Broca's aphasia: syntax and beyond

Abstract

The current project provides a novel perspective on sentence comprehension in Broca’saphasia by expanding the empirical domain both within and beyond narrow syntax. Further, we take a comparative approach to this investigation by comparing the perfor-mance of a group of individuals with Broca’s aphasia with a group of typical adults on the one hand and a group of typically developing children on the other. In particular, we focus on three key linguistic phenomena that arguably involve different language domains, get passive constructions (narrow syntax), ambiguous sentences involving the nominal quantifier every and negation (syntax-semantics interface) and finally pragmatic inferences, namely, scalar implicatures, presuppositions and multiplicity inferences (semantic-pragmatic interface). Traditionally, Broca’s aphasia has been defined as a dis-order mainly affecting syntax however recent evidence for non-linguistic deficits in this population poses the question as to whether it should be defined more generally. The current study adds to this debate by providing a broader view of language processing in Broca’s aphasia. Further, this project shows the value of the comparative approach in helping to constrain and refine theories of language acquisition and linguistic theories.

The findings of this project support the hypothesis that individuals with Broca’s aphasia suffer from a specific impairment affecting processing of narrow syntax and the relative sparing of non-syntactic phenomena. Additionally, the findings indicate that despite superficial similarities, individuals with Broca’s aphasia and typically developing children show clear differences in how they engage with core linguistic phenomena.

Thesis is embargoed until 31st October 2019

Date of Award	Oct 2017
Original language	English
Supervisor	Raffaella Folli (Supervisor), Jacopo Romoli (Supervisor), Christina Sevdali (Supervisor), Alison Henry (Supervisor), Christina Sevdali (Supervisor), Raffaella Folli (Supervisor) & Jacopo Romoli (Supervisor)