The production and comprehension of reversible dative and benefactive sentences

Abstract

Individuals with agrammatic aphasia often have comprehension deficits, especially on complex sentence structures that are reversible, meaning either participant in the sentence could plausibly perform the action of the verb or have the action of the verb done to them (e.g., The boy is chased by the girl). Comprehension of these sentences is impaired in agrammatic aphasia because their comprehension requires an understanding of the syntactic structure of the sentence. Virtually all prior research in this area has investigated reversible sentences with two arguments (subject, object). In our study, we expand this investigation to reversible sentences with three arguments using dative verbs (give, send) and benefactive verbs (find, get). We examined these sentences in two structures (prepositional object: The matchmaker sent a bride to the groom; double object: The matchmaker sent the groom a bride). The primary purpose of this study is to create a set of materials we can use to examine this kind of sentence comprehension in participants with aphasia. We created 3 online questionnaires to examine the judgment, comprehension, and production (sentence completion) of these reversible sentences. Results from the judgment test revealed that both structures for both verb types were all similarly acceptable. Results from the comprehension test revealed that the prepositional object sentences were easier to understand than the double object sentences, similarly for dative and benefactive verbs. Results from the production (completion) test, indicate the first object is typically interpreted as the recipient of the thing sent, rather than someone who is being sent. This same pattern was found for dative and benefactive verbs. Further research will use these sentences with temporally sensitive methods examining real-time comprehension in participants with aphasia. This will begin to offer more valuable insight for understanding syntactic deficits in this disorder and how to address them with this population.