Negative Concord in Neglect Dyslexia

EasyChair Preprint 6450

Abstract

Neglect dyslexia (ND) is caused by a lesion in the right hemisphere. It leads to a partial reading of words or sentences, but it is modulated by grammar (for instance, Abbondanza et al. (2020) showed the influence of left periphery). This study focuses on negative concord (NC) in Italian. In NC, two negative elements lead to an overall negative interpretation. NC requires a negative element at the beginning of the sentence and another one in the middle or end. According to our hypothesis, the second negative element should trigger the search for the one at the beginning, so sentences with NC should be read better by ND patients than sentences without. Transitive and unaccusative verbs are analyzed: transitive verbs have an agent (subject) and a patient (direct object), while unaccusative verbs only have a patient (subject).

Methods

Patient ZE, 61 y.o., ND caused by a tumor lesion in the right posterior temporal lobe. He read sentences (matched for length and font) on a screen. 3 types of sentences: NC, single negation, no negation. Omissions on the left side counted as neglect errors.

Results

Hypothesis confirmed: NC condition read significantly better than single negation and no negation. In no negation condition, ZE omitted significantly fewer transitive than unaccusative verbs.

Conclusions

ZE confirmed our hypothesis. In the no negation condition unaccusative verbs are omitted more often than transitive verbs. Linguistic competence (negation and verb type) influences the exploration of linguistic material, and it is not modulated by an impossible grammar since some languages (e.g., German) allow omission of simple unaccusative verbs.

Keyphrases: Neglect Dyslexia, negative concord, unaccusative verbs

@booklet{EasyChair:6450,
  author    = {Alessia Rossetto and Stefania Laratta and Cecilia Poletto and Carlo Semenza},
  title     = {Negative Concord in Neglect Dyslexia},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6450},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}