? How can we explain the globalimpairment that we found in our data?The differences between Grodzinsky et al.’s (1993) study and our study may potentially

be due to the severity of aphasia in the participants of each study, the selection criteria ineach study, the methodology used or the range of deficits within agrammatism. Let usexplore these possible explanations.A common explanation that is evoked when findings are not replicated is that findings

differ because subjects in the replicating study differ in some way from those in the original


study. Our subjects do differ on some variables. Subjects for this study were alldiagnosed on clinical tests, as in the Grodzinsky et al. study, and had classic agrammaticoutput. Details of severity of aphasia, as measured by a clinical test, are not availablefor either group of subjects, although scores on the subtest of the sentence comprehensiontest of the VAST (Bastiaanse et al., 2002) have been given above for our subjects.Comparison of total number of errors for each subject made across the four comparableconditions under investigation suggests that our subjects were performing less well. This initself does not lead to an explanation of our findings, as one might expect that a morepronounced profile would emerge from a more impaired group, not a different profileof errors. However, the severity does point to a more complex profile of deficits, as weargue below.

Are there other variables that could account for the different findings? Our subjects, as agroup, were approximately 10 years older than those in the Grodzinsky et al. study,although we do not consider this is material to the current discussion. Could variations inlesions sites account for the differences? The details of lesion site given by Grodzinsky et al.(1993) show individual variation and, in some cases, widespread damage. Sites of lesion forLD, RD and EM, for example, extend into the temporal region. Unfortunately, detailedneurological information was not available for our subjects but we contend that the highlyfractionated comprehension difficulties we are discussing are unlikely to be explained byappealing to different lesions sites. As with previous studies investigating thesephenomena, our subject selection was primarily based on clinical signs.

It is also highly unlikely that the discrepancy between the two studies is due to themethodologies used. Both studies used a version of the truth value judgment task withpictures, in which subjects were forced to evaluate the acceptability of a specificinterpretation of a sentence, as depicted in a picture. Grodzinsky et al. (1993) used thematerials devised for children by Chien and Wexler (1990) with minimal changes in theprocedure to fit the special characteristics of the population tested. In our study, weadapted the rationale of Chien and Wexler’s (1990) task but we devised our own materials(Varlokosta, 2002). Although only one of the verbs used in our study (the verb touch) wasalso used in the Grodzinsky et al. (1993) study, we did not observe any particular effect dueto the use of a specific verb in our study. The errors of our aphasic participants involvedsentences containing each of the test verbs and the errors of our control participantsinvolved all but one of the verbs (touch). Although six of the control errors involved theverb look, the errors were spread across the sentence types. Thus, there is no evidence thatour choice of verbs affected the pattern of errors found.

Let us now explore the patterns observed in the two studies as well as possibleexplanations for them:

(a)
Participants in the Grodzinsky et al. (1993) study performed as a group poorly only inthe condition that involved pronouns with referential antecedents. The authorsattribute this asymmetry between the PRON sentence type and the other three sentencetypes to a breakdown of Rule I, the pragmatic rule that determines coreferencebetween two counter-indexed elements (see Section 2.1).
(b)
The participants of our study as a group showed difficulties with all conditions, withthe QNT RFL condition being much worse than all other three conditions. Thus, itappears that subjects in our study are faced with a more global impairment that affectsboth pronouns and reflexives.


However, despite the fact that we cannot find the pattern observed by Grodzinsky et al.(1993) in our group, we can isolate in our data a group of four participants (PH, GH,
RB, TP) that display the opposite pattern than that observed by Grodzinsky et al. (1993),i.e. good performance at the condition that involves pronouns with referential antecedentsbut lower performance at the other three conditions. This is the pattern observed byVarlokosta and Edwards (2003) too with three of these participants (GH, RB, TP). Morespecifically, these four participants show high performance as a group in the condition thatinvolves pronouns with referential antecedents but a trend to lower performance in theconditions that involve pronouns with quantificational antecedents as well as reflexiveswith referential antecedents, and chance level performance in the condition that involvesreflexives with quantificational antecedents. According to Varlokosta and Edwards (2003),the rather poor performance of agrammatic individuals in reflexive conditions does notnecessarily indicate a problem with Principle A. The asymmetry between the PRONcondition and the other three conditions (QNT PRON, RFL, QNT RFL) indicatesproblems with cases that involve an A-dependency. Such a pattern could be due to a deficitin establishing certain syntactic dependencies, such as binding relations. We knowindependently that agrammatic individuals have problems with the comprehension ofpassive sentences (Grodzinsky, 1995, 2000). It appears, thus, that agrammatic subjects mayhave a deficiency in forming A-dependencies and, therefore, the low performance in theQNT PRON, RFL and QNT RFL conditions could simply be a different manifestationof the same deficiency. In other words, according to Varlokosta and Edwards (2003),the failure observed in sentences that involve binding (RFL, QNT PRON, and QNT RFL)is a manifestation of a general processing failure to link positions, and such deficit isalso compatible with poor performance with non-canonical structures that involve anA-dependency.We would like to maintain this idea here and provide more theoretical reasons why such
an explanation could be on the right track. Recent reformulations of the Binding Theory,within Chomsky’s (1995, 2000) Minimalist Program spirit, have eliminated Principles Aand B, and derive the locality restrictions that hold in these cases through independentprinciples of the theory (Hornstein, 2001; Kayne, 2002; Reuland, 2001). For example, inHornstein’s (2001) approach, binding is reduced to the theory of movement. For Hornstein(2001), both reflexives and bound pronouns are not lexical items but grammaticalformatives introduced by the computational system. Moreover, bound pronouns are notgrouped with referential (e.g. deictic) pronouns. Deictic pronouns are lexical elements,members of the numeration. According to Hornstein (2001), there is a clear distinctionbetween reflexives and bound pronouns, on the one hand, all instances of A-movement,and referential pronouns, on the other hand. This theoretical distinction provides a tool tointerpret our data, as it predicts a possible dissociation between reflexives and boundpronouns, on the one hand, and referential pronouns, on the other hand. Therefore, onemight expect that an impaired population that faces difficulties with passive constructionsor other non-canonical structures that involve movement, will also face difficulties withcases that are instances of binding, since the locality restrictions that hold in these cases arederived through movement. In all of these cases, an A-dependency is involved between themoved element and the base position. In contrast, referential pronouns are not reduced tomovement, hence they may be intact in this population.Assuming that the above hypothesis provides an explanation for the pattern of

performance observed with four of our subjects (PH, GH, RB, TP), it remains a question


how we can explain the impairments observed when we analyse all of our subjects as agroup. We propose that the low performance that our subjects exhibited as a group withpronouns and reflexives in simple transitive sentences is the result of two distinctimpairments, one that concerns A-dependencies and one that concerns coreference.

Let us focus a bit more on the low performance our subjects showed in reflexiveconstructions, particularly in those that involved quantificational antecedents. Similar butfar more severe problems in the interpretation of reflexives have been also observed inother impaired populations. Perovic (2001) reports that the performance of four English-speaking individuals with Down’s syndrome was at ceiling in tasks involving theinterpretation of pronouns with either a referential or a quantificational antecedent both inthe match and mismatch conditions but much poorer in all conditions involving reflexives,with performances ranging between a little bit above chance to below chance. Moreover,Van der Lely and Stollwerck (1997) report that their 12 English-speaking grammatical SLIchildren showed a marked decrease in correct responses for both the match and mismatchconditions that involved reflexives with quantificational antecedents. This conditionproved to be hard even for Chien and Wexler’s (1990) 4- and 5-year olds, who scoredpoorly in the sentences involving reflexives with quantificational antecedents for both thematch and the mismatch conditions.

The significantly lower performance of our subjects in the condition that involvedreflexives with quantificational antecedents may be due to the fact that in this condition,subjects are asked to construct and accept a bound variable reading. Grimshaw and Rosen(1990) argue that the low performance observed with 4- and 5-year olds with the quantifierconditions may be due to the complexity of constructing the distributive reading associatedwith bound variable interpretations. According to Grimshaw and Rosen (1990), childrenfail to construct the bound variable reading for sentences that involve quantificationalantecedents on a percentage of trials. As a result, when a reflexive is involved in thesentence, children’s performance drops, as they are asked to accept an interpretation theyare unable to construct. In contrast, performance does not drop in sentences withpronouns and quantificational antecedents, as in these cases subjects are asked to reject thebound variable interpretation. Van der Lely and Stollwerck (1997) adopt this explanationto account for their SLI children’s performance on the QNT RFL condition. Weconjecture that a similar explanation could hold for the low performance that our subjectsexhibit in this condition.

Last, let us discuss our subjects’ performance on the ECM sentences. Our subjectsshowed below chance level performance for the mismatch ECM condition (see Table 4).These results are consistent with the results reported in Varlokosta and Edwards (2003)and in Ruigendijk et al. (2006). Ruigendijk et al. (2006) argue that the poor performanceon ECM constructions compared to simple transitive constructions can be interpretedwithin theories for reference assignment that can distinguish between the two sentencetypes, such as Reuland’s (2001) Primitives of Binding account.5 We will explore theirexplanation, as we believe that it is on the right track, and we will argue that our results

5Within Chomsky’s (1981, 1986) Binding Theory in the Government and Binding Approach, there is no

distinction between simple transitive sentences and ECM constructions, thus it is not possible to offer an

explanation for the different pattern observed in these sentences, since both cases are subject to Principle B (for

details see Ruigendijk et al., 2006).


can contribute to decide between two possible alternatives that Ruigendijk et al. (2006)offer for the impairment of their agrammatic speakers.According to the Primitives of Binding account, referential dependencies can be

established at different levels, and the number of interpretative steps necessary for forminga referential dependency determines the cost of the operation and thus the choice of level.6

Anaphoric elements, such as the Dutch zich ‘himself’, establish their referentialdependencies through feature checking in the narrow syntax. Pronouns, on the otherhand, cannot form a referential dependency with their antecedents syntactically, as theycarry a number feature, which being interpretable cannot be deleted. Pronouns canestablish discourse-related dependencies (coreference) or bound variable dependencies.These dependencies, however, are more costly compared to syntactic ones because theyinvolve operations within different levels. Hence, pronouns can enter such dependenciesonly if a cheaper option is not available. As a result, in simple transitive and ECMsentences such as John covered him and John saw him dance, respectively, the interpretationon which him is John, is ruled out because (a) a syntactic dependency cannot be formedbetween the pronoun and its antecedent due to the impossibility of deleting the numberfeature and (b) because of the impossibility of establishing a non-syntactic dependencygiven that a syntactic one is in principle possible in these sentences. However, there is adifference between simple transitive and ECM constructions that lies on the fact that thepronoun and its antecedent are co-arguments in the former construction but not in thelatter. Interpreting the pronoun and its antecedent as one argument in the former case isnot possible because it would violate the arity reduction restrictions of the predicate (i.e. itwould change the number of its arguments) which is possible only in the case of ‘inherentlyreflexive’ predicates. Such restrictions do not apply in ECM constructions as the pronounand its antecedents are not co-arguments of the same predicate. Therefore, the pronounand its antecedent could be interpreted as the same entity in ECM sentences. According toRuigendijk et al. (2006), the economy hierarchy proposed by Reuland (2001) may notapply to some impaired populations. As a result, the interpretation of referential elementsin these populations may be different because non-syntactic dependencies may be availableto them. More specifically, Ruigendijk et al. (2006) propose that syntactic operations inagrammatic speakers are more costly, hence they allow for either a bound variabledependency or a discourse dependency, which in ECM constructions leads them toincorrect interpretation of the pronoun. In the case of simple transitive sentences,agrammatic speakers reject the bound variable interpretation because it would lead themto violate the arity reduction restrictions of the predicate, which is not expected, however,to be problematic in agrammatic speakers. The fact that the agrammatic speakers’performance is not 100% incorrect but is at chance level in ECM sentences can beaccounted in two different ways, according to Ruigendijk et al. (2006). According to thefirst possibility, chance level performance is the result of a very dynamic relationshipbetween syntactic and non-syntactic dependencies in which sometimes it is narrow syntaxthat wins and sometimes it is discourse or semantics. According to the second alternative,discourse dependencies are always more economical for agrammatic speakers, thus alwaysestablished by these speakers. Chance level performance is the result of the fact thatsubjects have a choice of two possible referents (because of the availability of two pictures

6Our presentation of Reuland’s (2001) Primitives of Binding account is largely based on Ruigendijk et al.

(2006).


in the task Ruigendijk et al. (2006) used). Ruigendijk et al. (2006) cannot distinguishbetween the two possibilities but we argue that given the nature of our task, we can. Morespecifically, since our task was a truth value judgment task and not a picture selection taskwhere two pictures, thus two referents, were available, the chance or below chance levelperformance observed in our study indicates that the first possibility that Ruigendijk et al.(2006) offer may be more plausible. In other words, we conjecture that syntactic and non-syntactic dependencies are equally costly for agrammatic speakers and that chance levelperformance is the result of a dynamic competition between the two.

In conclusion, our study on the comprehension of pronominal and anaphoric referencein agrammatism did not replicate the results reported in Grodzinsky et al. (1993). Theagrammatic individuals that participated in our study exhibited low performance in themismatch condition that involved not only pronouns, as in Grodzinsky et al. (1993),but reflexives as well, particularly in the condition with quantificational antecedents. Wehave argued that our data reveals a global impairment that affects both pronouns andreflexives in simple transitive sentences, specifically, one that concerns both coreferencerelations and formation of A-dependencies. Although our data complicates the picture, wehope that it provides good reasons why more research is needed to further explorepronominal and anaphoric reference in agrammatism. We have also shown that theagrammatic speakers in our study exhibited another impairment that concerns pronouns inECM sentences, in agreement with Varlokosta and Edwards (2003) and Ruigendijk et al.(2006). We are not sure at this point whether and how these impairments could be relatedand thus we cannot provide one parsimonious explanation for our data. We could appealto the notion of cost albeit we are aware that the interpretation of cost varies betweenauthors. For our purposes, we envisage a general processing cost, arising from localisedcortical damage that lowers performance on all these language tasks. That does notaddress the differing patterns observed in our subjects. We have considered sometheoretical explanations above and suggest that further work is needed in this area toresolve this apparent conundrum.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the speech and language therapists who referred the participantsof this study as well as the participants for their willingness to participate. We are verygrateful to Liz Payne for collecting the data from seven of the agrammatic participants andto Sheila Billarad for collecting some of the control data used in this study. Thanks also toMania Mavri for assisting us with the statistical analysis and to two anonymous reviewersfor their valuable comments and suggestions. An earlier version of the paper was presentedat the Academy of Aphasia 2003, at the Seminar Series of the Department of Phoneticsand Linguistics at UCL (December 2003) and at the Seminar Series of the Department ofLinguistics at Essex University (March 2006). We would like to thank the audiences foruseful remarks. The authors are listed alphabetically.

Appendix

Examples of the pictures used for the mismatch reading of each condition are givenbelow.




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Pronominal and anaphoric reference in agrammatism