- Home
- e-Journals
- Linguistic Variation
- Previous Issues
- Volume 13, Issue, 2013
Linguistic Variation - Volume 13, Issue 2, 2013
Volume 13, Issue 2, 2013
-
The role of declarative and procedural memory in disorders of language
Author(s): Michael T. Ullmanpp.: 133–154 (22)More LessLanguage is often assumed to rely on domain-specific neurocognitive substrates. However, this human capacity in fact seems to crucially depend on general-purpose memory systems in the brain. Evidence suggests that lexical memory relies heavily on declarative memory, which is specialized for arbitrary associations and is rooted in temporal lobe structures. The mental grammar instead relies largely on procedural memory, a system that underlies rules and sequences, and is rooted in frontal/basal-ganglia structures. Developmental and adult-onset disorders such as Specific Language Impairment, autism, Tourette syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and non-fluent aphasia each seem to involve particular grammatical deficits and analogous non-linguistic procedural memory impairments, as well as abnormalities of procedural memory brain structures. Lexical and declarative memory remain relatively intact in these disorders, and may play compensatory roles. In contrast, Alzheimer’s disease, semantic dementia, fluent aphasia and amnesia each affect lexical and declarative memory, and involve abnormalities of declarative memory brain structures, while leaving grammar and procedural memory largely intact. Overall, the evidence suggests that declarative and procedural memory play critical roles in language disorders, as well as in language more generally.
-
Tense and aspect in Cypriot Greek Down Syndrome: Developmental patterns and coping strategies
Author(s): Christiana Christodouloupp.: 155–186 (32)More LessThis study examines the production of tense and aspect of Cypriot Greek adults diagnosed with Down Syndrome and children with typical language development. Despite the evidently low IQ scores, and comparatively lower MLU scores, the performance of Cypriot Greek adults with Down Syndrome with tense and aspect is almost at ceiling with 95.7% accuracy for tense and 97.2% for aspect. These results suggest that at least certain aspects of the Down Syndrome grammatical system (e.g. inflectional marking) can be (fully) acquired. It was observed that both groups have developed three coping strategies, when not using a verb as targeted or expected; they either (i) use an alternative feature value, (ii) omit the entire verb, or quite rarely (iii) omit the inflectional suffix. Inconsistencies in the results across different languages suggest that cross-linguistic differences potentially related to the inflectional system of each language might be responsible for the different realization of problematic performance. Keywords: Down Syndrome; language development; inflectional marking; tense; aspect
-
Perfective – imperfective: Development of aspectual distinctions in Greek specific language impairment*
Author(s): Katerina Konstantzou, Angeliek van Hout, Spyridoula Varlokosta and Maria Vlassopoulospp.: 187–216 (30)More LessTense morphology has been found to be cross-linguistically vulnerable in specific language impairment (SLI). Research on the development of aspect is rather limited and results are quite inconsistent; some studies suggest that aspect appears intact (Leonard et al. 2003), while others report severe deficits (Fletcher et al. 2005). The present study is the first one to examine the comprehension and production of aspectual distinctions in Greek SLI. Forty children participated in the study; eight children with SLI (mean age: 6;7), sixteen age-matched typically developing children (mean age: 6;6) and sixteen language-matched typically developing children (mean age: 4;5). Our results provide evidence that the development of aspectual distinctions in Greek SLI seems to be delayed rather than deviant, as it follows the asymmetrical pattern described for earlier stages of typical development; perfective aspect is fully acquired, whereas interpretation of imperfective aspect is still inadequate (Kazanina & Phillips 2003; van Hout 2005).
-
Specific language impairment in Cypriot Greek: Diagnostic issues
Author(s): Eleni Theodorou, Maria Kambanaros and Kleanthes K. Grohmannpp.: 217–236 (20)More LessInvestigating children’s language skills in their native variety is of paramount importance. Clinical practices cannot be based on findings from languages or varieties which have different properties. This paper, after demonstrating the importance of investigating Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in Cyprus, assesses the feasibility of existing language assessments in Standard Modern Greek for the diagnosis of SLI in the Greek Cypriot context, for the children’s native variety of Cypriot Greek. In total, 16 children with SLI (5 to 9 years) and 22 age-matched typically language developing children participated in this study. However, given that not all stimuli in the Standard Greek versions were appropriate for Cypriot Greek-speaking children and because of cultural differences, the tools were adapted. Results showed that the assessment tools can accurately identify children with SLI from typically language developing peers with sensitivity and specificity when the comparison is between children that use the same variety. Keywords: acquisition; bilectalism; diagnosis; sensitivity; specificity
-
Lexical retrieval deficits in anomic aphasia and specific language impairment (SLI): More similar than different? Grammatical class and context effects
Author(s): Maria Kambanaros and Willem van Steenbruggepp.: 237–256 (20)More LessLexical retrieval of verbs and nouns was compared in two groups of impaired language users, children diagnosed with SLI and adults with acquired anomic aphasia, on two production tasks: picture confrontation naming and connected speech. Both children with SLI and adults with anomic aphasia showed a more substantial lexical or naming deficit for verbs than for nouns. However, no specific verb retrieval deficit was observed in connected speech in either group. Furthermore, partial correlations between verb and noun naming and their type-token ratios in connected speech failed to find an association between verb/ noun retrieval in naming and in connected speech. The results suggest (1) that children with SLI and adults with anomic aphasia show a specific verb deficit in naming, and (2) that the ability to predict lexical retrieval abilities for verbs (and nouns) in connected speech from naming performance is weak for both groups.
Most Read This Month
Article
content/journals/22116842
Journal
10
5
false

-
-
A typology of Bantu subject inversion
Author(s): Lutz Marten and Jenneke van der Wal
-
-
-
Unspeakable sentences
Author(s): Liliane Haegeman
-
- More Less