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Syntactic comprehension in Parkinson’s disease: Type of embedding and canonicity

Arhonto Terzi1, Eleni Barampati1 and Valantis Fyndanis2, 3*
  • 1 Technological Educational Institute of Western Greece, Department of Speech and Language Therapy, Greece
  • 2 Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Languages, University of Oslo, Norway
  • 3 Long Island University Brooklyn, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, United States

Introduction Although individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) comprehend subject/canonical relative clauses (RCs) better than object/noncanonical RCs, comprehension of subject/canonical RCs is not intact (e.g., Angwin et al., 2006; Grossman et al., 1991, 1992, 1993; Hochstadt, 2009; Skeel et al., 2001). This holds for both right-branching and center-embedded subject RCs ('The boy follows the girl that is tall' and 'The boy that follows the girl is tall', respectively). However, the role of embedding type and canonicity in RC comprehension by individuals with PD is not clear. While Grossman et al. (2002) found that individuals with PD were equally impaired in the comprehension of center-embedded and right-branching RCs (when canonicity was kept constant), Natsopoulos et al. (1991) found that individuals with PD were more impaired in the comprehension of active right-branching RCs than in the comprehension of active center-embedded RCs. Hochstadt (2009) found that passive/noncanonical center-embedded RCs elicited lower accuracy than center-embedded and right-branching active/canonical RCs. This study investigates the role of embedding type and canonicity in the comprehension of RCs in PD by focusing on Greek. Methods Ten non-demented individuals with advanced idiopathic PD and nine healthy controls were tested with a sentence-picture matching task modeled after Hochstadt’s (2009). The task consisted of 48 center-embedded RCs and 48 right-branching RCs. There was an equal number of active and passive sentences in each set. PD participants were tested in DBS-on state. Results We fitted a generalized mixed-effect model including Group (PD participants, healthy controls), Embedding Type (center-embedded RCs, right-branching RCs), and Canonicity (canonical/active, noncanonical/passive) as fixed effects, the interaction between the three, and Subjects and Items as random effects. Results showed that there was a main effect of Group, with healthy controls outperforming participants with PD, but no interaction between Group, Embedding Type and Canonicity. We also fitted a generalized mixed-effect model to the dataset of PD participants and to the dataset of control participants. This model included Embedding Type and Canonicity as fixed effects, the interaction between the two, and Subjects and Items as random effects. No interaction emerged in either dataset/group. A main effect of Canonicity emerged only in the PD group, with noncanonical structures eliciting worse performance than canonical ones. There was no main effect of Embedding Type in either group. Discussion Results show that Greek-speaking individuals with PD are impaired in the comprehension of sentences with subject RCs, in line with the literature (Angwin et al., 2006; Grossman et al., 1991, 1992, 1993; Skeel et al., 2001). Consistent with Hochstadt (2009), passive sentences are more difficult to comprehend than active sentences. However, there was no effect of embedding type in active or in passive sentences in either group. This is at odds with Hochstadt (2009) and Natsopoulos et al. (1991), but consistent with Grossman et al. (2002). Our results suggest that canonical word order is a better predictor of accuracy performance on sentence comprehension in PD than embedding type.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks go to J.Ellul and C.Constantoyannis for referring us to the PD participants, as well as to all the participants. This research has been co-financed by the EU (European Social Fund - ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program "Education and Lifelong Learning" of the NSRF-Research Funding Program ARCHIMEDES III – “The structure of (a)typical language: linguistic theory and intervention.” (Grant number MIS 383592 – Principle Investigator: Arhonto Terzi)

References

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Keywords: Parkinson Disease, syntactic comprehension, Embedding type, canonicity, Greek

Conference: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada, 21 Oct - 23 Oct, 2018.

Presentation Type: poster presentation

Topic: not eligible for a student prize

Citation: Terzi A, Barampati E and Fyndanis V (2019). Syntactic comprehension in Parkinson’s disease: Type of embedding and canonicity. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 56th Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2018.228.00074

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Received: 29 Apr 2018; Published Online: 22 Jan 2019.

* Correspondence: Dr. Valantis Fyndanis, Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Languages, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, valantis.fyndanis@gmail.com