Verb Retrieval in Brain-Damaged Subjects: 1. Analysis of Stimulus, Lexical, and Conceptual Factors

To mind the mind: An event-related potential study of word class and semantic ambiguity

“…This was a main effect of word class, which did not interact with the presence of word class ambiguity or semantic ambiguity. This result is consistent with findings from studies of aphasia that report selective deficits for words from different grammatical categories that are independent of both noun/verb homophony and the relatedness of noun meanings and verb meanings (Caramazza and Hillis, 1991;Goldberg and Goldfarb, 2005;Jonkers and Bastiaanse, 1998;Kemmerer and Tranel, 2000). However, not all studies have found this kind of N400 difference between nouns and verbs.…”

Unaccusative verb production in agrammatic aphasia: the argument structure complexity hypothesis

“…Kemmerer and Tranel (2000) also found this pattern in a large study examining factors that might influence verb production in English speaking aphasic patients. Of a total of 19 'impaired' participants, three showed more difficulty producing verbs involving two participant roles than those involving just one.…”

“…While recent research focused on determining the nature of verb production deficits has shown that several factors may play a role in this production difficulty, including frequency and familiarity (Kemmerer & Tranel, 2000), imageability (Bird, Howard, & Franklin, 2000), and semantic factors (Breedin, Saffran, & Schwartz, 1998), the number of syntactic arguments associated with the verb and corresponding participant roles has been shown to influence verb production in several studies (Jonkers & Bastiaanse, 1996Kegl, 1995;Kemmerer & Tranel, 2000;Kim & Thompson, 2000;Kiss, 2000 Lange, Schneider, & Shapiro, 1997; Thompson, Shapiro, Li, & Schendel, 1995a). For example, Thompson et al (1995aThompson et al ( , 1997 found that agrammatic aphasic subjects with verb retrieval difficulty in both verb naming and in sentence production showed a pattern of verb production deficit in both tasks related to the number of arguments associated with the verb.…”

“…Variables such as frequency of occurrence, familiarity, imageability, and age of acquisition also have been shown to influence production; for example, items with greater frequency of occurrence or greater imageability are easier to produce likely because they are activated more strongly than those with lower frequency and imageability. Although not as well studied, verb production appears to be influenced by many of the same variables (Bird et al, 2000;Breedin et al, 1998;Kemmerer & Tranel, 2000). One additional feature of the lexical representation of verbs, that is not relevant to nouns, concerns their argument structure properties.…”

Verb production in agrammatic aphasia: The influence of semantic class and argument structure properties on generalisation

“…While this study attempted to account for some of the more obvious features of the semantic class of the chosen verbs, it did not take into account all the features of the particular semantic verb class, nor did it consider the possibility of an interaction of these semantic features. Interestingly, a recent study by Kemmerer and Tranel (2000) examined various stimulus (e.g., visual complexity, imagability, familiarity), lexical (e.g., frequency, name agreement, homophonous), and conceptual (e.g., how the action is done, who or what undergoes the action, use of an instrument) features of verbs. They found considerable variation within and across these factors in individuals with unilateral left-hemisphere brain damage, suggesting that verb retrieval is a complex task involving many factors.…”