Journal
NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA
Volume 39, Issue 7, Pages 709-724Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/S0028-3932(01)00008-2
Keywords
semantic dementia; progressive fluent aphasia; regularisation errors
Funding
- MRC [G9724461] Funding Source: UKRI
- Medical Research Council [G9724461] Funding Source: Medline
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Two distinct mechanisms are often considered necessary to account for generation of the past-tense of English verbs: a lexical associative process For irregular forms like speak --> spoke, and a rule-governed process ('add -ed') for regular and novel forms like talk --> talked and wug --> wugged. An alternative account based on a parallel-distributed processing approach proposes that one complex procedure processes all past-tense types. In this alternative view, neuropsychological dissociations are explained by reduced input from word meaning that plays a greater role in successful generation of the past-tense for lower frequency irregular verbs, and by phonological deficits that disproportionately affect regular and novel forms. Only limited evidence has been available concerning the relationship between knowledge of word meaning and verb-tense processing. The study reported here evaluated the past-tense verb abilities of ii patients with semantic dementia, a neurodegenerative condition characterised by degraded semantic knowledge. We predicted and confirmed that the patients would have essentially normal ability to generate and recognise regular land novel past-tense Forms, bur a marked and frequency-modulated deficit on irregular verbs. Across the set of 11 patients, the degree of impairment for the irregular past-tense was significantly correlated with the degree of comprehension impairment as measured by verb synonym judgements. These results. plus other features of the data such as the nature of the errors to irregular verbs, are discussed in relation to currently developing theories of the language system. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available