sentence interpretation in normal and aphasic kannada-english

.I. Neurolmgursrics, Volume 3. Number 2, pp. 161-183, 1988. 091 f-6044/88 $3.00 + .OO Prmted in Great Britain 0 1988 Pergamon Press plc

Assigning Linguistic Roles: Sentence Interpretation in Normal and Aphasic

Kannada-English Bilinguals

Jyotsna Vaid

Department of Psychoiogq Texas A & M University

Shyamala Chengappa

Department of Speech Pathology All India Institute of Speech

and Hearing

ABSTRACT

In interpreting a sentence, listeners rely on a variety of linguistic cues to assign grammatical roles such as agent and patient. In normal sentence comprehension these cues converge to enable sentence interpretation, yet when the cues are placed in competttion they are differentially used by speakers. The present study investigated the relative strength of three cues to agenthood - word order, noun animacy and subject-verb agreement - in normal and aphasic Kannada-English bilinguals and Kannada monolingual controls. The findings are discussed with respect to other cross- linguistic evidence using the sentence interpretation paradigm and with respect to their bearing on theories of bilingual language representation.

In interpreting a sentence we rely on a variety of surface linguistic cues ranging

from phonological stress, morphological markers and syntactic-semantic cues

such as word order and noun animacy. The information conveyed by these cues

allows us to identify the topic of a sentence, to distinguish between given and new

information and to assign grammatical roles. In acquiring a first or a second

language, a language user must learn what kinds of information are conveyed by

particular linguistic cues present in the surface form.

The mapping between form and function is rarely one-to-one for a single form

can map to several functions and several forms can map to the same function. For

example, in English, cues such as word order, pronoun case inflection and noun

animacy all convey information about grammatical roles. Although more than one

162 Journal of Neurolinguistics, Volume 3, Number 2 (1988)

cue conveys information relevant to the same comprehension process, the cues vary

in how well they convey this information. The accuracy with which a cue conveys

information is known as its validit),. Cue validity may be viewed as the product ofa

cue’s availability and reliability. Availability is a measure of how often a cue is

present, reliability is a measure of how often a cue points to the correct interpre-

tation when it is present. Cue validity can be calculated from adult language input

to the language learner (cf. McDonald 1984). While overall cue validity predicts

order of acquisition, conflict validity (see McDonald 1987) predicts order of adult

strength of usage.

COMPETITION MODEL

The concept of cue validity has been incorporated into a model of sentence

comprehension developed by Bates and MacWhinney (1982. 1987). This model,

known as the Competition Model. offers a probabilistic account of how cues

combine during comprehension. ln this model. each cue is accorded a strength or

weighting proportional to its validity. This weighting in turn determines the

amount of activation of a particular interpretation. If two cues agree as to an

interpretation, their strengths are added, leading to a greater activation of that

interpretation compared to when a single cue is present. If they disagree. the

interpretation with the highest activation level is chosen. In this way, cues are

thought to cooperate and compete in the comprehension process.

SENTENCE INTERPRETATION PARADIGM

The notion of cue validity and its psychological counterpart cue strength has

been empirically examined by MacWhinney et al. (1984) in cross-linguistic studies

of sentence processing. The basic paradigm in this research involves a sentence

interpretation task where native speakers of different languages are presented with

simple, transitive sentences containing two concrete nouns and a concrete action

verb and are asked to identify the agent - that is, who performed the action

described in the sentence. While in normal discourse various cues arecorrelated, in

the sentence interpretation paradigm the sentences always represent orthogonal

combinations of lexical-semantic, pragmatic, grammatical and/ or phonological

cues, thereby allowing for an independent examination of the relative contribution

of each of these types of information. The result of selecting sentences in this way is

that a number of semi-grammatical sentences are included along with grammatical

sentences. Nevertheless. their syntactic or semantic oddness does not appear to

affect how they are processed as previous research with this paradigm has shown.

Bilingual Sentence Interpretation 163

For example, Hungarian speakers comprehend ungrammatical sentences in which

the obligatory case markings have been deleted in the same way in which they

process grammatical sentences where the omission of this case marking is allowable

(MacWhinney et al. 1985).

In some of the sentences in this task the various cues converge to a single decision

about who did the action while in other sentences one or all of the cues may conflict.

An example where the cues of word order, subject-verb agreement and noun

animacy conflict is in the sentence “The dog lick the pencils”. Standard subject- - verb ~ object (SVO) word order in English would assign the preverbal noun dog

as actor as would the animacy cue, but noun-verb agreement would favor the plural

noun pencils, which agrees in number with the plural verb form. In such cases

native speakers of English rely most on word order, discardingpencils as the actor

despite the agreement cue. Italian speakers, however, tend to choosepencils as the

agent, for agreement cues are stronger than word order cues in Italian. For

German speakers, animacy and agreement turn out to be stronger cues than word

order and for Hungarian and Serbo-Croation speakers case is a stronger cue than

word order. In short, adult native speakers interpret sentences by making preferen-

tial use of the cue that is the most valid (or informative) in their language. Thus, the

relative ranking of cues may often differ across different languages, even when the

languages on a formal level are typologically similar (e.g. Italian and English).

Developmental studies using the sentence interpretation paradigm to study

children as young as two years of age indicate that cue validity based on adult usage

is a strong predictor of the developmental sequence of acquisition of the cues.

Word order (SVO) is the first cue to emerge in English-speaking children and

nominative/accusative case marking is the first to emerge in Turkish children

(Bates and MacWhinney 1987). Within the Competition Model framework, lan-

guage learning is viewed as a process of incrementing and adjusting the weights of

form-function mappings until there is an optimal fit with the processing environ-

ment (MacWhinney 1987).

STUDIES WITH BRAIN-INJURED INDIVIDUALS

Given that there are differences in how normal listeners monitor different cues in

the input, one might expect differences in cue validity to be reflected in the pattern

of language impairment of brain-damaged individuals. In fact, language-specific

differences in cue strength appear to be preserved in aphasics (see Bates et al. 1987).

In general, the cue that has the highest strength in premorbid language use appears

to be the most resistant to impairment following brain damage. At the same time,

there appears to be a global impairment of certain cues (e.g. subject-verb agree-

ment) regardless of their premorbid status in a particular language, and a selective


sparing of other cues. e.g. word order (see Bates et al. in press). Research on

aphasics using the sentence interpretation paradigm is still in its infancy.

SENTENCE INTERPRETATION IN BILINGUALS

A recent extension of the sentence interpretation paradigm has involv,ed a

comparison of sentence interpretation strategies used by bilinguals or second

language learners in their two languages. This topic has thus far been addressed in

users of predominantly Indo-European languages including Spanish (Wulfeck 6’1

al. 1986) and German (Bates and MacWhinney 1981: McDonald 1984). but a few

other language families are also being studied. typically with English being one of

the two languages under study. These other languages include Dutch(Kilborn 1986:

Kilborn and Cooreman 1987). Korean (Park 1986), Japanese (Kilborn and Ito

1987) and Hindi (Vaid et (11. 1987).

On a theoretical level. the sentence interpretation task in bilinguals 15 of interest

in that it allows a test of different hypothesized views about bilingual language

representation. Most previous work in this area has concentrated on the lexical

level, typically using lists of unrelated words. The sentence interpretation task

allows for an examination of higher-level language comprehension strategies in

each language.

POSSIBLE OUTCOMES IN BILINGLIALS

A priori. one can distinguish between four different possible outcomes on

the task, reflecting different forms of internal representation of bilingual discourse.

Assuming language-specific differences on the task (as reflected in different

strategies used by monolingual speakers of the different languages). one possible

outcome for bilinguals on this task may be a transfer of first language strategies to

the second language. This outcome would be expected for individuals at early

stages of second language exposure and/or proficiency and would support a

“subordinate” form of bilingual language organization. where the first language

cues remain dominant and the second language is processed in terms of cues that

are salient in the first language (see McDonald 1987). A second possible outcome

is one in which the bilingual shows a different pattern in each language, correspon-

ding to the ranking of cues of monolingual speakers of the respective languages

This kind of response would support a”coordinate” form of representation where

distinct sentence comprehension strategies are used for the two languages. A third

possible outcome is where bilinguals show a unified strategy in each 01 their

languages. but this strategy differs from that used by monolingual speakers of the


languages and represents an amalgam or merger of cues that are dominant in each

of the languages. Such an outcome would be consistent with a “compound” form of

representation (see Wulfeck et al. 1986). Finally, it is possible that bilinguals may

show a reverse subordinate pattern such that their performance on their second

language is comparable to that of monolingual speakers of that language and their

performance on their native language is influenced by their second language. Such

an outcome might be expected to arise if the bilinguals are more practised in their

second language than in their first. These four hypothesized outcomes are not

mutually exclusive nor are they rigid over time. Rather, at different stages of a

bilingual’s language history, different outcomes may be observed. For example,

McDonald (1984) found that L2 speakers with little exposure to the second

language use Ll strengths; with increasing L2 exposure the L2 speakers shift to

appropriate L2 weights. The outcomes should thus be viewed merely as a useful

means of classification.

In what follows, sentence interpretation data are presented from adult bilingual

speakers of Kannada and English. A language from the Dravidian language family

used primarily in south India, Kannada is spoken by over five million speakers.

Sentence interpretation data are presented from a group of brain-intact Kannada

monolingual adults and Kannada-English bilinguals and from a smaller group of

aphasic counterparts. To date there has been only one published study of sentence

interpretation in bilingual aphasics (Wulfeck ef al. 1986).

RELEVANT CHARACTERISTICS OF KANNADA GRAMMAR

Some remarks are in order at this point about the characteristics of Kannada of

relevance to the sentence interpretation task. First. Kannada is a case-marked

language. The case system of Kannada is similar to that of other Dravidian

languages in that various suffixes are added to the noun stem to indicate different

relationships between the noun and the other sentence constituents. The cases

include the nominative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental; ablative, vocative

and accusative (Schiffman 1979).

The basic colloquial accusative marker is - anna/ - annu. It is used with both

“rational” (capable of thought) and “non-rational” referents (usually animals,

young children and inanimate objects). It is also possible for the accusative markers

to be omitted entirely except in the case of rational (masculine and feminme) nouns.

Case markers used with plural nouns are usually the same as those used with the

singular, but often in colloquial Kannada the plural marker -galu is not used, 50

the singular can be found even when more than one object is meant. In previous

sentence interpretation studies performed on other case-marked languages (e.g.

Serbo-Croation), case has emerged as a dominant cue. It is likely to play a strong

NEL 3:2-D


role in Kannada sentence interpretation as well. Since our interest was In com-

paring Kannada and English on cues that both languages possess to a comparable

degree, it was decided to delete the accusative case marker from the Kannada

stimuli so as to render the task of interpretation at least as ambiguous as that in

English. The cues chosen for study in the two languages. then. were noun animac!;.

noun-verb agreement and word order.

Word order may perhaps be a weaker cue in Kannada than in English since

Kannada permits more variation in word order, given that linguistic roles are

normally signalled by case markers. Moreover, Kannada uses a subject-object

verb (SOV) word order. VSO or VOS word orders are stylistic variations referred

to as “after thought” word orders used in colloquial speech (Schiffman 1979). The

nature of the word order effect might be expected to differ in Kannada and English.

a SVO language.

The subject in Kannada sentences agrees with the verb in number and gender. We

would thus expect the agreement cue to be at least as strong as that in English and

perhaps stronger since non-verb agreement in English is only on the basl5 of

number. There is no a priori basis for expecting a difference in the strength of the

animacy cue in the two languages. In neither language IS noun ammacy overtI>,

marked; rather it 1s one of the semantic properties associated with a noun.

STUDY I

Sentence Interpretation in Brain-intact Kannada Speakers

In order to understand Kannada-English bilinguals performance on the sentence

interpretation task, it is important to understand the cues used by monolingual

Kannada speakers. Thus both groups were tested.

Method

Subjects

Subjects included a group of 8 Kannada monolinguals and 21 Kannada-Enghsh

bilinguals. All were right-handed. The monolingual sample included 2 males and 6

females ranging in age from 21 to 60 years with a mean age of 40 years. The bilingual

sample ranged in age from 20 to 62 years with a mean age of 3 1 years and included 6

females and 15 males.

The bilinguals’ mother tongue was Kannada in all cases. They had studied

English in school until their second year of college and had been enrolled in

English-medium schools throughout their education. Many subjects also received

post-graduate training in English. As such, the sample was highly fluent in English.

A brief questionnaire administered to the bilinguals revealed that the majority of


subjects reported using English at work and with friends and in reading the

newspaper and writing letters; Kannada was used primarily at home and with

friends.

Stimuli For each language, a total of 54 sentences were constructed. The stimuli were all

simple, active, declarative sentences with two concrete nouns and a transitive action

verb. All three word orders (NVN, VNN and NNV) were tested in orthogonal

combinations of noun animacy (both nouns are animate, yielding semantically-

reversible sentences; only the first noun is animate; only the second noun is

animate) and noun-verb agreement (the verb agrees with both nouns in number;

the verb agrees only with the first noun; the verb agrees only with the second noun).

The 3 X 3 X 3 factorial design resulted in a total of 27 sentences. Two examples of

each sentence type were included, yielding a total of 54 sentences. To minimize the

effect of extralinguistic, real world knowledge on sentence comprehension, the

stimuli were prepared using a random assignment of animate and inanimate nouns

to the designated slots in the sentences. While the Kannada and English sentences

were not translation equivalents, they were constructed from the same pool of

words. The set of nouns and verbs used to generate the stimuli in each language is

provided in the Appendix.

Procedure

Subjects were all tested individually. The sentences were read out loud one at a

time in a neutral intonation by the examiner (SC) who is a native speaker of

Kannada and fluent in English. Upon hearing each sentence, subjects were to indi-

cate which of the two nouns - the first or the second - had performed the action

described in the sentence. Practice trials were given to ensure that subjects under-

stood the task. The order of testing for the bilinguals was alternated across subjects

such that half were tested in Kannada first followed by English while the remainder

were first tested in English. A gap of at least a day separated the two testing sessions.

Scoring

If the first preverbal noun mentioned was chosen as the actor, subjects received a

score of 1. Choice of the second noun was assigned a score of0. Since there were two

sentences with each possible combination of the three factors, the maximum score

possible was 2, indicating that subjects chose the first noun both times for that

sentence type. The dependent variable was the percentage choice of the first noun as

agent. Chance performance would be designated by 50%; 100% would indicate a

choice of the first noun on every item and 0% a choice of the second noun.


Results

Analyses of variance were performed on the percentage of lirst preverbal nouns

chosen as the agent for each sentence type. The monolingual data were analyzed

first tn a separate analysis of vartance and were subsequently compared with the

bilinguals’ Kannada data tn a combined analysts of vartancc. The bilinguals’ data

were further analyzed to compare performance tn their two languages.

Kannada Monolinguals

Mean scores ranging from 0 to 2 on the sentence interpretation test were entered

into a 3 X 3 X 3 analysis of variance as a function of noun animacy, word order and

verb agreement. There were two significant effects: a main effect of animacy (pc

.OOOl) and an animacy X agreement interaction (pc .OOl). The animacy effect

accounted for 84c7, of the variance while the two-way interaction accounted for an

additional 8qc of the vartance. Table I summarizes the ANOVA results for the

monolinguals.

Table I

Summary of ANOVA of

Kannada Normal Monolinguals (n=8)

Source df F P

Animacy 2, 14 80.63 ,000 1*

Agreement 2, 14 3.12 ,076 ns

Word order 2. 14 0.14 ,672 ns

Animacy X agreement 4, 28 5.97 .001*

Animacy X order 4, 28 0.85 .507 ns

Agreement X order 4. 28 0.94 456 ns

Animacy X agreement X order 8. 56 0.79 ,612 ns

* Significant

ns, not significant

The main effect of animacy indicated that the percentage choice of the first noun

as agent was much higher when the first noun m the sentence was animate and the

second noun was inanimate (88Yc) than when both nouns were animate (6357’) or

only the second noun was animate (254). The interaction of animacy and agree-

ment revealed that verb agreement was used as a cue only when animacy cues were

neutral or absent. as when both nouns in the sentence are animate. In this

condition, the percentage choice of the first noun was 794% when the first noun

agreed in number with the verb, whereas tt fell to 40 c?c when the second noun agreed


with the verb. With animacy cues present, the agreement effect was either greatly

diminished as in the animate-inanimate condition (compare 94% vs. 81% first-

noun choice in the first-noun-agreement and second-noun-agreement conditions,

respectively) or was completely absent, as in the inanimate-animate condition

(where the percentage choice of first noun remained a low 29% for first-noun and

second-noun-agreement conditions).

The word order effect was not significant in Kannada: subjects showed a

consistent preference of the first noun (around 6OYo) for all three word orders.

Figure 1 illustrates the performance of the Kannada monolinguals relative to

that of English monolinguals tested in previous studies by Bates and colleagues.

Note that while the agreement effect is weak in both language groups, the animacy

effect is particularly strong in Kannada relative to English while the reverse is true

for the word order effect.

0 Kannado

A English

NVN VNN NNV

Word order

‘7 I 1

I \ \ d’ 1 \ I I \ 4 I b

I I I

An ~macy Agreement

Monolinguals

Figure 1. Kannada vs. English Monolinguals: Main Effects of Word Order,

Animacy and Agreement.

Kannada Monolinguals vs. Kannada-English Bilinguals on Kannada

A 2 X 3 X 3 X 3 factorial analysis of variance was performed on the Kannada data


of monolinguals and bilinguals. All three within-subject variables (animacy,

agreement and word order) were highly significant, as were two two-way mter-

actions: animacy X agreement (p < .OOOl) and animacyX word order(p .:: .002). It

is noteworthy that there were no significant bilingual/monolingual group dif-

ferences nor were there any significant interactions involving the group variable.

Kannada-English Bilinguals on Kannada vs. English

A four-way analysis of variance (animacy by agreement by word order by

language) was performed on the bilinguals’data to compare their performance on

their two languages. A summary of the ANOVA results is presented in Table 2.

The analysis indicated significant main effects of animacy, agreement and word

order as well as 2 two-way interactions: animacy X agreement (p c: .0009) and

Table 2

Summary of ANOVA for Kannada-English Normal Bilinguals (n = 21)

Source df F P

Animacy

Agreement

Word order

Language

Animacy X agreement

Animacy X order

Agreement X order

Animacy X language

Agreement X language

Order X language

Animacy X agreement X language

Animacy X order X language

Agreement X order X language

Animacy X agreement X order

Animacy X agreement X order X language

2.40 168.95 .0001*

2.40 16.65 .0001*

2,40 8.55 .0008*

1,20 1.63 .22 ns

4,80 5.19 .0009*

4,80 6.76 .0001*

4.80 0.31 .87 ns

2,40 0.53 .59 ns

2.40 0.53 .59 ns

2.40 1.04 .36 ns

4,80 4.80 .002*

4,80 1.38 .25 ns

4,80 3.04 .02*

8,160 3.26 .002*

8.160 1.81 .08 ns

* Significant

ns. not significant


animacy X order (p < .OOOl). In addition, there were three higher order interactions:

animacy X agreement X order (p < .002) and language X animacy X agreement

(p < .02). Figure 2 illustrates the three main effects in each language.

The main effect of animacy accounted for the greatest proportion of the variance

(82%), while the main effect of agreement accounted for 8% and the interaction

effects together constituted about 1070 of the variance.

o Kannada

A English

80 -

Iu

;

0

5 fro- e ‘tB, --Cl

‘1 .E E 40-

20 -

0 I I I NVN VNN NNL

Word order

I I I AA Al IA

Anrnacy

I I I

NJ0 Agl Ag2

Agreement

Normal bilinguab ( n = 2 I)

Figure 2. Kannada-English Bilinguals: Effects of Word Order, Animacy and

Agreement by Language.

Let us examine the two higher-order interaction effects involving language. The

means for the language X animacy X agreement effect are summarized in Table 3.

Note first that in both Kannada and English the presence of an animate first noun

greatly increases the percentage choice of the first noun as agent while the presence

of an inanimate first noun greatly reduces it. When animacy cues are absent (when

both nouns in the sentence are animate) the choice of agent is governed by

agreement cues. These cues appear to be stronger for Kannada than for English.


Table 3

Kannada-English Normal Bilinguals (n = 21):

Language X Animacy X Agreement

Interaction Means (in %)

Kannada English

AgO f%l AS AgO Agl AS

AA 72 86 47 59 68 53

Al 88 93 78 80 87 66

IA 8 24 12 16 36 20

The other interaction effect was language X agreement X word order. Table 4

provides a summary of the interaction means. Inspection of the table suggests that

the source of the interaction hes in the NNV condition: when agreement is with the

ftrst noun in this word order condition, the percentage choice of the ftrst noun 1s

much higher in Kannada (7O?e) than it is in English(56qe). The analogous effect for

NVN word order does not appear to be present. that is, the percentage choice of the

first noun is only marginally higher in English than in Kannada (74$$ vs. 68%)) when

agreement is with the first noun in the NVN condition.

Table 4

Kannada-English Normal Bilinguals (n = 21):

Language X Word Order X Agreement

Interaction Means (in %)

Kannada English

AgO Ad A@ AgO Ad 49

NVN 61 68 55 60 74 52

VNN 53 65 44 48 60 46

NNV 54 70 40 47 56 42


Discussion

It would appear that animacy is the cue with the greatest cue strength in

Kannada at least among the cues tested, since case would presumably have been a

strong cue in Kannada as well. In monolinguals and bilinguals alike, the animacy

main effect accounted for by far the largest proportion of the variance. The cue used

next appears to be verb agreement, although its effect is evident only in the absence

of animacy cues. The weakest cue seems to be word order.

The performance of bilinguals on Kannada was indistinguishable from that of

Kannada monolinguals. While this finding may not be all that surprising given that

Kannada was the first language of the bilinguals, it is nevertheless interesting that

the bilinguals were not in any way influenced by their exposure to English, despite

their apparently high level of proficiency in English. As such, the present study does

not support hypothesized outcome 4 stated at the outset. One can speculate that the

word order cue was not used by Kannada-English bilinguals when processing

English because the English spoken in India has different structural properties than

the English spoken in America. While there may be some basis for this speculation

it should be pointed out that HindiiEnglish bilingual speakers do rely on word

order when processing English (see Vaid et al. 1987). Thus the observed lack of

reliance on word order in Kannada speakers would appear to suggest a language-

specific influence of Kannada, rather than sociolinguistic differences in the nature

of English used in India.

When we consider the bilinguals’ performance on Kannada vs. English, it is

noteworthy that across both languages animacy again accounted for the most

variance (over 80%). Word order was a relatively weak cue, even in English. In the

two instances where language differences were significant, the nature of the

difference was such that the effect (of agreement in one case and of word order in

another) was more pronounced in Kannada than in English. Specifically with

regard to the word order effect, while NVN sentences yielded a slight first-noun

preference in both Kannada and English, NNV sentences yielded a strong first-

noun preference in Kannada as compared to that in English. This difference reflects

the different structural properties of the two languages, inasmuch as Kannada is a

SOV language whereas the typical response of native English speakers to the non- canomcal NNV word order is to choose the second noun as agent (see MacWhinney

et al. 1984).

Thus, it would appear that the response of the bilinguals on this task supports the

first of the four hypothesized outcomes, namely, a transfer of first language

strategies onto the second language. The results do not support a situation where

bilinguals show a particular ranking of cues in one language and another ranking in

the other language. Rather, their performance on Kannada is almost identical to

174 Journal of Neurolinguistics. Volume 3, Number 2 (1988)

that of Kannada monolinguals. while their performance on English is a muted

version of their Kannada-based strategy and in no way resembles the performance

of English-speaking monolinguals. This outcome is somewhat surprising given the

high degree of English language proficiency reported by the bilinguals. The present

results suggest, therefore. that the sentence interpretation strategies observed need

not be related in any obvious way to the individual’s level of proficiency. Alter-

natively, it may be that. at the level of discourse processing, proficiency may mean

something different.

STUDY 2

Sentence Interpretation in Aphasic Kannada Speakers

In this section of the paper, we summarize the findings from the sentence

interpretation task administered to a group of left-hemisphere damaged native

Kannada-speaking adults.

Method

Subjects

Two monolingual Kannada aphasics, S.A. and B.B., were tested at the National

Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Sciences (NIMHANS) in Bangalore.

Both were patients at the Speech Pathology unit at NIMHANS where, on the basrs

of a standard aphasia test battery adapted to Kannada. they were diagnosed as

being receptive aphasics. In addition, three Kannada-English aphasic bihnguals

who were also patients at NIMHANS were tested. Two of these patients( K. K. and

J. P.) had been diagnosed as expressive aphasics and the third (N.D.) was a

receptive aphasic. While it was not possible to obtain a detailed premorbid

language use inventory on the bilingual patients, a brief interview with the patients’

immediate family confirmed that the bilingual patients’ language background and

premorbid language use was not all that different from that reported for the

bilingual controls in Study 1.

Criteria used to exclude patients from participation in this study included the

following: (a) a history of multiple strokes; (b) significant hearing and/or visual

deficits; (c) severe gross motor disabilities; (d) severe motor speech involvements

such that speech was all but unintelligible; and (e) evidence of neurological

instability and/ or testing less than 3 months post-onset of insult.

Monolingual Aphasics

Both monolingual patients S. A. and B. B. spoke Kannada as a mother tongue

and had Kannada as the medium of instruction m school through graduation

S.A. had suffered a post-traumatic cerebral contusion and an acute subdural


hematoma in the left temporal lobe following a traffic accident. On the basis of a

Kannada adaptation of the Western Aphasia Battery, S.A. was diagnosed as

having Wernicke’s asphasia. S,A.‘s language functions were tested 15 days post-

insult. At the time of testing, S.A. had a mild hemiparesis and aphasic symptoms.

B.B. was diagnosed on the basis of a CT scan as having had an infarct in the left

temporoparietal region. His language functions were tested four months post-

insult using the Western Aphasia Battery and, like S.A., he was also classified as a

Wernicke’s aphasic. At the time of testing one and a half years post-insult, B.B. had

almost recovered from a right hemiparesis but still had aphasic symptoms.

Bilingual Aphasics

All three bilingual aphasics. J.P., K.K. and N.D., had studied Kannada and

English in school as their first and second language, respectively. From grade 10, all

three had English as the medium of instruction and used English in their work.

The etiology of J.P.‘s brain injury, as indicated by a CT scan, was a left cervical

internal carotid aneurysm with cerebral embolism. The other two patients were not

Table 5

Background Information on Kannada Aphasics

Group Subjects’ Aphasia

initials type

Sex Age Hand Etiology

dom.

K mono B.B. Receptive M

K mono S.A. Receptive M

K-E bi N.D. Receptive M

K-E bi K.K. Expressive M

K-E bi J.P. Expressive M

37

27

3s

56

30

R Left internal carotid

insufficiency.

Right hemiparesis 1.5 years

earlier

R Left temporal lobe problems

due to left subdural

hematoma


insufficiency


insufficiency


insufficiency


advised to have a CT scan done and were diagnosed simply as having a left carotid

insufficiency, that is, inadequate blood supply to the cortical lobes by the middle

cerebral artery, perhaps as a result of a thrombosis or embolism. All three patients

had hemiplegia with aphasia. N.D. had almost recovered from the hemiplegia at the

time of testing.

Language testing of K.K. was done three months after the cerebral insult, one

month post-insult for J.P. and two years post-insult for N.D. Table 5 provides a

summary of the background characteristics of the patients.

Stimuli and Procedure

The same set of sentences used in Study 1 were administered to the brain-

damaged subjects. Sentences were read aloud to the patients by the same examiner

who had tested the normal subjects. Patients signalled their responses by pointing

to the appropriate noun on the stimulus sheet. Sufficient practice trials were given

to ensure that the patients understood the task. Bilinguals were tested in therr two

languages in separate sessions, with the order of the sessions being varred across

subjects.

The data were coded as in Study I with the additional feature that a score of 5

was assigned on any trial on which subjects failed to make a response.

Table 6

Performance of Kannada-English Bilingual Aphasics

(Percentage Choice of First Noun)

Animacy AA 84 44

AI 72 72

IA 61 16

Agreement AgO 61 56

AgJ 84 28

Ag2 72 50

Word order NVN 72 34

VNN 61 44

NNV 84 56


Results

Monolingual Aphasics

Given the small sample size, an analysis of variance was not conducted. Instead,

the data from the two monolingual aphasics are individually summarized in Table

6.

Inspection of the mean percentage choice of first-noun scores suggests that the

animacy cue was used by both subjects and was particularly dominant for B.B.

When the first noun of the sentence was animate. B. B. chose the first noun as agent

72% of the time as compared to 16% of the time when the first noun was inanimate.

Animacy may have been the only cue utilized systematically by B. B. inasmuch as

his performance on the other two factors appears to be essentially random.

S. A., on the other hand, showed some sensitivity to verb agreement, choosing

the first noun as agent 84% of the time when that noun agreed with the verb, as

compared to 61% of the time when agreement was ambiguous. S. A. also appeared

to favor a first-noun preference for sentences with the order NNV (84%) and to a

lesser extent for NVN sentences (72%).

Bilingual Aphasics on Kannada vs. English

Owing to the small sample size it was not advisable to conduct a statistical

Table 7

Performance of Kannada-English Bilingual Aphasics

(Percentage Choice of First Noun)

Kannada

N.D. J.P. K.K.

Animacy AA 39 72

AI 83 100

IA 0 6

Agreement AgO 61 56 83

Ag 1 33 67 67

Ag2 39 56 61

Word order NVN 50 67 67

VNN 44 61 67

NNV 39 50 78

83

89

39

Con td.

178 Journal of Neurolinguistics, Volume 3. Number 2 (1988)

Animacy AA 61

AI 89

IA 11

Agreement AgO 39 61 56

Agl 61 50 50

Ag2 50 50 44

Word order NVN 44 56 50 VNN 56 50 44 NNV 61 50 56

Table 7 - Contd.

English

44

100

17

50

89

11

analysis of the data. The data from the three bilingual aphasics are therefore

summarized in Table 7.

In all three bilingual patients, the animacy cue appears to have been spared, in

both Kannada and English. The percentage choice of the first noun was generally

higher when the first noun was animate (the scores ranged from 83 to 100%) than

when the first noun was inanimate (the scores ranged from 0 to 3996).

By contrast, the agreement cue appears to be largely unavailable in either

language. for none of the subjects showed a clear main effect of agreement. Had

there been more subjects, it would have been possible to examine whether the

agreement cue is in fact present under certain conditions of the other two factors.

Similarly, word order does not appear to have been a salient cue for the bilingual

aphasics. particularly in English, where performance was essentially at chance level

for all subjects. In Kannada, one subject (K. K.) showed a slight effect of word

order, favoring a first-noun preference for NNV sentences (78”~).

Discussion

Given the small numbers of patients tested, any generalizations drawn from the

aphasia data must be made with caution and should be viewed largely m terms of

their heuristic value. Even with such a small sample size, certain trends were

observed. For one thing, it would appear that semantic information, as reflected in

the animacy variable, is clearly preserved in these aphasics. As such the present data

are consistent with those reported for German aphasics (Bates et ul. 1987) who also


showed a sparing of animacy. This sparing of animacy is consistent with the notion

that what should be preserved in aphasia are cues that were premorbidly the

strongest cues in the language. As we have already seen in Study 1, animacy was in

fact the strongest cue for Kannada speakers.

There does not appear to be a sparing of grammatical morphology in the present

sample of aphasics. This vulnerability of morphological cues is consistent with

observations reported on native English-speaking and Italian aphasics (Bates et al.

1987). but does not appear to be restricted to aphasics, for it is found even among

non-aphasic brain-damaged individuals (Bates et al. 1987). The theoretical signifi-

cance of this finding remains to be determined.

Finally, word order appears to have been partially spared in the present sample.

One of the monolinguals (S. A.) and one of the bilinguals (K. K.) showed a first-

noun preference for NNV sentences in Kannada, consistent with the strategy

observed in brain-intact monolingual and bilingual Kannada controls. This prefer-

ence for the first noun as agent in sentences in which two nouns precede the verb

reflects an SOV interpretation of this particular word order. It is noteworthy that,

even in the absence of case markers, both brain-intact and brain-damaged indi-

viduals were sensitive to this statistical and structural property of Kannada.

CONCLUSION

The normative bilingual data (Study 1) support a view of bilingual represen-

tation in which first language discourse strategies are mapped onto the second

language. The fact that this particular outcome was observed in our subject sample

despite the relative fluency and competence of our subjects in English is particularly

interesting and contrasts with the pattern observed for a group of Hindi-English

bilinguals (Vaid et al. 1987).

In the aphasic bilingual group as well, when there was a sparing of cues, it was in

favor of cues that are used in Kannada or, alternatively, the cue that is most

dominant in Kannada (namely, animacy) was extended to English sentence

interpretation as well, whereas the cue that is normally the strongest cue in English

speakers (namely, word order) was relatively absent in Kannada speakers, aphasics

and normals alike.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was partially supported by a National Institute of Health Research

Grant on cross-linguistic studies of aphasia awarded to Elizabeth Bates of the

University of California, San Diego and by a Council for International Exchange

of Scholars Indo-American Advanced Research Fellowship awarded to Jyotsna

Vaid. We acknowledge with gratitude the Speech Pathology unit of the National

Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Sciences in Bangalore. India, under

whose auspices the data were collected. Tom Battocletti and Miguel Quinones of

Texas A & M University assisted in data analysis. We thank Janet McDonald for

her comments on the manuscript. Requests for reprints may be directed to the first

author c/o Department of Psychology. Texas A & M University. College Station,

TX 778434235, U.S.A.

Bilingual Sentence Interpretation l&II

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APPENDIX

Pool of Sentence Interpretation Stimuli

English Kannada

Animate nouns

Inanimate nouns

Zebra

Pig

Elephant

Bear

Donkey

cow

Block

Rock

Ball

Pencil

Monkey

Donkey

Elephant

Cat

Donkey

cow

Stick

Umbrella

Ball

Book

Verbs Hitting

Biting

Smelling

Patting

Eating

Kissing

Pushing

Grabbing

Licking

Hitting

Biting

Touching

Patting

Eating

Kicking

Pushing

Calling

Licking

sentence interpretation in normal and aphasic kannada-english

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