Passive Sentences in agrammatism: The case of Greek

1. Passive Sentences in agrammatism:The case of Greek Vicky Nanousi, Arhonto Terzi Technological Educational Institute of W. Greece, Patras Workshop on Advances in the Sciences of Language Disorders University of Cyprus, June 19-20, 2015.

2. 1. Background • Individuals with agrammatic aphasia are known to suffer from a deficit regarding sentences with non-canonical word order. Reversible verbal passives constitute a much studied subset of them. • A prominent account of the deficit is known as the Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH), proposed by Grodzinsky (1990, 1995, 2000). TDH In passives, the trace of the moved element is deleted. As a result, the two cannot relate and the moved DP cannot be interpreted as a patient. It is interpreted as an agent via a non-grammar strategy.

3. The boy was pushed <the boy> by the girl. # But: Passives are not impaired in all languages in agrammatism. Impaired: English, Spanish, Hebrew Not impaired: German, Dutch. Directionality of th-assignment (Grodzinsky 2006).

4. Directionality of th-assignment English, Spanish, Hebrew: to the right (VO languages) German, Dutch: to the left (OV languages) The boy was pushed <the boy> by the girl. √ German, Dutch * English, Spanish, Hebrew Greek: a VO language Passives understudied in agrammatism Passives develop late in children's grammar (Terzi et al. 2014, a.o.)

5. Relative sentences • The same rationale for aphasic performance on relative clauses. Trace of moved DP is deleted, affecting object relatives, (1), but not subject relatives (2). The latter are interpreted successfully via a non-grammatical mechanism. (1) The boy that the girl pushed <the boy>. (2) The boy that <the boy> pushed the girl Recently the above facts are explained via Relativized Minimality (Grillo 2005, 2009 via Rizzi, 1990 et seq.).

6. In (1) the moved element, the boy, has no Q features in agrammatism, and crosses another element of the same type, the girl. • In (2) nothing intervenes between the moved element and its trace. (1) The boy that the girl pushed <the boy>. (2) The boy that <the boy> pushed the girl Sameness of intervening features is claimed to cause trouble in children too (Belletti et al. 2012). Gender is such a feature (in languages that it is responsible for movement).

7. 2. The current study • The language Greek is a VO language. Passives are formed via the use of verbal inflection rather than the an auxiliary. (1) I Maria sproxnete. the Mary push-nonact-3s ‘Mary is pushed.’ (2) Ta pediatimorunde. the children punish-nonact-3p ‘The children are punished.’

8. Same morphology for middle and reflexive verbs. • Middle Afto to vivliodiavazeteefkola. this the book read-nonact-3s easily 'This book reads easily.' • Reflexive O Kostas ksirizete the Kostas shave-nonact-3s 'Kostas shaves himself.'

9. The participants a. Broca’s aphasics b. 10 healthy controls. 2 per each aphasic, matched on age, education, gender.

10. The tasks 1. A Past Tense (Reference) elicitation task A Sentence completion task 51 sentences/verbs. 18 sentences contained real regular verbs (Varlokosta & Koutsoubari 2006, w. minor modifications) 2. A clitics production task A picture task 10 sentences/clitics (and corresponding pictures) 4 masculine, 3 feminine, 3 neuter (Chondrogianni et al. 2010)

11. Results (1) Accuracy scores Also: Tense Reference: a few Agreement errors Clitic Production: a few Gender errors

12. The Passive tasks Passive Task 1: Short Passives • A picture-matching task consisting of 36 sentences. • Tested passive and reflexive verbs, along with Binding of pronouns and anaphors. • 6 sentences with short passives, i.e., passive sentences without the by-phrase. An example: (3) O Giorgossproxnete the George is-pushed ‘George is pushed.’ The same protocol was employed by Terzi et al. (2014) in an acquisition study. Typical 6:06 year-old children gave 75% correct responses on passive sentences.

14. Results (2) Short Passives • All participants performed at ceiling. • Participants from both groups commented that the test was easy. • Reminder: Typically developing 6;06 children performed 75% correctly on passives.

15. Passive Task 2: Long Passives • A picture-matching task consisting of 96 sentences. • Tested actives and long passives, i.e., passives with the by-phrase. It also tested subject relatives and object relatives. • There were 24 sentences in each condition., i.e., 24 long passives, An example: (4) Edo o gabros fotografizete apo tin giagia. here the groom is-photographed by the grandmother ‘Here the groom is photographed by the grandmother.’

17. 3. Results Long Passives Task • Active sentences Both groups, aphasics and healthy controls performed at ceiling.

18. Results (cont.) - Long PassivesAccuracy scores

19. Results (cont.) • Previous findings Fyndanis (2012) 1 agrammatic: 94% correct performance on both actives and passives Fyndanis et al. (2013) 2 agrammatics: 39% and 50% correct performance on passives but: 56% and 70% correct performance on actives

20. 4. Conclusions - Discussion • It most probably follows that passive sentences do not constitute a selective deficit for Greek-speaking individuals with Broca’s aphasia. • Although the performance of Broca's aphasics on passives is not as good as on the corresponding actives, it is by no means impaired.

21. What cannot account for this behavior? • Dirctionality of th-role assignment (Grodzinsky 2006) No, because Greek is a VO language • Lower parts of the tree are not impaired (only higher are) (Friedmann 2005) No, because the Infl area, i.e., the T projection is not good. • The manner in which Greek forms passives?

22. Appendix - Relatives clauses

23. Selected References • Caramazza, A. et al. 2005. Patterns of comprehension performance in agrammaticBroca's aphasia: A test of the Trace Deletion Hypothesis. Brain and Language 94: 43-53. • Friedmann, N. 2005. Degrees of severity and recovery in aphasia: climbing up the tree. Brain and Language 19: 1037-1051. • Grodzinsky, Y. 1990. Theoretical perspectives on language deficits. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. • Grodzinsky, Y. 2006. A blueprint for a brain map of syntax. In Y. Grodzinsky & K. Amunts(eds.), Broca’s Region, Oxford University Press. • Fyndanis, V. 2012. Comprehension in Greek-speaking agrammatism: a case study. In Z. Gavriilidou et al. (eds.), Proceedings of ICGL10, 265-274. • Fyndanis, V. et al. 2013. Morphosyntacticcomprehension in agrammatic aphasia: Evidence from Greek. Aphasiology 27: 398-419. • Terzi, A. et al. 2014. Grammatical Abilities of Greek-Speaking Children with Autism. Language Acquisition, 21: 4-44.

24. Acknowledgements • This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund - ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program "Education and Lifelong Learning" of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) - Research Funding Program: ARCHIMEDES III. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund. Project Title: The structure of (a)typical language: linguistic theory and intervention PI: Arhonto Terzi