Argument Structure Deficits in Aphasia

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Aphasiology
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Argument structure deficits in aphasia: New perspective on models of

lexical production
Elena Barbieria; Anna Bassob; Mirella Frustacic; Claudio Luzzattia
a
University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy b University of Milan, Italy c Salvini General Hospital, Rho-
Passirana, Milan, Italy
First published on: 09 August 2010
To cite this Article Barbieri, Elena , Basso, Anna , Frustaci, Mirella and Luzzatti, Claudio(2010) 'Argument structure
deficits in aphasia: New perspective on models of lexical production', Aphasiology, 24: 11, 1400 — 1423, First published
on: 09 August 2010 (iFirst)
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/02687030903580325
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APHASIOLOGY, 2010, 24 (11), 1400–1423
Argument structure deficits in aphasia: New perspective on

APHASIOLOGY, Vol. 1, No. 1, May 2010: pp. 0–0
1464-5041
0268-7038
PAPH
APHASIOLOGY
models of lexical production
Elena Barbieri
Argument Structure
BARBIERI ET AL. Deficits in Aphasia
University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Anna Basso
University of Milan, Italy
Mirella Frustaci
Salvini General Hospital, Rho-Passirana, Milan, Italy
Downloaded By: [TÜBTAK EKUAL] At: 13:18 2 March 2011
Claudio Luzzatti
University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
Background: The study explores the ability of fluent and non-fluent aphasic patients to
produce verbs using the appropriate argument structure, i.e., a feature specifying the
number and type of participants in the event described by the verb. According to Chomsky’s
Minimalist Program (1995), the lexical entry of a verb contains information about the
number of arguments and the thematic roles assigned, which is then mapped onto the
sentence argument structure, while Bock and Levelt’s (1994; see also Levelt, Roelofs, &
Meyer, 1999) model of lexical production assumes that the information regarding verb
argument structure (VAS) is part of the lemma and is accessed before the retrieval of the
phonological word form, i.e., the lexeme.
Aim: Participants were tested to investigate their ability to map thematic information
onto the corresponding syntactic argument structure.
Methods & Procedures: Seven aphasic patients (five suffering from non-fluent aphasia
with agrammatism and two from fluent aphasia) and ten neurologically unimpaired
individuals participated in the study. They were given a picture description task formulated
in two conditions: in the first condition they were asked to provide a free description of
the image, while in the second condition they had to complete the sentence structure
provided by the examiner. Patients showing deficits in verb production were also tested
for the use of prepositions within prepositional compounds and in a sentence context.
Outcomes & Results: Four agrammatic patients and one fluent aphasic patient scored a
high rate of argument structure errors in the selection of the appropriate verb, which
was employed with an incorrect argument structure. Furthermore, these patients tended
to substitute rather than to omit prepositions when required to fill the gap in a sentence.
Address correspondence to: Claudio Luzzatti, Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca,

Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1; 20126 Milan, Italy. E-mail: claudio.luzzatti@unimib.it
This research was partially supported by a Grant from the Regione Lombardia to E.B. and from the
MIUR to C.L. We are grateful to Prof. Germano Rossi for the helpful suggestions given regarding the
statistical analyses, and to Prof. Alfonso Caramazza for his insightful comments on a previous version of
the manuscript.
© 2010 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
http://www.psypress.com/aphasiology DOI: 10.1080/02687030903580325
ARGUMENT STRUCTURE DEFICITS IN APHASIA 1401
Conclusions: Our results indicate an impaired access to (VAS) and/or in mapping the
thematic role information onto the syntactic argument structure. This deficit, which
was found in both the agrammatic and the fluent aphasic patients, conflicts with an
alternative interpretation of verb production errors in terms of omission of the preposi-
tion introducing the manner adjunct. Data support the hypothesis of retrieval of the
verb lexeme without prior access to the corresponding lemma, where information about
argument structure is stored.
Keywords: Argument structure deficits; Agrammatism; Lemma and lexeme; Picture
description; Verb retrieval deficits; Syntactic impairment.
A verb argument structure (VAS) is a lexical feature specifying the number and type
of participants in the event that is described by a verb. Verbs always require at least
one external argument (the subject)1, the number depending on the category to which
the verb belongs. More specifically, while intransitive verbs usually take one argu-
ment, which plays the role of grammatical subject, transitive verbs need at least two
arguments, i.e., a subject and a direct object respectively. For instance, in the sen-
tence “The woman cuts the cake with a knife”, to cut is a transitive verb, and the
noun phrases (NPs) the woman and the cake are arguments. This sentence also
contains a prepositional phrase (PP) with the knife, which is an adjunct, i.e., a
non-obligatory element. Each argument (but not adjuncts) also receives a thematic
role describing the logical function that an element plays in the sentence and is
assigned according to the thematic grid of the verb. The latter is part of the verb’s
lexical representation, which also contains the verb argument structure.
Several studies (Berndt, Haedinges, Mitchum, & Sandson, 1997; Luzzatti et al.,
2002; Miceli, Silveri, Nocentini, & Caramazza, 1988; Thompson, Shapiro, Li, &
Schendel, 1995) have shown that aphasic patients, particularly those suffering from
agrammatism, may show more severe impairment in retrieving verbs than nouns.
Agrammatism is one of the main aspects of Broca’s aphasia and its main feature is a
“telegraphic” output, i.e., sentences are short (S-V or S-V-O) and syntactically
simplified, with omission of closed class vocabulary, i.e., omission of bound morphemes
in English, substitution of marked inflected forms with less-marked ones in Italian.2
Furthermore, agrammatic patients show impaired comprehension of syntactically
complex sentences where thematic role assignment is non-canonical, as in interroga-
tive, passive, and object relative clauses. Another morphosyntactic deficit that often
occurs in fluent aphasia is paragrammatism, which can be defined as a production
disorder where grammatical morphemes are substituted instead of being omitted.
Several theories have been proposed to explain morphosyntactic disorders. A
theoretical account of agrammatic production was advanced by Friedmann and
co-workers (Friedmann, 2000, 2002; Friedmann & Grodzinsky, 1997) to explain the
difficulty of producing syntactically complex sentences and the dissociation between
the production of tense (impaired) and agreement (spared) inflections. According to
Friedmann, the production deficit in agrammatic aphasia is due to a disruption
1
This is not the case for Italian meteorological verbs such as piovere (piove, [it] rains) and for imper-
sonal verbs such as sembrare (sembra, [it] seems), which do not take a subject; furthermore, the Italian
language allows subject pro-drop, i.e., the omission of subject pronouns.
2
Italian has a very rich morphology in which citation forms are also inflected; therefore, an omission of
bound morphemes often results in the production of non-lexical roots.
1402 BARBIERI ET AL.
(“pruning”) of the syntactic tree, in which the upper nodes are impaired. It is
assumed that the syntactic tree is pruned at the tense phrase (TP)3 node in severe
agrammatic patients and at the complementiser phrase node (CP) in milder cases.
The basic assumption therefore is that the tree is pruned from the impaired node
upward: thus, patients who have problems with tense inflections and subject pronouns
are impaired at the TP node, while if the damage is at the CP level, the deficit affects
the production of questions and embedded sentences.
Several studies showed that impaired access to the verb argument structure is one
of the factors that causes difficulty in retrieving verbs typical of agrammatic production.
For instance, Thompson and co-workers (Thompson, Lange, Schneider & Shapiro,
1997) found an influence of the number of arguments taken by the verb: agrammatic
patients found it easier to produce intransitive verbs, i.e., verbs taking only one exter-
nal argument (the subject) to which the role of Agent is assigned, rather than transi-
tive verbs, i.e., verbs requiring two arguments to which they assign the roles of Agent
and Theme. These verbs were easier to produce than verbs such as to give or to put,
which require a three-place-argument structure, with the theta roles being respec-
tively Agent, Theme, and Goal and Agent, Theme, and Location. Finally, even
three–place verbs were more easily produced than verbs such as to say or to know,
which are usually followed by a whole sentence (for example: the girl knows the cat is
in the tree). If these data are interpreted in the light of Levelt’s model of language
production (Bock & Levelt, 1994; see also Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999), the verb
production deficit which emerges in agrammatism may be localised at the lemma
level and this, in a serial model, also implies failure in retrieving the lexeme. In the
case of a real lemma disruption, as discussed by Bastiaanse and van Zonneveld
(2004), patients could be expected to encounter the same kind of difficulty in compre-
hension as well, since there is only one set of lemmas, although several studies (Jonk-
ers, 1998; Kim & Thompson, 2000; Shapiro & Levine, 1990) reported good verb
comprehension and a preserved ability in detecting argument structure errors in a
grammaticality judgment task. Thus Kim and Thompson hold that verb-naming
impairments emerging in Broca’s aphasia and depending on argument structure
complexity, would arise at a lemma selection level. Bastiaanse and van Zonneveld,
on the other hand, suggest that the deficit would arise after the lemma has been
selected, at the grammatical encoding level, i.e., when the creation of a syntactic envir-
onment takes place (phrases, clauses, and sentences). This interpretation rephrases
the mapping hypothesis in a syntactic frame (Rochon, Laird, Bose, & Scofield,
2005; Schwartz, Linebarger, Saffran & Pate, 1987); this hypothesis conceived the
agrammatic deficit as an impaired mapping between thematic roles and the syntactic
argument structure required by a verb. The assumption made by Bastiaanse and van
Zonneveld also explains why aphasic patients have greater difficulty in retrieving
unaccusative (e.g., to fall) as opposed to unergative verbs (e.g., to sleep; Luzzatti et
al., 2002; Thompson, 2003). The latter require only one argument, the subject, which
is external to the verb phrase (VP) and directly receives the role of Agent; on the con-
3
Following Chomsky’s Principles and Parameters Theory (Chomsky & Lasnik, 1993), a sentence may
be represented as a tree with nodes and branches. Each node splits into a head, a complement, and a
specifier. A precise hierarchy is assumed to govern the syntactic tree, which dictates the order in which the
nodes occur; for example, the CP node, which hosts complementisers (such as that) and question
morphemes (such as who and what), projects to the TP node, which is responsible for the tense inflection of
the verb.
trary, unaccusative verbs differ in that their grammatical subjects do not perform but
undergo the action expressed by the verb. Thus, these verbs assign thematic roles dif-
ferently from unergative verbs, in that the grammatical subject receives the role of
Theme in its initial position, that is as verb complement, and moves out of VP, leav-
ing behind a trace which allows the assignment of the thematic role (see, for instance,
Burzio, 1986). Therefore, unaccusative verbs require a more complex syntactic pro-
cessing than unergative verbs, which are easier to produce for aphasic patients.
Bock and Levelt’s (1994) language production model specifies Garrett’s (1980)
distinction between functional and positional levels. In their model, information
about argument structure and thematic role assignment is stored in the lemma which
“carries the grammatical information associated with individual lexical concepts”,
such as grammatical class (i.e., noun or verb) and the number of arguments subcate-
gorised by the verb (Bock & Levelt, 1994, p. 947). This model considers word
production as a serial process, where each unit is assumed to be “influenced only by
information represented at the level directly above it” (Bock & Levelt, 1994, p. 949).
The functional level is conceived as the first step of grammatical encoding, i.e., the
set of processes generating the skeleton of an utterance. On the contrary, lexemes,

which represent the morphological and phonological features of words (word form).
Caramazza (1997) developed an alternative model, known as the independent net-
work model of lexical access, which aims at overcoming lemma–lexeme seriality.
According to Caramazza the information that in Levelt’s framework is assumed to
be stored in the lemma, is divided into two independent networks: semantic features
are assumed to be part of a lexical-semantic network, while the lexical-syntactic net-
work contains information on grammatical category, gender, auxiliary type, and
argument structure. There are also two modality-specific lexeme networks for pho-
nological (P-lexeme) and orthographic (O-lexeme) representations. He assumed that
the lexical-semantic network (i) projects to both the P and the O lexeme, which in
turn project to the lexical-syntactic network, and (ii) is directly connected to this lat-
ter. The activation of a lexical-semantic representation spreads simultaneously and
independently to both the lexical-syntactic and the word-form systems. However,
while the lexeme-networks can reach the threshold and thus be directly activated by
the lexical-semantic network, the lexical-syntactic system can only be primed by it,
and needs to be reinforced by the phonological/orthographic representation in order
to be activated.
To summarise, the aphasia literature confirms that the information regarding
argument structure is stored at the lexical level (the lemma) and that it may be
impaired by brain damage; alternatively, aphasic patients may suffer from a deficit in
mapping the thematic information onto the corresponding sentence argument structure.
Most of these studies were conducted on agrammatic patients, which resulted in a
number of hypotheses accounting for this type of language disorder. However, it has
been seen that fluent patients also suffer from the same type of syntactic damage as
agrammatic patients (see for instance Luzzatti et al., 2001).
The objective of the present study is to pursue investigation of argument structure
deficits in Italian aphasic patients suffering from non-fluent agrammatic or fluent
aphasia, in order to test contemporary models of lexical production and verify current
theories of agrammatic production. A specific picture-naming task (Experiment 1) was
prepared, which tested the patients’ ability to describe pictures using syntactically
simple sentences containing a transitive two-argument verb. In Experiment 2 patients
were given two further tasks to assess their use of prepositions, as impaired processing
of this word type usually characterises agrammatism (e.g., Grodzinsky, 1990; Lonzi
& Luzzatti, 1995); these tasks were used to disentangle this possible disorder from a
deficit in realising verb arguments (or in mapping thematic roles to the corresponding
argument structure).
EXPERIMENT 1
Aim
Our aim was to throw light on the use of verbs with an abnormal argument structure,
resulting in errors like *l’uomo mangia la forchetta (*the man eats the fork) through
testing fluent and non-fluent aphasic patients in a picture description paradigm.
Hence it is possible that the patients encounter difficulties in mapping thematic
knowledge to the corresponding argument structure. The occurrence of this type of
error has a theoretical consequence: the production of a sentence of this nature indi-
cates that verbs are being retrieved but used with an incorrect argument structure.
In order to investigate this phenomenon further, we developed a new task in
which patients were asked to describe 53 pictures of actions using the following
sentence structure:
Subject + Verb + Direct object + Manner adjunct
The task had two conditions: a free condition, where participants described the
picture without any constraints, and a constrained condition, in which the examiner
provided the participants with the sentence structure, asking them to complete it by
filling in the lexical gaps.
Method and materials

Participants. The study was carried out with seven Italian aphasic participants
(five males and two females), recruited at the Aphasia Rehabilitation Unit of Milan’s
“Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico” and at the Rehabilitation Unit of the G. Salvini
General Hospital at Passirana (Milan) and a control group of ten healthy partici-
pants (six males and four females). Controls were between 25 and 66 years old,
and had 8 to 13 years of education.
Participants with mild-to-moderate fluent or non-fluent aphasia with predominant
morpho-syntactic difficulties (omission or substitution of verbs, articles, prepositions)
were selected for the study. Patients suffering from visual deficits that might impede
correct perception of the test material were excluded from the study.
Case reports. All participants took a standard language examination which included
the Token Test (De Renzi & Vignolo, 1962) and a standard aphasia battery, such as the
“Esame di Milano – II” (Ciurli, Marangolo, & Basso, 1996), the Battery for the Analyses
of Aphasic Disorders (Miceli, Burani, Capasso, & Laudanna, 1994), or the Italian
version of the Aachen Aphasia Test (AAT; Luzzatti, Willmes, & De Bleser, 1994).
Five of the aphasic patients participating in the study suffered from non-fluent
agrammatic aphasia, and two had a fluent and paragrammatic output, but occasionally
omitted free and bound morphemes. Table 1 summarises clinical data for each
patient, and a sample of their spontaneous speech is given in Appendix 1.
TABLE 1
Main features of the aphasic patients participating in the experiment
Months post Language

Name Sex Age YOE Aetiology onset Lesion Diagnosis examination
L.G. M 25 13 traumatic brain 24 left TP and agrammatism Esame di

injury right FP Milano II
F.C. M 48 13 stroke 118 left FTP and agrammatism BADA
left sylvian
N.C. F 56 5 stroke 28 left FTP agrammatism AAT
L.M. M 56 13 stroke 26 left TPO agrammatism AAT
A.C. F 31 11 stroke 86 left FTP and agrammatism AAT
left insula
D.S. M 63 5 stroke 17 left FT, left fluent aphasia AAT
caudate
nucleus
B.D. M 67 6 stroke 38 left FTP fluent aphasia BADA
YOE = years of education; T = temporal, F = frontal, P = parietal, O = occipital.

L.G. was a right-handed 25-year-old barman. His speech output was slow and
dysprosodic with omission of function words and impaired comprehension of sentences
with non-canonical word order. Picture naming was only slightly impaired (95%
correct on nouns; 90% correct on verbs); word-to-picture matching was unimpaired
(100% correct), while sentence-to-picture matching was moderately impaired (75%
correct). However, his score on the Token Test was low (9 correct responses out of
36) due to a severe phonological short-term memory deficit. His language disorder
was classified as a moderate non-fluent aphasia with agrammatism.
F.C. was a 48-year-old right-handed mechanic, whose language disorder appeared
in 1997. His spontaneous speech was slow, with long and frequent pauses, no subor-
dination, and scarce retrieval of verbs, which were often produced in the non-finite
form. Picture naming was moderately impaired (62% correct on names; 56% on
verbs) Comprehension was good on single words (99% correct), but impaired on
sentences (85% correct). His performance on the Token Test was moderately
impaired (16 correct responses out of 36). F.C.’s language disorder was classified as a
moderate non-fluent aphasia with agrammatism.
N.C. was a 56-year-old right-handed housewife with 5 years of education. Her
spontaneous speech was slow and dysprosodic and often interrupted by long pauses,
with phonemic paraphasia and speech apraxia. Sentences were very short, usually
limited to one or two words, with constant omission of verbs and of grammatical free
and bound morphemes. Picture naming was moderately to severely impaired on
verbs (47% correct) and mildly to moderately impaired on nouns (80% correct).
Comprehension was relatively preserved (but she obtained only 20 correct responses
out of 50 on the Token Test section of the AAT). Her language disorder was classified
as a moderate non-fluent aphasia with agrammatism.
L.M. was a 56-year-old male clerical employee. His spontaneous speech was
severely impaired due to anomia and several automatic elements. He produced very
few verbs and substituted inflectional endings with less-marked forms; closed-class
words were almost always omitted. Naming of pictures was severely impaired on
verbs (34% correct) and only moderately on nouns (72% correct). Comprehension
was mildly to moderately impaired on the AAT battery and moderately to severely
impaired on the Token Test (13 correct responses out of 50). His language disorder was
classified as a moderate-to-severe non-fluent aphasia with agrammatism.
A.C. was a 31-year-old shop assistant with 11 years of education. She had no
articulatory deficit, but her speech output was impaired with recurring phonemic
paraphasia, anomia, and frequent use of circumlocutions. Sentences were short and
syntactically simplified, with predominant omission of function words; inflectional
endings were frequently substituted with less-marked forms. Her performance on the
naming task was moderately impaired (62% correct on verbs, 70% correct on nouns).
She also had difficulty in oral comprehension (and scored 17 correct out of 50 on the
Token Test). Her language disorder was classified as a moderate non-fluent aphasia
with agrammatism.
D.S. was a 63-year-old metal worker by trade with 5 years of education, whose
language impairment emerged in 2005. His speech was fluent, with severe anomia,
phonemic paraphasia, neologisms, and some perseveration. He produced severe
morpho-syntactic errors on the figure description task; his sentences were short and
often interrupted but contained elements indicating traces of a complex syntactic
structure. A language examination showed severe repetition disorders on the AAT,

impaired picture naming (50% correct on verbs, 54% correct on nouns), and mild-to-
moderate comprehension disorders, but he obtained 20 out of 50 correct responses at
the Token Test. His language impairment was classified as a moderate fluent aphasia.
B.D. was a 67-year-old retired butcher. His language impairment was fluent, with
conspicuous grammatical/syntactic difficulties. Although he did retain some clear
traces of a complex sentence structure, he seldom produced complete subordinate
sentences, and there were several agreement errors (subject–verb or article–noun
agreement). Picture naming was very good for nouns (98% correct) and mildly
impaired on verbs (81% correct). Word and sentence comprehension were mostly
preserved (100% and 81% correct respectively), while his performance at the Token
Test was moderately impaired (20 correct responses out of 36). His language disorder
was classified as a mild-to-moderate fluent aphasia.
Stimuli and experimental procedure. A picture-naming task was devised in order

to detect impaired access to the verb argument structure. The task was composed of
53 images (28 b/w drawings and 25 pictures), which depicted actions requiring a tool.
All the images were preliminarily shown to a sample of control participants, who had
to describe each event using verbs taking the same argument structure, i.e., a subject,
an object, and a manner adjunct. The name of the tool had to be morphologically
unrelated to the name of the verb, so images triggering answers such as l’uomo sega
un tronco con la sega (the man saws a trunk with a saw) were not included. Appendix
2 contains the list of the sentences included in the final version of the target task. The
task had two conditions.
Condition 1. Participants were shown the images depicting the actions. The examiner
read the following instructions: “Now I will show you pictures and drawings depicting
actions. Look at each picture and tell me what happens in it. Tell me who is depicted
in the picture, what the person is doing and which tool he/she is using.” Two examples
were given before the actual task was set; if the action Theme or tool were omitted, the
examiner pointed to the omitted element in the picture and prompted: “Well, and
what about this?” This support was not given during the test itself.
Condition 2. Each item, examples included, was presented in a second run; in the
second condition the participants were also presented with the sentence structure
(Figure 1) that they had to complete using two flash cards (Figure 2) provided by the
examiner.
L UOMO
The man
Figure 1. Sketched representation of item number 52, l’uomo affetta il pane con il coltello (the man slices
the bread with the knife). In Condition 1, participants were shown only the upper part of the figure, and
were asked to describe the picture by saying who is depicted in the figure, what the person is doing, and
which tool he/she is using. In Condition 2, participants were also presented with the sentence structure
(lower part of the figure), were asked to add a verb and complete the sentence using two flash cards pro-
vided by the examiner (see Figure 2) and to spell out the whole sentence.
IL COLTELLO IL PANE
the knife the bread
Figure 2. Example of the flash card supplied to the participants to fill the gaps of Figure 1. The picture on
the right represents the direct object and has to be located after the verb. The picture on the left depicts the
tool by which the action is carried out and should be placed in the final position.
Each sentence was composed of five elements: the grammatical subject, the verb,
the object/Theme, the preposition heading the manner adjunct, followed by the tool
used to perform the action. Theme and instrument were represented in written and
picture form on two flash cards given to the participant (Figure 2), who then had to
fill the gaps in the sentence frame (see lower part of Figure 1) and to spell out the sen-
tence. Pictures and names of VP internal arguments/adjuncts were provided in order
to bypass possible lexical retrieval disorders.
In condition 2 the examiner said: “Now the task will be easier, because I will give
you some cues. Look at the lower part of the stimulus: first you have to say which
person carries out the action (pointing to the first element on the left), then (indicat-
ing the second element) you must retrieve the verb and finally (pointing to the gaps in
the third and fifth position) produce the two elements of the action which are
depicted on the flash cards.” The two flash cards were stacked one upon the other to
avoid the patient thinking that the order given by the examiner would correspond to
that of the target. The examiner opened the first example with the words “A man . . .”
and the participant had to retrieve the appropriate verb by placing the two flash
cards in the right order and by uttering the corresponding content words and the
fitting preposition (fourth element).
All patients were examined in both conditions. There was no time limit; however,
if a patient was unable to generate a sentence within 3–4 minutes, s/he was invited to
pass to the following item. If one of the main elements of a sentence (direct object or
tool) was omitted, the examiner asked the participant to produce it. Task instructions
were repeated whenever needed. The patients’ entire production was audio-recorded
and transcribed including pauses, self-corrections, and the examiner’s interventions.
The responses produced by the participants were divided into six different
categories:
1. Correct production: sentences containing an Agent, an appropriate transitive
verb, a Theme, and a manner adjunct were scored as correct. Errors in the
article–name or name–verb agreement, or the production of verbs in a non-
finite form were not counted as errors. We also classified as correct responses
that were generated after the examiner elicited the production of omitted ele-
ments, and sentences containing lexical substitutions but resulting in argument
structures that were appropriate for the retrieved verbs (for instance, “the man
folds a piece of paper with his hands” instead of “the man models a plane with
paper”). In condition 1, sentences were computed as correct when the gram-
matical subject, the direct object, or the tool of the action were omitted (“the
woman reads with a magnifying glass” for “the woman reads a book with a
magnifying glass”). Finally, responses in which the elements of interest were
distributed into two clauses (for instance “the boy opens a bottle by using a
corkscrew” for “the boy opens a bottle with a corkscrew”) were classified as
correct.
2. Sentences containing passe-partout verbs (to do, to use, to put, and to take) were
considered incorrect. An answer was classified in this class if the passe-partout
verb was the only one produced, as in “*the woman puts a piece on the pot with
some glue” (target sentence “the woman repairs a pot with some glue”).
3. Verb-argument structure errors. In most cases, the action tool became the Theme
of the action as in the sentence “*the girl sews a thread for the button” (target
sentence “a woman sews a button with a thread”). Errors were also classified in this
class if they occurred in a sentence containing one or more lexical substitutions of

the subject, theme, or adjunct (e.g., “*the woman eats a fork with an egg”,
produced instead of “the woman whisks an egg with a fork”).
4. Substitution/omission of prepositions. This category grouped sentences where the
preposition “with” was missing or substituted (e.g., “*the woman cuts the paper
for the scissors” instead of “the woman cuts the paper with the scissors”).
5. We classified as other errors all the remaining abnormal responses and, in
particular, all cases in which it was not possible to make a clear-cut decision
regarding the type of error: e.g., *l’uomo importa la sua salute (*the man cares his
health).
6. Non-structured responses / no response.
Statistics. Data were analysed with chi-square statistics to assess the goodness-of-fit
to a theoretical model, and particularly to investigate the occurrence of verb-argument
structure errors. The behaviour of the non-neurological participants in the first two
conditions of the task constituted the theoretical model of reference. We considered the
mean of the errors made by control participants in the two conditions (in percentage).
Responses were divided into two error categories: verb-argument structure errors
(“VAS errors”) and “other errors”, including categories (2), (4), (5), and (6). The rate
of correct answers was not considered, as it would have induced an artificial increase
of c2 values. Observed values source from the aphasic speakers suffering from mild-to-
moderate disorders, while expected values refer to neurologically intact participants.
Two-by-two contingency tables were prepared using the following procedure: first
we computed the mean number of verb-argument structure errors and of other types
of errors in the control sample (10 participants) for the two conditions (106 responses
for each participant). Mean values were then transformed into percentages. Expected
frequencies were computed for each patient: i.e., the number of errors made by each
patient was divided by the total error rate of the control group and then multiplied
by the expected error rate in each category. Finally, we computed c2 by applying the
general formula:
( OF-EF )2
∑
EF
where OF and EF indicate observed and expected frequencies respectively.
Results
Control participants. The control participants did not have any difficulty in
performing the task (see Table 2). They responded correctly to most items in the two
conditions, and the percentage of hits increased in the constrained condition. Their
errors were mainly the use of passe-partout verbs (as to put or to do); only two
responses contained a verb argument error and no omissions or substitutions of
prepositions were generated. The total rate of error was 3.2%: 0.1% for the “verb-
argument structure errors” category and 3.1% for “other types of error”. These
TABLE 2
Results obtained by the control participants in the two experimental conditions
Score (range: 0–53)
Condition 1 Condition 2
Type of answer M % SD M % SD
Correct response 50.3 94.9 2.0 52.3 98.7 1.1

Omission/Substitution of preposition – 0 – – 0 –
Passe-partout verb 2.6 4.9 1.8 0.6 1.1 0.8
Verb-argument structure error – 0 – 0.1 0.2 0.3
Other types of error 0.1 0.2 0.3 – 0 –
Non-structured/no response – 0 – – 0 –
For each condition mean (M), percentage (%) and standard deviation (SD) are given.
Condition 1 = unconstrained picture description. Condition 2 = constrained condition.
percentages were considered as the theoretical model of reference in computing the

c2 values.
Aphasic patients. Contrary to the pattern of performance that emerged in the

control group, some of the aphasic patients did not improve their performance in the
constrained condition (see Table 3). In particular, participants L.M., N.C., and F.C.
produced a greater number of errors in the second condition than in the first one.
When invited to complete a sentence, they often produced verb argument errors and
substituted or omitted prepositions, while they tended to omit the action tool in the free
description condition. They also produced more passe-partout verbs and unstruc-
tured responses. Table 3 reports the various error types produced by the patients.
In the performance of the agrammatic patient F.C., VAS errors represented 30%
and 24.5% respectively of the responses in the two conditions (see Table 3). When
considering the rate of VAS errors with respect to the entire number of errors, it con-
stituted 52% and 27% in the two conditions respectively. The patient produced a
higher proportion of VAS errors than the control participants (see Table 4).
The performances of L.G. and A.C. were also characterised by several VAS
errors. For L.G., errors mainly occurred in the free description condition (15% of all
responses), while in the second condition he produced a majority of passe-partout
forms (45%) and errors in the use of prepositions. A.C. produced the same rate of
correct sentences in the two conditions (66% of responses in the first and 68% in the
second); her errors were mainly substitutions of the target verb form with passe-par-
tout forms and the production of sentences with anomalous argument structure
(respectively 17% and 41% of all errors). L.M. made approximately the same rate of
VAS errors in the two conditions (9.5% and 15% respectively), and his errors were
mainly constituted by the use of passe-partout verbs. N.C. and D.S., on the other
hand, made only a few VAS errors, and errors mostly involved the substitution of
verbs with passe-partout forms, the retrieval of prepositions (which were often omit-
ted) and the production of unstructured sentences (N.C. in particular). Finally, the
performance of the fluent aphasic patient B.D. did not reveal a clear pattern of dam-
age, since he obtained the highest percentage of correct responses and his few errors
were distributed among the various categories without a clear prevalence of sentences
containing anomalous VAS (see Table 4). Regarding the use of prepositions, L.G. did
TABLE 3
Results obtained by the seven aphasic patients
Omission/Substitution Verb argument

Correct response of preposition Passe-partout verb structure error* Other types of error Non-structured/no response
Patient N % N % N % N % N % N %
CONDITION 1
L.G. 22 41.5 4 7.5 7 13 8 15 8 15 4 7.5
F.C. 22 41.5 8 15 3 6 16 30 0 0 4 7.5
N.C. 18 34 7 13 2 4 0 0 0 0 26 49
L.M. 11 21 3 5.5 26 49 5 9.5 5 9.5 3 5.5
A.C. 35 66 1 2 12 23 3 6 2 4 0 0
D.S. 29 55 4 7.5 16 30 0 0 1 2 3 5.5
B.D. 42 79 1 2 5 9 2 4 2 4 1 2
CONDITION 2
L.G. 20 38 4 7.5 24 45 3 5.5 2 4 0 0
F.C. 4 7.5 20 38 7 13 13 24.5 2 4 7 13
N.C. 6 11 19 36 0 0 3 6 1 2 24 45
L.M. 1 2 3 5.5 38 71.5 8 15 2 4 1 2
A.C. 36 68 0 0 10 19 7 13 0 0 0 0
D.S. 31 58 9 17 9 17 1 2 2 4 1 2
B.D. 44 83 1 2 1 2 3 6 4 8 0 0
For each category, number (N) and rate (%) of correct responses are reported separately for the two experimental conditions.
*Some of the errors that were included in this category could actually be explained as errors in selecting the preposition introducing the manner adjunct. This could
account for the performance of some patients: L.G. = 7 out of 11 errors; F.C.= 7 out of 39 errors; N.C. = 1 out of 3 errors; L.M. = 2 out of 13 errors; B.D. = 1 out of 5 errors.
ARGUMENT STRUCTURE DEFICITS IN APHASIA
A.C. and D.S. did not produce any ambiguous error.

1411
TABLE 4
Observed frequencies and χ2-values referring to the patients’ performance on the picture
description task
Verb argument
structure errors Other errors Total
Controls 0.10% 3.10% 3.20% χ2 p
L.G. 11 53 64 41.80 < .001

F.C. 29 51 80 290.00 < .001
N.C. 3 79 82 0.062 ns
L.M. 13 81 94 36.30 < .001
A.C. 10 25 35 74.30 < .001
D.S. 1 45 46 0.104 ns
B.D. 5 15 20 33.30 < .001
Errors made in Condition 1 and Condition 2 were considered. Controls = mean % of the control
sample production.
not omit prepositions in any of the sentences in which VAS errors emerged. F.C.
introduced a prepositional adjunct in 19 out of 29 sentences containing VAS errors,
while A.C.’s VAS errors (10) were always based on the use of a direct object for the
tool and a prepositional adjunct for the Theme of the action, e.g., *donna chiude le
chiave con la. . .la porta (*woman closes the keys with the. . .the door). L.M. pro-
duced prepositions in 8 out of 13 sentences with an error in the VAS. Finally, B.D.
made a total of five VAS errors and never omitted prepositions.
Discussion
Of the seven aphasic patients participating in the study, five scored a statistically
significant rate of errors involving the VAS. Four (L.G., F.C., L.M., and A.C.) suf-
fered from non-fluent aphasia with agrammatism, whereas one patient (B.D.) was
classified as having Wernicke’s aphasia. Patients made a relevant number of errors in
mapping thematic roles to the corresponding sentence argument structure in both
conditions. These errors indicate that patients may be able to retrieve the correct verb
but be unable to use it with the appropriate VAS. In detail, patients seemed to adopt a
default VAS, in which the role of Theme is assigned to the instrument, as is the case
with the verb to use. This result is particularly interesting since it is at odds with a
strict application of Levelt’s model of lexical selection (Bock & Levelt, 1994; see also
Levelt et al., 1999), which maintains a strictly sequential lemma → lexeme access.
However a sequential lemma–lexeme access cannot account for the performance of a
patient who is able to retrieve the verb lexeme but uses it with an incorrect argument
structure (i.e., without accessing the information contained in the lemma). An altern-
ative explanation is that agrammatic patients usually omit function words, therefore
their errors may be explained as an omission of the preposition “with” introducing
the manner adjunct, rather than an impaired selection of the appropriate argument
structure; for instance, the production of a sentence like *la donna taglia la forbice
(*the woman cuts the scissors) could be the result of a correct retrieval of the target
sentence structure la donna taglia con la forbice (the woman cuts with the scissors)
and the omission of the preposition “with”. However, there are numerous cases that
do not fit this interpretation (61 out of 78 errors made by patients throughout the
picture description task, i.e., 72% of the whole corpus): e.g., L.M. produced *il mura-
tore costruisce il mattone per il muro (*the mason builds the brick for the wall), L.G.
said *la donna taglia la forbice con la carta (*the woman cuts scissors with the paper),
while F.C. stated *la signora pulisce il fazzoletto per il naso (*the woman cleans the
handkerchief for the nose). These sentences were all produced by non-fluent aphasic
patients and showed that they were able to retrieve prepositions but placed the tools
in the direct object position, and expressed the Theme as a prepositional phrase. Fur-
thermore, a patient suffering from Wernicke’s aphasia produced errors in the verb
argument structure, which is clearly in contrast with the preposition omission expla-
nation, since fluent aphasic patients generally do not omit prepositions.
These results therefore cannot be interpreted in terms of omission of preposition
introducing the manner adjunct, while a defective retrieval of verb argument structure
appears to be a more likely explanation.
However, in order to further exclude the possibility that the abnormal production
described so far is caused by an impaired retrieval of prepositions, a second experi-
ment was introduced to test their correct use in patients with presumed impaired
VAS retrieval.
EXPERIMENT 2
Aim
The aim of this experiment was to evaluate the use of prepositions in five patients
who made a relevant number of VAS errors in the picture description task. In par-
ticular we wanted to exclude that the results obtained in the first experiment derived
from an inability to retrieve prepositions (a condition which usually characterises
agrammatic production), rather than from a failure to retrieve the correct VAS. In
order to achieve this, we administered two different tasks, tapping the use of the
prepositions that are encoded at lexical level (Luzzatti & De Bleser, 1996) or in a sen-
tence context (Lonzi & Luzzatti, 1995). The first task was included as a control con-
dition, to differentiate the impaired use of prepositions at sentence level from a
deficit already appearing within the NP. The second task specifically taps the selec-
tion of prepositions in a condition that is similar to that required in Experiment 1,
since they depend on the VAS.
Method and materials

The participants were asked to take a test tapping the retrieval of prepositions. The
first task checked their ability to generate prepositions in noun phrases such as pasta
al forno (baked pasta [lit. pasta at the oven]), statua di marmo (marble statue [lit.
statue of marble]) or arma da fuoco (firearm [lit. arm for fire]). The test was composed
of 60 nouns modified by a prepositional phrase (for example mulino a vento [wind-
mill]). The examiner pronounced two nouns separated by an audible pause reinforced
by a click. The patient had to orally produce the prepositional compound while
adding the linking preposition and, if necessary, the clitic article. The 60 preposi-
tional compounds were mixed with 18 noun-noun (N-N) and 9 noun-adjective com-
pounds (for example, ferrovia, railway), in which neither a preposition nor an article
had to be inserted (Luzzatti & De Bleser, 1996)
The second task (Lonzi & Luzzatti, 1995) aimed at verifying the patients’ ability
to use prepositions in a sentence context, as for example Giovanni andrà dal dottore
per una visita (Giovanni will go to the doctor for a medical examination). The task
was composed of 100 sentences which were read aloud by the patient and/or by the
examiner, and the patient had to fill the blank with: (i) an article, as in Mario compra
un regalo (Mario buys a present); (ii) a preposition, as in devi dare questo libro a
Giovanni ([you] must give this book to Giovanni);4 (iii) both a preposition and an art-
icle as in ho visto una bottiglia nel frigo ([I] saw a bottle in the fridge); (iv) the task also
included 16 fillers, in which there was nothing to add, as for instance la mamma con-
vincerà . . . Luisa (mother will convince Luisa).
Prepositions in this task could be strictly subcategorised by the verb, i.e., introducing
arguments, such as questo libro appartiene a Luigi (this book belongs to Luigi), or not
strictly subcategorised, i.e., introducing adjuncts, such as prese il telegramma con pre-
occupazione ([he] took the telegram with concern). Prepositions could also be part of
a by-phrase in passive sentences, as in la lettera sarà consegnata dal postino (the letter
will be delivered by the postman).
In both tasks the participants had to decide whether the clause required a preposition ±
an article to fill the blank or whether nothing had to be added. The examiner started
the first task with three examples. L.M. could not take the second task because of his
short-term memory impairment and his severe reading difficulties.
The patients’ responses were classified into four possible types of error: inappro-
priate addition, inappropriate omission, substitution of article/preposition, and “yes,
but I don’t know”. In the last category the patients understood that the blank
required an article/preposition, but were unable to produce the appropriate element.
Results
Use of prepositions within noun phrases (prepositional compounds). Table 5 sum-
marises the results of Experiment 2. Patients L.G. and F.C. easily identified
noun-noun compounds (25 and 26 out of 27 respectively), could detect the preposi-
tional compounds, and generally inserted the correct preposition: their errors were
more often substitutions than omissions. L.M., on the contrary, frequently omitted
prepositions (51 out of 60). A.C. produced very few correct responses and made a
high number of omissions and substitutions. B.D. produced a majority of correct
insertions (62 out of 87), and used the correct preposition in 58% of the cases; his
errors were almost equally distributed between omissions and substitutions. He
omitted the preposition in 14 items only, while in 46 cases his responses contained a
preposition that was mostly correct.
Use of prepositions in a sentence context. The three agrammatic participants (L.G.,

F.C., and A.C.) were often able to supply prepositions (see Table 6) when required,
but often not the correct ones: omissions, however, were rare (9 for F.C., 10 for A.C.,
and 11 for L.G.). B.D., on the other hand, often managed to retrieve the correct
4
Contrary to the English verb to give, which can take a double argument structure, either transi-
tive (+ complement) or ditransitive (Mary gives the book to John and Mary gives John the book), in
Italian the verb dare takes only one argument structure, always requiring a prepositional phrase
introduced by a (to).
TABLE 5
Patients’ retrieval of preposition within prepositional compounds (Experiment 2)
Abnormal insertion of Omission of Substitution of Yes but don’t know
Patient Correct responses Art Prep Both Art Prep Both Art Prep Both Correct Incorrect Total
L.G. 54 5 1 1 – 8 1 – 17 – – – 87
F.C. 63 – – 1 – 4 2 – 14 – – 3 87
L.M. 26 4 – – 1 2 49 1 4 – – – 87
A.C. 5 5 – 9 – 24 7 – 27 – – 10 87
B.D. 62 – – – – 6 8 – 11 – – – 87
Art = insertion / omission / substitution of the article only. Prep = insertion/omission/substitution of the preposition only. Both = insertion/omission/substitution of both
article and preposition. Yes, but don’t know = answers in which the patient correctly recognises the necessity of inserting a preposition (= correct). “Incorrect” refers to items
that did not require any additions.
ARGUMENT STRUCTURE DEFICITS IN APHASIA
1415
TABLE 6
Retrieval of prepositions in a sentence context
Subcateg. Not subcateg. Partially subcateg. Passive-da No prep. Total
L.G.
correct 18 7 5 3 13 46
substituted 13 15 2 5 * 35
omitted 6 2 1 2 * 11
added * * * * 3 3
yes, but don’t know 3 2 0 0 0 5
total 40 26 8 10 16 100
F.C.
correct 9 10 3 6 15 43
omitted 5 1 2 1 * 9
added * * * * 1 1
total 40 26 8 10 16 100
A.C.
correct 17 7 5 0 9 38
omitted 5 2 2 1 * 10
added * * * * 7 7
total 40 26 8 10 16 100
B.D.
correct 26 22 6 5 13 72
omitted 2 1 0 0 * 3
added * * * * 2 2
total 40 26 8 10 16 100
Results from L.M.’s performance are not reported as he was unable to complete the task.
Subcateg = subcategorised by the verb; Prep = preposition; Passive-da = passive-by.
preposition (72 items out of 84). His errors were predominantly substitutions (20),
with very few omissions (3).
The patients’ performances in the two tasks were compared by a paired t-test, in
which the percentage of errors for each type (omissions, substitutions, additions, yes
but don’t know) was compared across the two tasks. No difference was found
between the two tasks (t = 0.267, ns).
Discussion
The results indicate that at least four of the five patients were often able to retrieve the
correct prepositions, and only a few omissions were made in the task assessing the abil-
ity to insert prepositions into sentences. No differences were found in the patients’ abil-
ity to use prepositions in the two tasks. These results indicate that our patients had an
almost preserved ability to employ prepositions and, in particular, were able to identify
when a preposition had to be inserted in a sentence depending on the verb provided, and
thus on the VAS, as in the sentences in Experiment 1. These results would appear to be
in contrast with the interpretation of the errors made by aphasic patients in Experiment
1 in terms of a specific impairment in retrieving prepositions.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The aim of the present study was to assess the ability of aphasic patients to employ
verbs in an appropriate syntactic frame, i.e., using an appropriate argument structure.
Argument structure specifies the number and type of participants in the event
described by the verb, and several studies (Bonakdarpour, Thompson, & Fix, 2007;
Kim & Thompson, 2000; Luzzatti et al., 2002; Thompson, 2003; Thompson et al.,
1997) have proved the influence of this feature on verb processing in aphasic
patients. According to models of lexical production (Levelt et al., 1999), information
about verb argument structure is stored in the lemma, defined as a “package of
semantic and syntactic information” concerning, for instance, grammatical gender of
nouns and VAS. Clinical observation indicates that some fluent and non-fluent
aphasic patients implement verbs in a sentence frame using an inappropriate argu-
ment structure.
In Experiment 1 we used a picture description task to investigate verb production
in sentences and found that five out of seven aphasic patients (four suffering from
agrammatism and one from Wernicke’s aphasia) used verbs in an abnormal syntactic
frame. These errors emerged both when patients were asked to describe the picture
freely and when they had to complete the sentence frame by placing flash cards in the
right position and inserting the correct preposition.
Experiment 2 aimed at assessing the use of prepositions by patients who made a
relevant number of verb argument structure errors, in order to exclude an alternative
explanation of this deficit. Since most of these patients were suffering from non-fluent
aphasia and agrammatism, some of their errors (for instance *la donna taglia la
forbice [*the woman cuts the scissors]) could have been explained by the omission of
the preposition introducing the manner adjunct. However, the results indicate that
most patients tend to substitute prepositions rather than to omit them, even if
required to insert them in a sentence context.
To sum up, this study shows that fluent and non-fluent aphasic patients may retrieve
the correct verbs but then use them with an improper VAS. In particular, they tend to
retrieve a default argument structure such as that of the verb to use; indeed, although a
patient (e.g., F.C.) made an error when he attempted to describe an image depicting a
woman sewing a button with a needle with the words *la signora cuce l’ago per il bot-
tone (*the lady sews the needle for the button), had he substituted the verb “cuce”
(sews) with the verb “usa” (uses) the sentence would have been acceptable.
Since most patients who made VAS errors did not omit prepositions either in prep-
ositional compounds or in a sentence context (see Experiment 2), it can be claimed that
these errors are not caused by difficulty in the use of prepositions, but by a deficit
affecting the mapping of thematic roles onto the corresponding sentence argument
structure. In addition, our results are in line with those obtained by Biran and Fried-
mann (2008), who tested aphasic patients’ ability in processing verb argument
structure by means of a verb completion, a grammatical judgement, and a sentence
production task.
As stated in the introduction, the verb production deficit in Broca’s aphasia is
explained either as an impaired lemma selection (Kim & Thompson, 2000), or as a
deficit at the grammatical encoding level, i.e., during the creation of the syntactic
environment (Bastiaanse & van Zonneveld, 2004). Even if our study does not directly
address this issue, damage at the lemma level may be assumed in our patients. Specif-
ically, they might encounter difficulties in accessing lemma information, i.e., in map-
ping stored lemma thematic knowledge to the corresponding argument structure, or

the lemma knowledge itself may be damaged. This latter case is in contrast with the
strictly serial lemma–lexeme access posited by Bock and Levelt’s model of lexical
production (1994; see also Levelt et al., 1999). These authors assume that word pro-
duction is a five-step process, in which the syntactic features included in the lemma
are always accessed before the phonological word form, i.e., the lexeme. Therefore,
when producing a verb, information about its argument structure and thematic role
assignment should be accessed before retrieving its phonological word form. How-
ever, if a patient is able to retrieve the correct lexical label of a verb but employs it in
an incorrect argument structure, it can be assumed that s/he retrieves the lexeme
without having accessed the lemma. Given its strictly sequential lemma-lexeme
order, Levelt’s model does not fully account for this type of error. The independent
network model of lexical access proposed by Caramazza (1997) appears to be most
coherent with our data, in that the lexical-syntactic network is activated by both the
lexical-semantic network and the phonological and orthographical representations
(P-lexeme and O-lexeme). In addition, information concerning verb argument struc-
ture is assumed to be fully activated only after the retrieval of the phonological/
orthographic representation. Thus, in this theoretical framework, the damage in our
patients could be located at the connection between the P-lexeme and the lexical-syn-
tactic network: indeed, if this connection is disrupted, it is impossible to access all the
information stored in the lexical-syntactic network, including the verb argument
structure. Further investigation is needed in order to shed light on the locus of the
deficit in these patients.
Manuscript received 18 July 2009

Manuscript accepted 21 December 2009
First published online 9 August 2010
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APPENDIX 1
Spontaneous speech samples
The names of places and persons were changed in order to protect patients’ privacy.
Patient L.G.
Tell me about your day: what do you do?
Oggi . . . nel la . . abbiamo no a . . (. . .) . ho fatto colazione . ho preso il caffelatte e . . fioc-
chi e . . basta . Poi . . . i . . la Chiara . fisioterapia . . . . abbiamo abbiamo . . fatto un .
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . . e . . basta . Poi . la Teresa . . ho guardato . . i compiti . . e . . . . basta .
Poi Vanessa . . logopedia . . . . leggere . scrivere . poi . . basta . . La sera . . guarda no .
ho mangiato e . . . finito . . e . . . . . buonanotte (. . .)
[Today . . . in the . . had1stPPl no . . . (. . .) . (I) had1stPSg breakfast . (I) had1stPSg coffee-

with-milk and . . flakes and . . stop . Then . . . . . Chiara . physiotherapy . . . . (we)
have1stPl (we) have1stPl . . done a . 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 . . and . . stop . Then . Teresa . . (I)
have1stSg looked at. . the homework . . and . . . . stop . Then Vanessa . . speech ther-
apy . . . . readInf . writeInf . then . . stop . . The evening . . watches no . (I) have1stSg
eaten and . . . finished . . and . . goodnight (. . .)]
Patient F.C.
Tell me about your day: what do you do?
Alla mattina . . a casa . . preparo la colazione . . . . . e . . i ragazzi . . . vanno a scuola
e la . . Serena . a scuola lavoro . Io . . . ehm . . la mattina faccio i letti . . e . . . poi vado
in bicicletta . . . . . . in bicicletta per . . . la carrozzeria . . e parlare del più e del meno . . . gli
amici per discorsi . . . (. . .) A casa mangio e . il telegiornale . Parlare del più e del meno
però tavola apparecchiata per tre . . la Elisa e il Davide (. . .)
[In the morning . . at home . . (I) prepare1stSg the breakfast . . . . . and . . the kids . . .
go3rdPl to school and . . Serena . to school work . I . . . uh . . the morning (I)

do1stSg the beds . . and . . . then (I) go by bike . . . by bike . . . for . . . the garage . .
and chatInf (lit. talkInf of-the-more-and-the-less) . . . the friends for speeches . . .
(. . .) At home (I) eat and . the news . ChatInf (lit. talkInf of-the-more-and-the-less)
but table setPstPrtFemSing for three . Elisa and Davide (. . .)]
Patient N.C.
Describe your family.
Eh . . . . . . (a)spetta . . . . ecco eh . . . Luigi . . Marta . . . e . . Simona (. . .) Marta . . . eh . .
. case . . ehm . . case . . . case (. . .) . . . eh . . . no . .. disegni . . . . . . clicca (. . .). E suo mar-
ito? Pensione. E di che cosa si occupava? Lavorare . . . pi . . . pi . . . lavorare . . . . computer.
[Uh . . . . . . wait . . . . well uh . . . Luigi . . Marta . . . uh . . Simona (. . .) Marta . . . eh . . .
houses . . uh . . houses . . . houses (. . .) . . . uh . . . no . . . drawings . . . . . . clicks (. . .). And
your husband? Retired. And what did he do? WorkInf . . . pi . .. pi . . workInf . . . computer. .
Patient L.M.
Tell me what happened to you at the beginning of your disease.
E . . per adesso quando o . . o . . via e . . lui . . lui . . e . . ferma . Questo qui qualche cosa
qualche cosa . . e . . questo questo tutti i giorni . E . . e . . gamba, la gamba non . . tutti i
giorni tutti i giorni (. . .). Capisco o o . . “Ciao come stai? Come stai?” Tutti questo .
Parlare parlare parlare però ogni giorno questo non riesco (. . .). E. . posso par . . e . .
la baldorante . . e Debora scende perché chiedo chiedo, come si chiama, qualcosa perché
chiu non c’era e . . portato e . . portato portato portato e . .clinica, clinica (. . .)
[And . . for now when or . . or . . away and . . he . . he . . and . . stops . This one something
something . . and . . this this, every day . And . . and . . leg the leg not . . every day every
day (. . .) (I) understand or or . . “Hello how are you?” “How are you?”All this . TalkInf
talkInf but every day I do not manage (. . .). And . . (I) can ta . . and . . the [neologism] . .
and Debora comes down because (I) ask (I) ask, what’s its name, something because
there was not and . . taken and . . taken taken taken and . . clinic, clinic.]
Patient A.C.
(. . .) Era una sera . . eh ha ho guardato la tivù . . no? In camera sul letto . e dopo un po’,
niente, . . cioè . . aspetta . . poi va . . . ritorna in bagno no . . sempre un po’ che (. . .) . Alle
l’una e mezza . la mamma fina(l)mente ritorna in casa (. . .) e la mamma fa: cos’è cos’ho
fatto?. E . e . io parlare cioè . . . insomma . . . allora faccio schivi (scrivi) un attimo la penna.
. .Aloro (Allora), ho letto, no, scri, un foglio, no tivo (scrivo) niente, cioè pi-ri-tu (. . .).
[(. . .) It was3rdSg an evening . . uh has (I) have1stSg watched the TV . . uh? In my bedroom,
on the bed . and after a while, nothing, . . that is . . wait . . then goes, goes back to (the)
bathroom, uh . . . always a while that (. . .) . At DETFemPl DETFemSg half past one . mum
finally [phonemic paraphasia] comes back home (. . .) and mum says: what’s that, what
have1stSg I done?. And . and I. talkInf that is . .well . well do1stSg write2ndSg a moment the
pen. . .So, I read, no, wri, a paper, (I) write nothing, that is pi-ri-tu (. . .) ]
Patient D.S.

(. . .) Eh c’era un giorno sedici (. . .) sedici o o-ooo-obbre si eh . porto mia moglie a Novara
no? Laaaa mia figlia, no? E dopo c’era . c’è la tua figlia no? Io va . (. . .) “C’è, c’è Maria?”
“Sì sì c’è”:. e vai giù . su . (. . .) Dopo per (l)a ma(c)china, no? Vaio (Vado) a casa no?
(. . .) E dopo così io così, no? (. . .)
[(. . .) Uh there was a day sixteen (. . .) sixteen October yes uh . . I take1stSg my wife to
Novara, uh? There, my daughter, uh? And then there was . there is your daughter, uh? I
goes (. . .) “Is there, is there Maria? Yes, yes (she) is there”; and go2ndSg down . up . (. . .)
Then for the car, isn’t it? Go1stSg home, uh? (. . .), and then so, I so, isn’t it? (. . .)]
Patient B.D.
Describe a day in your life: what did you do yesterday?
Alle sette . . . mi sono svegliato perché . . . il il nipote . . . porto dalle scuola con la
macchina da Verdello a Dalmine verso le otto meno un quarto. Dopo faccio la colazione
. . . e . . . prendo la macchina (. . .) . Verso le undici e mezza . . . vado la Gazzetta . . .
pre preparo . . . il tavola e mangio (. . .) . Pomeriggio . . . guardo la televisione, bevo il
caffè . . . e dopo . . . prepara la cena . . . leggo la televisione un film (. . .)
[At seven o’clock . . . (I) woke upRefl+Aux+PstPrt because . . . the the grandson . . . (I)
take1stSg from theFemPl school with the car from Verdello to Dalmine about a quarter
to eight. Then (I) have1stSg breakfast . . . and . . . take1stSg the car (. . .) . About half
past eleven. . . (I) go1stSg the Gazzetta (newspaper) . . . (I) prepare1stSg . . . theMscSg
table and eat1stSg. . Afternoon . . . (I) watch1stSg the television, drink1stSg coffee . . . and
then . . . prepares the dinner; . . . (I) read1stSg the television a movie (. . .)]
APPENDIX 2
List of target sentences
Agent Verb Theme Instrument
Ex L’uomo misura il quadro con il metro The man measures the picture with the metre
Ex L’uomo pesa il bambino con la bilancia The man weighs the baby with the scales
1 L’uomo pianta il chiodo con il martello The man embeds the nail with the hammer
2 L’uomo dipinge il muro con il The man paints the wall with the brush
pennello
3 L’uomo scava la buca con la pala The man digs a hole with the spade
4 La ragazza scrive la lettera con la penna The girl writes the letter with the pen
5 La ragazza lega il ragazzo con la corda The girl ties up the boy with the rope
6 La donna accende il televisore The woman switches on the TV with the remote
con il telecomando control
7 L’uomo ascolta il CD con le cuffie The man listens to the CD with the
headphones
8 La donna attacca il bottone con l’ago The woman sews the button with the needle
9 La bambina bagna il papà con la canna The girl sprays her father with the garden
hose
10 Il cameriere stappa la bottiglia con il The waiter opens the bottle with the
cavatappi corkscrew
11 La donna lava i denti con lo spazzolino The woman brushes her teeth with the
toothbrush
12 La donna pulisce il pavimento con lo The woman cleans the floor with the cloth
straccio
13 La nonna lava la padella con la spugna The grand washes the pan with the sponge
mother
14 La donna benda il ragazzo con il The woman bandages the boy with the
fazzoletto handkerchief
15 La donna ripara il vaso con la colla The woman repairs the pot with the glue
16 La donna taglia i capelli con la forbice The woman cuts her hair with the scissors
17 Il bambino disegna la macchinina con The child draws the toy car with the pencil
la matita
18 La donna pela la patata con il coltello The woman peels the potato with the knife
19 L’uomo taglia le unghie con la forbice The man cuts his nails with the scissors
20 L’infermiera pulisce la vetrina con lo The nurse cleans the display with the cloth
strofinaccio cabinet
21 La donna raccoglie la carta con la The woman sweeps up the paper with the dustpan
paletta
22 La donna trita l’aglio con la mezzaluna The woman dices garlic with the knife
23 La donna asciuga i capelli con il phon The woman dries her hair with the
hairdryer
24 L’uomo riempie la piscina con la canna The man fills the with the garden
paddling hose
pool
25 La donna asciuga il piatto con lo The woman wipes the dish with the
strofinaccio dishtowel
26 La donna legge il libro con la lente The woman reads the book with the
magnifying glass
27 Il bambino tira il sasso con la fionda The child throws the stone with the sling
28 La donna apre la porta con la chiave The woman opens the door with the key
29 Il ladro colpisce i poliziotti con il The thief hits the with the stick
bastone policemen
(Continued)
APPENDIX 2
(Continued)
Agent Verb Theme Instrument
30 La donna accende la candela con il The woman lights the candle with the match
fiammifero
31 La donna versa l’acqua con la brocca The woman pours water with (from) the
jug
32 L’uomo gonfia la bicicletta The man pumps up the bicycle with the bicycle
con la pompa (wheel) pump
33 Il pittore dipinge la tela con il pennello The painter paints the picture with the brush
34 L’uomo mangia gli spaghetti con la The man eats the with the fork
forchetta spaghetti
35 La donna lucida gli stivali con la The woman polishes her boots with the brush
spazzola
36 Il dentista toglie il dente con la pinza The dentist pulls out the tooth with the pincers
37 La donna taglia la carta con la forbice The woman cuts the paper with the scissors
38 La donna sbatte l’uovo con la forchetta The woman whisks the egg with the fork
39 La donna attacca la figurina con la The woman pastes the picture with the glue
colla card
40 Il pastore tira la pecora con la fune The shepherd pulls the sheep with the rope
41 L’uomo bagna i fiori con l’innaffiatoio The man waters the with the
flowers watering-can
42 Il giardiniere raccoglie le foglie con il The gardener gathers the leaves with the rake
rastrello
43 L’uomo aggiusta il rubinetto con la The man repairs the faucet with the monkey-
chiave inglese wrench
44 La donna beve il succo con la cannuccia The woman drinks the juice with the straw
45 L’uomo lava la macchina con la spugna The man cleans the car with the sponge
46 L’uomo costruisce l’aeroplanino con la The man builds the model with paper
carta plane
47 La donna assaggia la minestra con il The woman tastes the soup with the spoon
cucchiaio
48 L’uomo rompe la tazza con il martello The man breaks the cup with the hammer
49 Il muratore costruisce il muro con i The mason builds the wall with bricks
mattoni
50 L’uomo scopisce la statua con martello The man carves the statue with hammer and
e scalpello chisel
51 La donna soffia il naso con il fazzoletto The woman blows her nose with the
handkerchief
52 L’uomo affetta il pane con il coltello The man slices the bread with the knife
53 La donna sottolinea il libro con The woman highlights the book with the marker
l’evidenziatore

Argument Structure Deficits in Aphasia

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Argument Structure Deficits in Aphasia

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On: 2 March 2011

Argument structure deficits in aphasia: New perspective on models of

First published on: 09 August 2010

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Argument structure deficits in aphasia: New perspective on

models of lexical production

University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

Address correspondence to: Claudio Luzzatti, Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca,

set of processes generating the skeleton of an utterance. On the contrary, lexemes,

Method and materials

Months post Language

L.G. M 25 13 traumatic brain 24 left TP and agrammatism Esame di

YOE = years of education; T = temporal, F = frontal, P = parietal, O = occipital.

structure. A language examination showed severe repetition disorders on the AAT,

Stimuli and experimental procedure. A picture-naming task was devised in order

class if they occurred in a sentence containing one or more lexical substitutions of

where OF and EF indicate observed and expected frequencies respectively.

Score (range: 0–53)

Correct response 50.3 94.9 2.0 52.3 98.7 1.1

percentages were considered as the theoretical model of reference in computing the

Aphasic patients. Contrary to the pattern of performance that emerged in the

Omission/Substitution Verb argument

A.C. and D.S. did not produce any ambiguous error.

Controls 0.10% 3.10% 3.20% χ2 p

L.G. 11 53 64 41.80 < .001

Method and materials

Use of prepositions in a sentence context. The three agrammatic participants (L.G.,

Abnormal insertion of Omission of Substitution of Yes but don’t know

Subcateg. Not subcateg. Partially subcateg. Passive-da No prep. Total

ping stored lemma thematic knowledge to the corresponding argument structure, or

Manuscript received 18 July 2009

Friedmann, N. (2000). Moving verbs in agrammatic production. In R. Bastiaanse & Y. Grodzinsky

[Today . . . in the . . had1stPPl no . . . (. . .) . (I) had1stPSg breakfast . (I) had1stPSg coffee-

go3rdPl to school and . . Serena . to school work . I . . . uh . . the morning (I)

Tell me what happened to you at the beginning of your disease.

Agent Verb Theme Instrument

Agent Verb Theme Instrument

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