Nando raises to [SpecJP] and mendorong moves to I° to check its case. Passive sentences like (2a) contain verbal prefix di- ('PT' for. Patient Topic). As sketched ...
AFLA VIII (2001)
Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association
When the Sum of the Parts Doesn't Equal the Whole: Agrammatic Comprehension of Complex Sentences in Indonesian Whitney Postman, Cornell University Cross-linguistic studies of sentence comprehension by people with agrammatic aphasia have provided evidence for a disruption of thematic role assignment, particularly with syntactically complex structures and sentences with non-canonical word order. This paper investigates whether, given the distinctive features of Indonesian grammar and usage, Indonesian-speaking people with agrammatic aphasia would experience the same comprehension pattern as in previously studied languages. In Standard Indonesian (SI), active sentences like (la) contain verbal prefix meN- ('AT' for Agent Topic). Following Adisasmito-Smith (1998), whose proposal is based on the Predicate Phrase Hypothesis in Bowers (1993), we assume that the verb dorong raises to Pred° to merge with meN- and assigns case to Allen, as shown in (lb). Nando raises to [SpecJP] and mendorong moves to I° to check its case. Passive sentences like (2a) contain verbal prefix di- ('PT' for Patient Topic). As sketched in (2b), di- absorbs the case of the object Susan, which then must move to [SpecJP]. Presumably Susan can move past Nando since verb raising renders both NPs equidistant from IP (Chomsky 1995). Nando receives genitive case from dicium, as argued in Aldridge (1998).
SI differs from previously studied languages in that passive constructions are not more morphologically complex than actives, since no auxiliary or preposition 'by' is necessary. Furthermore, passives are relatively frequent and often more pragmatically felicitous (Kaswanti Purwo 1991, Poedjosoedarmo 1986). We hypothesized that since passives in Indonesian are prevalent, functionally important, and relatively simple morphologically, SI speakers with agrammatic comprehension may find passive sentences at least as easy to understand as actives, unlike comparable populations in previously studied languages. On the other hand, the underlying structure of SI passives is more complex than that of actives. The trace left in object position in (2b) is further from its antecedent than the trace left in [SPEC,PredP] in (2b). In addition, the agent NP Nando intervenes between the passivized object Allen and its trace. Therefore, SI speakers with agrammatic comprehension may find passive sentences more difficult to compute than actives, just like comparable populations in other languages. HS, a 68-year-old man with left hemisphere damage and nonfluent speech in SI, was tested in Manado, Sulawesi along with two control subjects and a stroke patient with right-hemisphere damage, HM. Subjects were read coordinate and center-embedded sentences (among other sentence types) like (3a,b) and (4a,b), and acted out their meanings with 3 mannequins. MIT
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AFLA VIII (2001)
Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association
(3) a. Coordinate with meN-:
b. Coordinate with di-:
(4) a. Center-embedded with meN-:
b. Center-embedded with di-:
Allen mendorong Nando dan menendang Susan. Allen AT-push Nando COORD AT-kick Susan 'Allen pushes Nando and kicks Susan' Nando dicium Susan dan dipeluk Allen. Nando PT-kiss Susan COORD PT-hug Allen 'Nando is kissed by Susan and is hugged by Allen' Allen yang menyentuh Susan menggaruk Nando. Allen REL AT-touch Susan AT-scratch Nando 'Allen who touches Susan scratches Nando' Susan yang digaruk Allen dipukul Nando. Susan REL PT-scratch Allen PT-hit Nando 'Susan who is scratched by Allen is hit by Nando'
HS correctly acted out sentences containing meN-verbs with the first NP as agent of both verbs, just as the controls and HM did. In contrast to HM and the controls, though, HS did not maintain the first NP as patient in analogous sentences with di-verbs. Instead, while he correctly made the first NP the recipient of the action of the first verb, he almost always made the second NP the recipient of the action of the second verb. For example, in his enactment of (4b), he had Allen scratch Susan, but had Nando hit Allen (when he should have hit Susan). The fact that HS always acted out the first clause of each test sentence correctly shows that he could successfully interpret both meN-verbs and di-verbs. Yet the result that he consistently misinterpreted the second clause of sentences with di-verbs suggests that HS lacked the computational resources to integrate two passive clauses into a larger compound structure. Specifically, we claim that he could not maintain the syntactic information in the first clause to determine the patient argument of the di-verb in the second clause. HS's performance can be explained if it is based on relative syntactic complexity, following Frazier & Friederici (1992). Because they involve movement from object position, SI passives are, underlyingly, more computationally taxing than actives, and thus more vulnerable in agrammatic aphasia. To compensate for his processing limitations, HS employed a default strategy, which crucially made use of the linear but not structural position of NPs. For HS, the patient of the second verb was the adjacent preverbal NP, which was the second (middle) NP. This conclusion corroborates results from a contrastive grammaticality judgment task with the same subjects (Postman & Martohardjono, 1998). References Adisasmito-Smith, N. 1998. Sentence structure and adverbs in Indonesian. Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics 16:1-33. Aldridge, E. 1998. Reconsidering Tagalog phrase structure with reference to Indonesian. Paper presented at AFLA V, Honolulu. Bowers, J. 1993. The syntax of predication. Linguistic Inquiry 24:591-656. Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Friederici, A. & L. Frazier. 1992. Thematic analysis in agrammatic comprehension: Syntactic structures and task demands. Brain and Language 42: 1-29. Kaswanti Purwo, B. 1991. Perkembangan bahasa anak: Pragmatik dan tata bahasa. In PELLBA 4, (Ed.) S. Dardjowidjojo, 157-202. Jakarta: Penerbit Kanisius. Poedjosoedarmo, G. 1986. Subject selection and subject shifting in Indonesian. NUSA 25:1-17. Postman, W. & G. Martohardjono 1998. Disorders of morphosyntactic comprehension in aphasia in Indonesian. Poster presented at the Academy of Aphasia 36 Annual Meeting, Santa Fe. MIT
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