Resumption in the production of focused constructions in Akan speakers with agrammatism
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Date
2019-11-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Aphasiology
Abstract
Background: The distribution of pronouns varies cross-linguistically.
This distribution has led to conflicting results in studies that investigated
pronoun resolution in agrammatic indviduals. In the investigation
of pronominal resolution, the linguistic phenomenon of
“resumption” is understudied in agrammatism. The construction of
pronominal resolution in Akan presents the opportunity to thoroughly
examine resumption.
Aims: To start, the present study examines the production of (pronominal)
resumption in Akan focus constructions (who-questions
and focused declaratives). Second, we explore the effect of grammatical
tone on the processing of pronominal (resumption) since
Akan is a tonal language.
Methods & Procedures: First, we tested the ability to distinguish
linguistic and non-linguistic tone in Akan agrammatic speakers.
Then, we administered an elicitation task to five Akan agrammatic
individuals, controlling for the structural variations in the realization
of resumption: focused who-questions and declaratives with
(i) only a resumptive pronoun, (ii) only a clause determiner, (iii)
a resumptive pronoun and a clause determiner co-occurring, and
(iv) neither a resumptive pronoun nor a clause determiner.
Outcomes & Results: Tone discrimination .both for pitch and for
lexical tone was unimpaired. The production task demonstrated
that the production of resumptive pronouns and clause determiners
was intact. However, the production of declarative sentences
in derived word order was impaired; wh-object questions were
relatively well-preserved.
Conclusions: We argue that the problems with sentence production
are highly selective: linguistic tones and resumption are intact
but word order is impaired in non-canonical declarative sentences
Description
Research Article
Keywords
Agrammatism, focus constructions, (pronominal) resumption, clause determiner, Akan
Citation
Nathaniel Lartey, Frank Tsiwah, Clement Amponsah, Silvia Martinez-Ferreiro & Roelien Bastiaanse (2019): Resumption in the production of focused constructions in Akan speakers with agrammatism, Aphasiology, DOI: 10.1080/02687038.2019.1686746