The Role of Relative Frequency in the Production of Prepositional Phrases in Aphasia in Czech

EasyChair Preprint 6629

Abstract

Introduction

Usage-based construction grammar views language as a network of constructions (form-meaning pairings) shaped by individual linguistic experience (Diessel, 2019). This approach has been recently applied to the analysis of language in aphasia with very promising results (e.g. Gahl, 2002; Hatchard & Lieven, 2019). I present an analysis of prepositional phrases in a corpus of connected speech of Czech speakers with aphasia. The corpus contains transcripts of discourse elicited from 11 individuals with aphasia.

Methods

A subcorpus of two picture descriptions and a story retelling task was used in the analysis. This subcorpus was also used to generate fluency profiles of the individual participants. All prepositional phrases (PP) produced with no disfluencies were extracted which resulted in a total of 202 phrases. These PPs were analyzed using frequency data from a corpus of spoken Czech and a corpus of movie subtitles.

Results

A substantial number of fluently produced PPs expresses spatial relations and has similar frequency characteristics: the complement noun has a high relative frequency of occurrence in the grammatical case governed by the preposition and a high backward transitional probability of the sequence P N. For example, the PP v kleci ‘in the cage’ was successfully produced even by participants with very low level of fluency. The form kleci ‘cage-locative’ is the most frequent word form of the corresponding lemma.

Conclusions

The results provide some support for the usage-based model of language representation and processing. High relative frequency and probability of occurrence reflects a higher level of entrenchment which requires fewer processing resources, resulting in a higher probability of success in production even in individuals with relatively low levels of fluency overall.

Keyphrases: Czech morphosyntax, corpus linguistics, frequency of use, usage-based analysis

@booklet{EasyChair:6629,
  author    = {Michal Láznička},
  title     = {The Role of Relative Frequency in the Production of Prepositional Phrases in Aphasia in Czech},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6629},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}