Ressource pédagogique : Compounding and lexical recursion in aphasia and in Alzheimer’s disease / Zoltán Bánréti

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Compounding and lexical recursion in aphasia and in Alzheimer’s disease / Zoltán Bánréti. In "Perspectives neuropsycholinguistiques sur l'aphasie - NeuroPsychoLinguistic Perspectives on Aphasia", colloque international organisé par l'Unité de Recherche Interdisciplinaire Octogone de l'Université Toulouse II-Le Mirail (France). Toulouse, 21-23 juin 2012. We examined the lexical recursion by tests requiring productive and recursive construction of compound words. Broca’s and conduction aphasic subjects and subjects with moderate Alzheimer’s disease (AD), as well as healthy control subjects were involved in the tests.  Some Hungarian compounds have a binary branching structure in which the constituents are also binary constructions consisting of further words in turn. The rightmost constituent is a deverbal noun with -ó/-? (-er/-or) affix. These constituents are the heads taking left-hand words in the role of complement. The construction can be repeated recursively, the operation is called lexical recursion, these compounds are recursively structured (Dressler 2006). The test material consisted of 63 pictures, each accompanied by a statement referring to it. While the subjects were looking at the pictures, they heard statements. Then a question was asked. To response, the subjects had to create compounds of two, three, and four ultimate constituents recursively. We took their performance with respect to two-constituent compounds as results of activating lexical units “ready-made” stored in lexicon. It was their performance in producing three- and four-constituent compounds that we took to be relevant with respect to their recursive abilities. Frequency effects were also considered.  The target three- or four-constituent compounds were all headed by a deverbal noun. First the subjects had to supply a two-part compound, then build a three-part compound based on it, and then a four-part compound based on the latter. Broca’s and conduction aphasics followed the strategy of lexical search: they produced simple words with synonym/hyperonym meaning, instead of three- and and four-constituent compounds. In this way, lexical recursion was avoided. Persons with moderate AD preferred the strategy of exit to syntax. Increasing complexity of the target word triggered this strategy, the number of responses involving syntactic phrases grew radically. DPs and embedded sentences were produced instead of three- and four-constituent compounds. AD subjects avoided lexical recursion by using the strategy of exit to syntax. The normal control subjects’ performance did not exhibit these features.  In other tests we found a deficit of syntactic-structural recursion in Broca’s aphasia but the recursive syntax remained unimpaired in moderate AD (Bánréti-Mészáros-?rley 2011). Language has recursion outside syntax, too: this is lexical recursion. The results are explained by the fact that it is not a single recursive operation applied at various linguistic levels but rather there are several recursive operations bound to various grammatical subsystems that can be selectively impaired.

"Domaine(s)" et indice(s) Dewey

• Psycholinguistique (401.9)
• Troubles de la parole et du langage (troubles de la communication, de l'articulation ; orthophonie) (616.855)

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