TRAINING WH-QUESTION PRODUCTION IN AGRAMMATIC APHASIA - ANALYSIS OF ARGUMENT AND ADJUNCT MOVEMENT

The present research utilized aspects of the Principles and Parameters Approach (P&PA; Chomsky, 1991, 1993) in linguistic theory as well as findings from the psycholinguistic literature as a basis for examining sentence production in aphasic individuals. We examined the productio n of particular wh-movement constructions-wh-questions requiring movem ent of an argument noun phrase (i.e., who and what questions) and thos e which require adjunct movement (i.e., when and where questions). Usi ng a single-subject experimental treatment paradigm, subjects were seq uentially trained to produce these wh-questions and, throughout traini ng, generalization to untrained wh-questions relying on similar wh-mov ement processes was tested. As well, the influence of training on aspe cts of narrative and conversational discourse was examined. Seven agra mmatic aphasic subjects who evinced difficulty producing (and comprehe nding) ''complex'' sentences (e.g., passives, object relative clauses, wh-questions)-sentences that involve movement of noun phrases (NPs) o ut of their canonical positions, leaving behind a ''trace'' of that mo vement or ''gap''-participated in the study. Subjects were trained to produce wh-questions by taking them through a series of steps emphasiz ing the lexical and syntactic properties (e.g., thematic role assignme nt, movement processes, and proper selection of wh-morpheme) of declar ative sentence counterparts of target sentences. Results revealed impr oved sentence production abilities in all subjects under study in both constrained sentence production and, importantly, in discourse tasks. The argument/adjunct distinction was observed in the sentence product ion recovery patterns noted in six of the seven subjects. Three of the subjects evinced correct argument movement across trained and untrain ed question structures when wh-questions relying on argument movement were trained; similarly, for these subjects, training structures relyi ng of adjunct movement resulted in improved adjunct movement. Three of the remaining four subjects who required additional treatment to alle viate their wh-morpheme selection deficits, too showed covariance betw een argument and adjunct movement structures with each type of movemen t emerging across structures in temporal sequence. We discuss these da ta in terms of the operations necessary to produce wh-questions, the i mportance of considering linguistic and psycholinguistic data when des igning treatment programs for language disordered patients, and the co ntribution that detailed recovery data can make both to understanding the nature of sentence production deficits and to issues regarding nor mal sentence production. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.