Aphasias and theories of linguistic representation: representing frequency, hierarchy, constructions, and sequential structure

Abstract

Error and preservation patterns in aphasic speech show that the brain makes use of the frequencies of words, constructions, and collocations, as well as category membership and hierarchical structure, during language processing. Frequency effects are evident along two quasi-independent axes: syntagmatic (the sequential context, e.g., deploying correct functors, categories, and utterance-level intonation) and paradigmatic (the choice at any given linguistic level, e.g., selecting content words and modifying structures). Frequency along the syntagmatic axis is shown to play a role in errors involving idioms, constructions, and collocations that cross major phrasal boundaries. Along the paradigmatic axis, frequency affects errors involving lexical selection, competing functors and inflected forms (e.g., using plural where singular is required). An account of language representation and processing that encompasses frequency as well as categorization and structure is compatible with what we know about how the brain works: increased experience with a linguistic structure results in increased activation-and strengthening-of the neural networks involved in processing that structure. These claims are supported by the literature on experimental work in normal speakers. Parsimony, plus the unexamined assumption that mental representation is like a written record (entries either present or absent, structure displayable in two dimensions), has been a misleading guide to modeling language representation. The substantial redundancy in representations and processing that is introduced by incorporating both frequency-based and hierarchy-based information is in fact appropriate for the brain as a fast, reliable, massively parallel error-correcting network with very large storage capacity and gradient representation strength. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:651-663. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1257 CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Coactivation in bilingual grammars: A computational account of code mixing

“… 1 Consistent with an analysis where doubling can arise due to the co-presence of multiple elements in the input to the grammar, elements from multiple alternative formulations of an intended message are sometimes co-present in monolingual speech errors (Coppock, 2010; Menn & Duffield, 2013). …”

Assessing syntactic deficits in Chinese Broca’s aphasia using theNorthwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences-Chinese (NAVS-C)

“…Notably, these tests fail to provide a precise picture of the syntactic deficits in this population, in that the verbs included are not classified and compared in terms of the number and optimality of argument structure and the canonical/non-canonical contrast is not specifically addressed. Moreover, the stimuli included are not controlled for frequency, despite its strong influence on patients’ language processing (Menn & Duffield, 2013). The same problems also exist for a more recently developed test battery (the Chinese Agrammatism Battery , CAB; Zhao, Li, Mao, & Feng, 2002), which does not consider linguistic distinctions among verbs and sentences, nor is it based on impairment patterns identified in Chinese patients.…”

Inflection of nouns for grammatical number in spoken narratives by people with aphasia: how glass slippers challenge the rule-based approach

“…In all errors, the form produced was more frequent than that expected, suggesting some effect of relative frequency (dominance) on error production. This, too, was predicted, based on the idea that more frequent forms within a given paradigm are typically easier to retrieve/produce, including in aphasia (see again Menn & Duffield, 2013). (Note that ‘dominance’ does not necessarily imply high frequency per se; rather, that the form is more frequent than the other form of the noun.)…”

“…Another consideration is that, if all language is learned from the input, from the particular contexts in which it is used, as proposed in constructivist, usage-based theory, then context-specific frequency effects, that is, from the frequencies of noun forms in the context of the Cinderella story, may also influence production, competing with general frequency (see again Hatchard, 2015, pp. 125–169; Menn & Duffield, 2013). The current results indicate that participants mainly produced each noun with the grammatical number frequent for that noun in the context of this story, but when they did not, there appeared to be an influence of the relative frequencies of the nouns’ singular versus plural forms in general language usage (as measured from the Spoken BNC).…”

“…In this approach, all language is learned from the input as constructions (form–meaning pairings) of various sizes and degrees of schematicity, from morphemes and words to multiword ‘chunks’, partially filled schemas, and fully abstract grammatical patterns. Therefore, frequency effects are expected at all utterance sizes and degrees of schematicity and within various paradigms (e.g., affecting which name to use for a given referent or which noun form to use within an inflectional paradigm for grammatical number; see Menn & Duffield, 2013), and there is indeed mounting evidence of such effects from various linguistic areas (e.g., typical language processing: e.g., Ambridge, Kidd, Rowland, & Theakston, 2015; Arnon & Clark, 2011; Bannard & Matthews, 2008; Bybee & Scheibmann, 1999; and aphasia: e.g., Gahl, 2002; Gahl et al, 2003; Hatchard, 2015; Zimmerer, Newman, Thomson, Coleman, & Varley, 2018).…”