Language-specific effects in Alzheimer's disease: subject omission in Italian and English

Giulia M. L. Bencini; Lucia Pozzan; Roberta Biundo; William J. McGeown; Virginia V. Valian; Annalena Venneri; Carlo Semenza

doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.07.004

Language-specific effects in Alzheimer's disease: subject omission in Italian and English

Giulia M. L. Bencini, Lucia Pozzan, Roberta Biundo, William J. McGeown, Virginia V. Valian, Annalena Venneri, Carlo Semenza

Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The aim of this study was to verify whether the repetition abilities in Alzheimer patients interact with the linguistic properties of individual languages such that speakers will omit nominal referents more often only if the omission is a grammatical option in their language Unlike English where an overt nominal referent is always required in grammatical subject position Italian allows grammatical subjects to be unexpressed In Experiment 1 twelve Italian speakers with Alzheimer s disease (AD) and twelve age- and education-matched controls repeated sentences of varying length and complexity As predicted Italian AD speakers omitted sentence subjects in complex sentences while control participants very rarely did In Experiment 2 ten English AD speakers matched with the Italian AD participants with respect to age and severity of the disease and ten age- and education-matched controls repeated translation equivalent materials Unlike the Italian AD participants English AD participants did not omit sentence subjects Italian and English AD participants however were comparable in their global ability to repeat sentences of varying length Together these results indicate that the performance of AD speakers in repeating sentences interacts with language-specific properties (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	25-40
Number of pages	16
Journal	Journal of Neurolinguistics
Volume	24
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.07.004
Publication status	Published - Jan 2011

Keywords

null subjects
cross linguistic neurolinguistics
aphasia
syntax
memory
spontaneous speech
children
patterns
alzheimer s disease
syntactic subjects
sentence production

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10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.07.004

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title = "Language-specific effects in Alzheimer's disease: subject omission in Italian and English",

abstract = "The aim of this study was to verify whether the repetition abilities in Alzheimer patients interact with the linguistic properties of individual languages such that speakers will omit nominal referents more often only if the omission is a grammatical option in their language Unlike English where an overt nominal referent is always required in grammatical subject position Italian allows grammatical subjects to be unexpressed In Experiment 1 twelve Italian speakers with Alzheimer s disease (AD) and twelve age- and education-matched controls repeated sentences of varying length and complexity As predicted Italian AD speakers omitted sentence subjects in complex sentences while control participants very rarely did In Experiment 2 ten English AD speakers matched with the Italian AD participants with respect to age and severity of the disease and ten age- and education-matched controls repeated translation equivalent materials Unlike the Italian AD participants English AD participants did not omit sentence subjects Italian and English AD participants however were comparable in their global ability to repeat sentences of varying length Together these results indicate that the performance of AD speakers in repeating sentences interacts with language-specific properties (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved",

keywords = "null subjects, cross linguistic neurolinguistics, aphasia, syntax, memory, spontaneous speech, children, patterns, alzheimer s disease, syntactic subjects, sentence production",

author = "Bencini, {Giulia M. L.} and Lucia Pozzan and Roberta Biundo and McGeown, {William J.} and Valian, {Virginia V.} and Annalena Venneri and Carlo Semenza",

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doi = "10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.07.004",

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AU - Bencini, Giulia M. L.

AU - Pozzan, Lucia

AU - Biundo, Roberta

AU - McGeown, William J.

AU - Valian, Virginia V.

AU - Venneri, Annalena

AU - Semenza, Carlo

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N2 - The aim of this study was to verify whether the repetition abilities in Alzheimer patients interact with the linguistic properties of individual languages such that speakers will omit nominal referents more often only if the omission is a grammatical option in their language Unlike English where an overt nominal referent is always required in grammatical subject position Italian allows grammatical subjects to be unexpressed In Experiment 1 twelve Italian speakers with Alzheimer s disease (AD) and twelve age- and education-matched controls repeated sentences of varying length and complexity As predicted Italian AD speakers omitted sentence subjects in complex sentences while control participants very rarely did In Experiment 2 ten English AD speakers matched with the Italian AD participants with respect to age and severity of the disease and ten age- and education-matched controls repeated translation equivalent materials Unlike the Italian AD participants English AD participants did not omit sentence subjects Italian and English AD participants however were comparable in their global ability to repeat sentences of varying length Together these results indicate that the performance of AD speakers in repeating sentences interacts with language-specific properties (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved

AB - The aim of this study was to verify whether the repetition abilities in Alzheimer patients interact with the linguistic properties of individual languages such that speakers will omit nominal referents more often only if the omission is a grammatical option in their language Unlike English where an overt nominal referent is always required in grammatical subject position Italian allows grammatical subjects to be unexpressed In Experiment 1 twelve Italian speakers with Alzheimer s disease (AD) and twelve age- and education-matched controls repeated sentences of varying length and complexity As predicted Italian AD speakers omitted sentence subjects in complex sentences while control participants very rarely did In Experiment 2 ten English AD speakers matched with the Italian AD participants with respect to age and severity of the disease and ten age- and education-matched controls repeated translation equivalent materials Unlike the Italian AD participants English AD participants did not omit sentence subjects Italian and English AD participants however were comparable in their global ability to repeat sentences of varying length Together these results indicate that the performance of AD speakers in repeating sentences interacts with language-specific properties (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved

KW - null subjects

KW - cross linguistic neurolinguistics

KW - aphasia

KW - syntax

KW - memory

KW - spontaneous speech

KW - children

KW - patterns

KW - alzheimer s disease

KW - syntactic subjects

KW - sentence production

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DO - 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2010.07.004

M3 - Article

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EP - 40

JO - Journal of Neurolinguistics

JF - Journal of Neurolinguistics

IS - 1

ER -

Language-specific effects in Alzheimer's disease: subject omission in Italian and English

Abstract

Keywords

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