Interpretable vs. Uninterpretable Features: Evidence From Six Greek-Speaking Agrammatic Patients

Journal of Neurolinguistics 19 (2006) 209–238
www.elsevier.com/locate/jneuroling
Interpretable vs. uninterpretable features: Evidence

from six Greek-speaking agrammatic patients
Vicky Nanousi a, Jackie Masterson a,*, Judit Druks b, Martin Atkinson c
a
Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK
b
Department of Communication Science, University College London, London, UK
c
Department of Linguistics, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Received 6 October 2004; received in revised form 10 August 2005; accepted 18 August 2005
Abstract
The aim of the present study is to examine the validity of the tree-pruning hypothesis (TPH) put forward
by [Friedmann, N., & Grodzinsky, Y. (1997). Tense and agreement in agrammatic production: Pruning the
syntactic tree. Brain and Language, 56, 397–425]. The TPH accounts for the deficits agrammatic Broca’s
aphasic have in relation to verb inflections in syntactic terms and postulates that such patients cannot
construct syntactic trees higher than an impaired node, the pruning site, while nodes located lower remain
intact. This paper reports the performance of six Greek-speaking agrammatic patients. The experiments
investigated the patients’ ability to produce tense, agreement and aspect in single word and sentential tasks
and their ability to judge the grammaticality of the same inflectional markers within sentences. In single
word tasks the patients were impaired in all inflectional markers to a similar degree, while in sentential
tasks, both in production and in grammaticality judgment, aspect and tense were more impaired than
agreement. The results are similar to those in [Friedmann, N., & Grodzinsky, Y. (1997). Tense and
agreement in agrammatic production: pruning the syntactic tree. Brain and Language, 56, 397–425].
However, in the syntactic clause in Greek, agreement is thought to be located higher than tense and aspect,
and aspect is located lower than tense. These results, therefore, do not support predictions of the TPH
insofar as tense and aspect that are lower in the syntactic tree were found to be more impaired than
agreement. Instead, the results are interpreted within recent formulations of minimalism that distinguish
between interpretable (tense and aspect) and uninterpretable (agreement) features and the morphopho-
nological evaluation operations associated with them.
q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Agrammatic Broca’s aphasia; Tree pruning hypothesis; Morphological deficits; Interpretable and
uninterpretable features
* Corresponding author. Tel.: C44 1206 873712; fax: 44 1206 873801.

E-mail address: mastj@essex.ac.uk (J. Masterson).
0911-6044/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2005.11.003
210 V. Nanousi et al. / Journal of Neurolinguistics 19 (2006) 209–238
1. Introduction
Since, the earliest descriptions of agrammatism (e.g. Pick, 1913) the impairment of
grammatical morphemes has been singled out as the defining feature of the disorder. A number
of proposals have been put forward in order to explain the phenomenon of agrammatism in terms
of phonology (e.g. Kean, 1977, 1980), morphology (e.g. Goodglass & Berko, 1960; Lapointe,
1983) and syntax (e.g. Grodzinsky, 1990). These proposals, despite their theoretical differences,
share the view that all grammatical morphemes are vulnerable in agrammatism to the same
extent. However, recent evidence from different languages has been amassed against these
across-the-board accounts. Studies by Nadeau and Gonzalez-Rothi (1992) in English, Benedet,
Christiansen and Goodglass (1998) in Spanish, Jarema and Kehayia (1992) in French,
Friedmann and Grodzinsky (1997) in Hebrew, for example, reported more problems in the
production of tense than agreement morphemes.
The selective impairment of tense marking inflections of RS, a Hebrew-speaking agrammatic
patient has motivated the postulation of the tree-pruning-hypothesis (TPH, Friedmann &
Grodzinsky, 1997). The TPH is further supported by a group study of Palestinian Arabic- and
Hebrew-speaking patients (e.g. Friedmann, 2001). Friedmann’s proposal was made within the
framework of feature checking theory (Chomsky, 1993) and is based on Pollock’s (1989) split
inflection hypothesis, according to which tense and agreement are represented in two distinct
nodes on the syntactic tree, and on Ouhalla’s (1991) proposal with the ordering of functional
categories of: CP–TP–AgrP–NegP–VP, for semitic languages.
According to the TPH, the syntactic tree of agrammatic patients is impaired or ‘pruned’ at a
certain level or height, and a defective node implicates all nodes above it, whereas nodes located
below it remain well preserved. Variability in severity among agrammatic patients is, according
to the authors, determined by the pruning location. The lower the impaired node, the greater the
number of impaired functional categories and hence the impairment is more severe. The least
severely impaired patients have deficits only in relation to the highest COMP node and the most
severely impaired patients have deficits not only in relation to tense by also in relation to
agreement marking inflections. Deficits at the level of the tense node are the most frequently
reported ones in agrammatic patients, and the pattern of deficits of such patients motivated the
hypothesis originally. The suggestion that an impaired node implicates all nodes above was
tested in Friedmann (1999, 2001, 2002) with Palestinian Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking
agrammatic speakers using a wh-question elicitation task and by analyzing the patients’
connected speech. All patients were impaired in the production of tense marking inflections, and
they were also impaired in producing and repeating wh-questions that are formulated by the wh-
word moving to the COMP node. In contrast, the patients could produce yes/no questions that in
Palestinian-Arabic and Hebrew do not require movement to COMP, at least no overt movement.
In a study in English, where both wh- and yes/no questions require movement, both
constructions were found to be impaired (Thompson, Shapiro, Tait, Jacobs, & Schneideret,
1996). In a further study conducted in Hebrew, Friedmann (2001) compared the ability to repeat
relative clauses (involving COMP) and sentences with sentential complements (not involving
COMP) and the production of subject relatives (involving COMP) and sentences with adjectival
modification (not involving COMP). Again, the results supported the hypothesis that tense-
impaired patients are also impaired on sentences that require an intact COMP node.
There are several potential problems with the TPH. First, the generalization of a deficit related
to a pruned T node hinges on parametric variation (Belletti, 1990; Chomsky, 1993).
Parameterization has its roots in Baker’s mirror principle (1988), according to which there is
V. Nanousi et al. / Journal of Neurolinguistics 19 (2006) 209–238 211
a strict relationship between affix order on a stem and the position of the corresponding functional
categories in a syntactic tree. For example, in languages where the agreement morpheme is closer
to the verb stem than is the tense morpheme, the Agr node will appear below the tense node. For
this reason, in Arabic and Hebrew, T is higher than Agr. However, this is not the case in Italian,
French, and English, where the ordering of the functional categories in the syntactic tree is
reversed (Belletti, 1990; Chomsky, 1993). Thus, the TPH makes different predictions depending
on the relevant positions of T and Agr. Pruning of T should entail disruption of Agr, if Agr appears
higher than T. It is therefore, surprising that Friedmann and Grodzinsky (1997) cite data from
French-, Italian- and English-speaking patients who are more impaired in the production of tense
than agreement as evidence in favour of the TPH. In fact, such evidence is contrary to what we
should expect if the TPH (and Baker’s mirror principle) are correct.
Second, the linguistic framework in which the TPH is framed is that of an early version of the
minimalist program, in which there are separate projections for tense and agreement, and feature
checking takes place within a syntactic derivation. Checking theory was developed so as to
interact with processes such as subject raising and head movement, and case and agreement
licensing in appropriate domains. Thus, the subject was raised through the specifier of T to the
specifier of Agr, allowing its case and agreement features to be checked (licensed) in a specifier-
head configuration. Additionally, the verb was raised via adjunction to T and Agr, where its
morphosyntactic features are also checked. The specifier position and positions adjoined to
heads constituted a checking domain, in which feature checking was a legitimate operation
(Chomsky, 1993). In more recent developments of linguistic theory (Chomsky, 2000, 2001), Agr
has been eliminated from the syntactic tree and checking in a checking domain has been
abandoned. The distinction between two types of features, namely the interpretable (features that
have a semantic content) and uninterpretable (features that are devoid of a semantic content)
ones, introduced in Chomsky (1995), remains important, but the processes of matching and
deletion that were integral parts of checking now take place in situ in a head-complement
relation rather than in a specifier-head relation. The linguistic assumptions, therefore, within
which the TPH has been articulated, are no longer generally accepted.
Finally, there is a problem related to the generalisation that the selective tense deficit may be
restricted to the output modality. Friedmann’s position about this remains unclear. The patients
that were tested in relation to the hypothesis all had intact comprehension and grammaticality
judgement performance with tense marking inflections. This does not mean, however, that intact
comprehension is a required postulation of the hypothesis. On the contrary, intact
comprehension, judgement and recognition would need additional theoretical justification to
make the TPH a viable theory. The reason is that TPH is a theory of impairments of
representations (pruned nodes on the syntactic tree), and in such a theory, dissociations between
production and comprehension is difficult to account for. Empirical evidence (e.g. Benedet et al.,
1998; Druks & Carroll, 2005; Goodglass, Christiansen, & Gallagher, 1993; Wenzlaff & Clahsen,
2004), however, suggests that, at least some patients have problems not only with the production
but also with the comprehension of inflectional morphemes. For the same reason, the TPH
cannot explain partial preservation/impairment of a pruned feature.
It is evident therefore, that more research is needed for the evaluation of the claims of the
TPH. The present study explores the availability of verbal inflectional morphology in Greek-
speaking Broca’s aphasic patients. Hitherto only a few studies explored language impairments in
Greek-speaking patients and the findings are conflicting.
Stavrakaki and Kouvava (2003) studied the spontaneous speech of two Greek-speaking
Broca’s agrammatic patients and their ability to carry out grammaticality judgment tasks. Both
patients produced correct agreement markers in almost all singular verbs (although they made
some errors with plural verbs), and neither made any errors in producing sentences containing
present tense verbs. Many errors occurred, however, in the past tense. One patient produced 36%
and the second 17% errors. Both patients were impaired in the production of the perfective
aspect (as this is realized in simple past forms) with an error rate of 48% for the first and 22% for
the second patient. In the grammaticality judgment tasks, the first patient made 2/10 errors when
judging incorrect past tense sentences, and 1/10 when judging correct and incorrect subject/verb
agreement. The second patient made only one error in accepting an incorrectly inflected past
tense form. Stavrakaki and Kouvava concluded that while aspect is impaired, tense and
agreement were available to the patients to an equal extent.
The shortcoming of this study is that spontaneous speech data do not allow a systematic
exploration of the availability of all verb inflections, and in spontaneous speech the intended
verb inflection is often unknown. Also, Stavrakaki and Kouvava’s claim that tense and
agreement are similarly impaired is not warranted, since the results show that for both patients
agreement is better preserved than tense not only in production but also in grammaticality
judgment.
In contrast to Stavrakaki and Kouvava’s study, Tsapkini, Jarema and Kehayia (2002) using
different methodology, showed that tense production can be severely compromised. A Greek-
speaking patient was presented with verbs inflected for the simple present tense and had to
produce the corresponding past tense forms. The past tense forms were controlled with respect to
their aspectual form. While comprehension and repetition of the past tense verb forms was
almost intact, there were problems with the production of these forms in the transformation task.
It was argued that the patient had problems related to the retrieval of the perfective verb forms.
Deficits in the production of the past tense perfective verb forms were also reported in Tsapkini,
Jarema and Kehayia (2001) in another Greek-speaking patient who, in an elicitation task, failed
to produce the required forms in 42% of the items, resorting to the production of imperfective
forms. These two studies provide evidence for deficits related to tense and suggest that this
feature can be severely compromised in agrammatism. Hitherto, the availability of the aspectual
node in agrammatic speech has not been systematically investigated (but see Leheckova, 2001 in
Czech; Ulatowska, Sadowska, & Kadzielawa, 2001 in Polish). Before presenting our own
evidence, a brief description of the Greek morphological system will be provided.
2. The Greek verbal morphological system
Modern Greek (MG) is a highly inflectional (fusional) language with a rich set of verbal
affixes. Verbs display inflection for person, number, tense, aspect, voice and to some extent
mood (Holton, Mackridge, & Philippaki-Warburton, 1997). Due to its rich agreement
morphology MG does not typically use subject pronouns. Verbal morphology is fusional and
the morphemes that express certain grammatical categories are amalgamated in complex ways
resulting in portmanteau forms. This property makes it impossible to separate affixes from each
other. For example, person and number exponents are fused with those of tense in most verbal
paradigms, and thus, person, number and tense are often realised by a single segment. For
example, in lin-i (solve, 3rd person sing., non-past) and e-lin-e (solve, 3rd person, sing., past
continuous), Ki and Ke, a single phoneme, mark tense, person and number.
Tense and aspect are also tightly interwoven. Aspect is morphologically marked in the stem
of every verb form and tense marking is always the result of a combination of time reference
and aspect. Table 1 shows the way that tense and aspect combine in the verb graf-o, ‘I write’.
Table 1
Interaction of tense and aspect in the verb graf-o ‘I write’
Tense Imperfective aspect Perfective aspect

Non-past graf-o ‘I write’ (present) graps-o ‘wrote’ (dependent)
Past e-graf-a ‘I was writing’ (imperfect) e-graps-a ‘I wrote’ (simple past)
Future tha graf-o ‘I will be writing’ (imperfective future) tha graps-o ‘I will write’ (perfective future)
Forms in the imperfective involve the stem graf- while those in the perfective, use the stem
graps-.
Some tenses are formed monolectically by modification within the verb form itself, (present,
simple past, past continuous) e.g. graf-o ‘I write’, simple pres; e-graf-a ‘I was writing’ past cont;
e-graps-a ‘I wrote’ simple past; while others are formed periphrastically (perfective and
imperfective future, conditional, perfect conditional and future perfect), e.g. tha graps-o ‘I will
write’ perf fut, tha graf-o ‘I will be writing’ imperf fut, tha echo graps-i ‘I will have written’ fut
perf. Other complex periphrastic tenses are the present perfect, e.g. echo graps-i ‘I have written’
and pluperfect icha graps-i ‘I had written’ which use the auxiliary verb echo ‘have’. In relation
to aspect, verbs make a morphological distinction between the perfective and imperfective, e.g.
graps-o ‘wrote’, non-past perf, graf-o ‘I write’ non-past imperf. There is also a third type of
aspect, namely, perfect, this being expressed periphrastically by means of auxiliary verbs, e.g.
echo graps-i ‘I have written’.
MG has flexible word order with V–S–O, S–V–O and V–O–S being the most typical
alternative orders of constituents. Given the complexities described above, it is customary to
suppose that the clause in MG contains a number of functional heads organised hierarchically as
in Fig. 1 (Alexiadou, 1997; Horrocks, 1982; Philippaki-Warburton, 1992).
In the structure in Fig. 1, the verb moves first to aspect, located closest to it, since it affects the
internal morphophonological shape of the stem. Then it moves to tense and agreement to acquire
its tense and agreement inflectional affixes. In the periphrastic structures with the auxiliary echo
‘have’ the main verb moves to aspect, while the auxiliary moves independently to tense and
agreement to obtain its own relevant inflectional affixes.
3. Methods
3.1. Participants
Six agrammatic Broca’s aphasic patients participated in this study. They were identified as
agrammatic Broca’s aphasics on the basis of CT scans, their spontaneous speech and by formal
assessment using the Boston diagnostic aphasia examination (Goodglass & Kaplan, 1983),
adapted for use in the Greek language. On the BDAE, all patients presented with dysfluent
speech, their comprehension of single words and non-reversible sentences was unimpaired, and
they all had moderate naming deficits. While their reading of single words was well preserved
(apart form AJ who could not read), their writing to dictation was very impaired. All patients
were male, their mean age was 51.2 years (range, 38–66 years) and all were native Greek
speakers, right handed and in a stable condition. Table 2 gives a summary of the patients’
demographic details.
CP
C’
C MP
Spec M’
Mood NegP
Neg FutP
Future AgrP
Agr TP
Spec T’
T AUXP
Aux AspP
Spec Asp′
Asp VP
Spec V
V NP
Fig. 1. Syntactic representation of the Greek clause1
1
While some of the details of Fig. 1 continue to be debated—inevitable in a rapidly developing field—it does represent a reasonable
consensus of what is necessary to develop a comprehensive description of the elements of the MG clause. However, Tsimpli (1990)
suggested a different tree structure for Greece in which T is higher than Agr. If true, this would have an effect on the argument here in
relation to tense and agreement, but not in relation to aspect, as it will be seen later.
Table 2
Patients’ background information
Patient Age at time Occupation Years since CT scan

of testing onset
DS 66 Mechanic 4 L.inferior fronto-temporal and internal capsule
PA 61 Elevator attendant 4 L.inferior fronto-temporal
ZA 41 Lorry driver 3 L.inferior fronto-temporal
AS 38 Bank cashier 8 L.inferior fronto-temporal
AJ 55 Painter 6 L.inferior fronto-temporal
RS 46 Bus driver 9 L.inferior fronto-temporal
3.2. Preliminary language tests
3.2.1. Spontaneous speech

Speech samples were collected by asking patients to tell the Cinderella story. One patient
(AS) was unwilling to tell the story, instead he talked about what happened during the period that
he was hospitalized. The patients’ speech was recorded and transcribed, and was analyzed
following the guidelines of Berndt, Wayland, Rochon, Saffran, and Schwartz (2000). Table 3
compares the speech characteristics of the patients in the present study with that of the data
presented in Berndt et al. (2000) for controls and (non-fluent) English speaking aphasics.
According to Table 3, the profile of the patients in the present study was comparable to that of
the English-speaking patients and compatible with the diagnosis of Broca’s aphasia. All patients
had deficits in pronoun production, three patients were impaired in determiner production, but
verb production was impaired only in the case AJ, who was also most impaired in producing
grammatical sentences. The perfect score in inflection production for all the patients shows that
the Greek patients, unlike English patients, always inflect verbs, albeit erroneously. The reason
is that in Greek, all verbs must be inflected in order for them to surface as legal words. Indeed, it
has been argued previously that Broca’s aphasic patients respect this morphological restriction
of their language (see Grodzinsky, 1990).
3.2.2. Semantic knowledge, naming and syntactic comprehension

All patients underwent background language testing using the Pyramids and Palm Trees Test
(Howard & Patterson, 1992), and version of the Boston naming test (Kaplan, Goodglass, &
Weintraub, 1983) and the Object and Action Naming Battery (Druks & Masterson, 2000)
adapted for Greek. Their syntactic comprehension abilities were tested using a sentence/picture
Table 3
Summary of the analysis of the patients’ speech and of English-speaking aphasics and controls
Measure Controls Non-fluent DS PA ZA AS AJ RS

patients
Words per minute 160.82 39.01 26.21 24.74 26.77 31.22 9.68 20.90
Well-formed sentencesa 0.95 0.56 0.67 0.70 0.71 0.85 0.50 0.84
Determinersa 0.99 0.65 1.00 0.87 0.68 0.78 0.61 0.86
Pronounsa 0.41 0.25 0.25 0.12 0.18 0.25 0.08 0.16
Verbsa 0.48 0.37 0.45 0.47 0.49 0.40 0.34 0.49
Inflectionsa 0.92 0.56 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
a
Proportion in obligatory context.
Table 4
Summary of the patients’ performance in the naming tests and the syntactic comprehension test (% correct)
Patients DS PA ZA AS AJ RS
Boston naming (nZ60) 70 85 82 93 93 85
Object naming (nZ60) 100 100 100 100 100 100
Action naming (nZ60) 87 93 92 92 88 85
Comprehension: actives (nZ14) 100 100 100 100 100 100
Comprehension: passives (nZ14) 71 50 50 86 100
matching task with reversible active and passive sentences (Froud & Druks, unpublished), On
the Pyramids and Palm Trees Test all patients performed within the published range for controls.
Their performance on the naming tests and the syntactic comprehension test are summarized in
Table 4.
The results in Table 4 confirm the findings in the BDAE that naming in all patients was
relatively well preserved. The different results in the Boston naming test and in object naming in
the Object and Action Naming Battery is due to the fact that the Boston naming test contains
items that are less frequent and familiar than the object items in the Druks and Masterson battery.
Action naming was somewhat impaired in comparison to object naming despite the fact that the
nouns and verbs in this battery are carefully matched. This is expected in Broca’s aphasia (e.g.
Caramazza & Hillis, 1991; Hillis & Caramazza, 1995; Miceli, Silveri, Nocentini, & Caramazza,
1988). Deficits in the comprehension of reversible passives sentences are also expected in this
type of patients (e.g. Grodzinsky, 1990).
4. Experimental investigations
4.1. Materials and procedure
All the words and the sentence constructions used in the study are highly familiar to speakers
of modern Greek. They were administered to 12 non-aphasic adults matched for age, education
and socio-economic status with the patients. The few items (seven) that were unclear, or that the
controls made errors on, were replaced. The verbs used in all the tasks fall into two conjugation
patterns, the first and the second; the majority of the verbs were from the first pattern, since the
majority of Greek verbs take this form. Conjugation patterns and the internal structure of Greek
verbs were not manipulated in this study.
Patients were seen during four testing blocks, each of which lasted approximately three
months. During this period, patients were seen once a week for a session lasting approximately
two hours. Tasks that consisted of many items were broken into smaller parts and during a single
session different tasks were administered in order to avoid monotony, as much as possible.
Patients were allowed frequent rests. All tasks were presented in both spoken and written format
in order to minimise demands on short-term memory. Test items were repeated on demand, and
patients were allowed as much time as they required to respond.
The experimental tasks involved immediate and delayed repetition and of transformation.
The instruction for immediate repetition was: “I’ll say one word (or one sentence). Please listen
to it carefully and repeat it immediately after you have heard it”. The instruction for delayed
repetition was: “I’ll say one word (or one sentence). Please listen to it carefully and before
repeating it I want you to say aloud the letters zeta, epsilon and delta in reverse order, and then
repeat the word (or the sentence) you heard”. In the transformation tasks patients had to make a
pre-specified change on a word: change a verb from singular to plural, from first person to third
person or from present tense to past tense, for example. Practice items were presented at the
beginning of each task to familiarise the patients with the requirements.
5. Introduction to the experiments
In Section 1 we outlined the problems agrammatic Broca’s aphasic patients have with
the verbal inflectional features of tense, agreement and aspect. We also highlighted a
number of theoretical problems in the interpretation of these deficits in terms of the TPH.
In order to address these problems, and to find out the extent to which the deficits are also
present in tasks that do not require production, 10 tasks were presented to the patients.
Single word and sentential tasks were included in order to distinguish between deficits in
the morphological or the syntactic component of the language faculty, assuming that only
sentential tasks engage syntax. Following the work of Friedmann and Grodzinsky (1997), a
repetition task—immediate and delayed repetition of single words and sentences—was
initially used (task 1). The rest of the production tasks were transformation tasks. In three
tasks, the patients were required to produce either the correct agreement inflectional ending
(task 2), the correct tense (task 3) or the correct aspect (task 4) to a given single verb form.
In a further three tasks, the production of the same inflectional features was examined
within sentences (tasks 5–7). In the final three tasks, the availability of the same features
was examined in grammaticality judgment (free and contrastive) and sentence completion
tasks.
6. Task 1
6.1. Repetition of inflected single verbs and tensed sentences
6.1.1. Materials and procedure

The method used was based on that of Friedmann and Grodzinsky (1997), and involved
immediate and delayed repetition.
The repetition of single words. Ninety verb forms were selected from the Greek version of the
Object and Action Naming Battery (Druks & Masterson, 2000). These are all highly familiar
concrete verbs with a range of frequencies such as to eat, to write, to tickle and to melt. The verbs
were inflected in all possible ways. They were inflected for the three monolectically formed
tenses (simple present, simple past and past continuous) and for the two most representative
periphrastic forms (simple future and present perfect). There were 18 verbs for each tense. Half
of these verbs were inflected for singular and half for plural. A third of the 18 verbs for each tense
were inflected for each of the three persons (first, second and third) and a third were inflected for
imperfective, a third for perfective and third for perfect. Thus, there were, for example, 18 verbs
in the simple present form, out of which nine were singular and nine plural, six were in first, six
in second and six in third person, six had imperfective, six perfective and six perfect aspect. The
complete list of verbs was presented initially for immediate repetition and two weeks later for
delayed repetition.
The repetition of sentences. The stimuli consisted of 90 sentences, four to six words long
that included the same verbs that had been used in the single word repetition task, inflected for
tense, number and person. The tenses included were simple present, simple past, past
continuous, simple future and present perfect. Eighteen sentences were constructed for each of
the five tenses. Thirty of the sentences were presented in S–V–O order (e.g. To pedi pini
nero.‘The child drinks water’), 30 in V–O–S order (e.g. Stazi nero i vrisi. ‘Drips it water the
faucet’ ‘The faucet drips water’) and 30 in V–S–O order (e.g. Gargalai o papus ton mikro.
‘Tickles the grandfather the little boy’ ‘The grandfather tickles the little boy’). The
sentences were presented in a single random order, first for immediate and then for delayed
repetition.
6.1.2. Results and discussion

Performance with immediate repetition of single words was error free. With delayed
repetition there were a few errors of substitution (overall 5%). Errors occurred across all tenses
and all three types of aspect and a few involving number and person. In sentence repetition,
similar results were observed. Immediate repetition yielded almost no errors and only few errors
occurred in delayed repetition. There were no errors involving nouns or adjectives. Overall,
performance in both tasks was good, similar to the results reported for patient RS (Friedmann &
Grodzinsky, 1997).
7. Task 2
7.1. The production of agreement in single words

Twenty-four sets of verbs (12 sets for number and 12 for person) taken from the Greek
version of the Action and Object Naming Battery (Druks & Masterson, 2000) were selected.
Each set consisted of five test verbs and one example illustrating the required change. Person
and number changes were investigated separately. Tense and aspect features were kept
constant and the transformations took place within the same tense and within the same type of
aspect.
7.1.2. Production of number

When number changes were required, person was held constant. The verb forms (12 for
each tense) were inflected for the simple present, past continuous, simple past and the two most
common periphrastic tenses, simple future and present perfect. All five tenses appeared in a
given trial. In one trial the participants had to transform 1st person plur verbs into 1st person
sing. In a second trial the transformation was from 2nd person plur to 2nd person sing., and in a
third trial 3rd person plur to 3rd person sing. The same procedure was followed for the
elicitation of plural. There were 30 items that required the production of verbs inflected for
singular on the basis of plural forms and 30 that required the production of verbs inflected for
plural on the basis of given singular forms. Below is an example of a trial involving number
change:
Example: fevgume we leave Provided: fevgo I leave
given: magirevume we cook target: magirevo I cook
given: fitevame we were planting target: fiteva I was planting
given: fisiksame we blew target: fisiksa I blew
given: tha kolibisume we will swim target: tha kolibiso I will swim
given: echume zografisi we have drawn target: echo zografisi I have drawn
8. Production of person
The same method was used for the elicitation of person. When person changes were
required number was held constant. There were four trials (each consisting of five verbs) for
each of the three grammatical persons. In a trial, the 1st person was provided and the requested
changes involved the production of the 3rd person. In another trial the 1st person was once
again provided and the requested changes involved the production of the 2nd person. The same
procedure was followed for the elicitation of the 2nd and 3rd person. The total number of items
for person change was therefore, 60. The verb forms (12 for each tense) were inflected for the
simple present, past continuous, simple past and the two most common periphrastic tenses,
namely simple future and present perfect. Below is an example of a trial involving person
change:
Example: fevgo I leave Provided: fevgi he/she leaves
Given: pino I drink target: pini he/she drinks
given: tragudaga I was singing target: tragudage he/she was singing
given: eliosa I melt target: eliose he/she melt
given: tha kimitho I will sleep target: tha kimithi he/she will sleep
given: echo anapsi I have lit target: echi anapsi he/she has lit
8.1. Results
The patients’ performance in this task is summarized in Table 5.

A t-test was used to analyze the results. This revealed that there was a significant
difference in the number of errors made for singular and plural, t(5)Z7.76, pZ.001, with
plural being more difficult. A single factor ANOVA was used to explore any differences
between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person inflection on verbs. No significant effect of person was
found (F(2)Z1.11, pZ.4). The errors were always of substitution, with no predominant
pattern emerging. The errors made in the production of agreement were distributed almost
evenly across all five tenses and across the three types of aspect. Therefore, it was not the
case that the agreement errors were the consequence of difficulties related to tense or aspect
marking inflections.
Table 5
Percentage of errors in the production of number and person change with single words
DS PA ZA AS AJ RS Mean
Number
Singular (nZ30) 57 43 67 53 63 50 56
Plural (nZ30) 70 57 80 67 87 60 70
Mean 64 50 74 60 75 55 63
Person
1st person (nZ20) 65 45 60 40 70 50 55
2nd person (nZ20) 65 35 75 50 60 75 60
3rd person (nZ20) 30 50 50 55 65 45 49
Mean 53 43 62 48 65 57 55
Table 6
Percentage of errors in the production of tense with single words
Simple present (nZ30) 53 47 53 43 60 50 51
Past continuous (nZ30) 43 33 53 50 57 53 48
Simple past (nZ30) 53 70 63 57 67 63 62
Simple Future (nZ30) 50 57 70 50 67 60 59
Present perfect (nZ30) 63 47 83 63 77 67 67
Mean 53 51 65 53 65 59 57
9. Task 3
9.1. The production of tense in single words

The same methodology used for the elicitation of agreement forms was employed here. The
changes that were required were, from simple present to past continuous; from past continuous
to simple present; from simple past to simple future; from simple future to simple past, and from
past perfect to present perfect. The total number of verbs was 150 (30 for the elicitation of each
tense). In all cases, the given and required tenses expressed the same aspect (e.g. the simple
present and the target past continuous express imperfective aspect). The assessment of tense was
confined to the three monolectic tense forms (simple present, past continuous, simple past) and
the two most frequently used periphrastic tenses of MG, simple future and present perfect. In the
last condition, the past perfect was introduced in order to include perfect aspect. In the first,
second and third sets of trials, the given verb forms were inflected for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person
sing., respectively, and the target forms were the corresponding singular forms with tense
changed, while in the fourth, fifth and sixth sets of trials, the given verb forms were inflected for
the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person plural and the target form was the corresponding plural form with
tense changed. Thus, when the patients had to produce the correct tense the features of aspect
and agreement were held constant (e.g. from liono ‘I melt’ [simple pres, imperf, 1st sing], to
eliona ‘I was melting’ [past cont. imperf, 1st sing.]). Below is an example of a trial involving
tense change:
Example: fevgo—Simple Pres. ‘I leave’ Provided form: efevga—Past. Cont. ‘I was leaving’
Given form: liono ‘I melt’ Target form: eliona ‘I was melting’
Given form: siderono ‘I iron’ Target form: siderona ‘I was ironing’
Given form: pino ‘I drink’ Target form: epina ‘I was drinking’
Given form: pleko ‘I knit’ Target form: epleka ‘I was knitting’
Given form: anavo ‘I light’ Target form: anava ‘I was lighting’
9.1.2. Results
The performance of the patients in the production of tense changes is summarized in Table 6.
A one-way ANOVA with five levels (simple present, past continuous, simple past, simple
future and present perfect) showed that the effect of tense was significant, F(2)Z7.331, pZ.001.
Post hoc analyses2 revealed that present perfect was significantly more difficult than past
2
Due to the large number of pair-wise comparisons involved a significance level of .025 was adopted.
continuous, t(5)Z4.22, pZ.01 and simple present, t(5)Z3.60, pZ.02. Simple past was more
difficult than simple present, t(5)Z3.49, pZ.02. The errors were of substitution and never of
omission. A specific pattern of substitutions was observed, with the simple present being
substituted by the past continuous and vice versa, the simple future was substituted by the simple
past and vice versa and finally the present perfect was substituted by the simple past and past
perfect.
10. Task 4
10.1. The production of aspect in single words

The methodology employed was the same as that used for the investigation of agreement and
tense. Patients were required to make the following changes: from simple past to past continuous
(from perfective to imperfective—30 verbs); from past continuous to simple past (from
imperfective to perfective—30 verbs); from future continuous to simple future (from
imperfective to perfective—30 verbs) and from simple future to future continuous
(from perfective to imperfective—30 verbs). In these transitions tense (specifically tense
reference to past/future) and agreement were held constant (e.g. psareva ‘I was fishing’ [past
cont, reference to past, 1st sing] to psarepsa ‘I fished’ [simple past, reference to past, 1st sing]).
All five given verb forms in each set corresponded to the targets in person and number. In the
first, second and third set of trials, the given verb forms were inflected for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd
singular, respectively, while in the fourth, fifth and sixth set of trials the given verb forms were
inflected for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person plural, respectively. Below is an example of a trial
involving aspect change:
Example: efevga—past cont. ‘I was leaving’ Provided form: efiga—simple past ‘I left’
Given form: kimomun ‘I was sleeping’ Target form: kimithika ‘I slept’
Given form: psareva ‘I was fishing’ Target form: psarepsa ‘I fished’
Given form: tragudaga ‘I was singing’ Target form: tragudisa ‘I sang’
Given form: zitianeva ‘I was begging’ Target form: zitianepsa ‘I begged’
Given form: zografiza ‘I was drawing’ Target form: zografisa ‘I drew’
The investigation of perfect aspect was excluded on the grounds that it expresses tense and
aspect simultaneously, it is more complex semantically and verb forms employing the other two
aspects can often replace it. The imperfective aspect can be expressed through three different
tenses in MG, (past continuous, simple present and future continuous), while the perfective
aspect is expressed through the simple past and simple future. Therefore, when the imperfective
was the target all three tenses could be produced, while when the target was the perfective only
simple past and simple future could be produced.
10.1.2. Results
The performance of patients in the production of aspect is summarized in Table 7.
A paired samples t-test showed that the effect of type of aspect (imperfective versus
perfective) was not significant, t(11)Z.513, pZ.621. The majority of errors were repetitions of
the given aspectual form but there were also many substitutions in which the imperfective was
substituted by the perfective, while the perfective was substituted by the imperfective. The
Table 7
Percentage of errors in the production of aspect in single words
Perfective/imperfective 73 70 83 63 93 77 77
(past) (nZ30)
Perfective/imperfective 70 43 63 33 67 50 54
(future) (nZ30)
Imperfective/perfective 63 53 80 60 100 73 72
(past) (nZ30)
Imperfective/perfective 60 50 70 57 73 67 63
(future) (nZ30)
Mean 67 54 74 53 83 67 66
patients on these occasions relied on the stem properties of the given verb and produced a verb
sharing the same stem to that of the given verb.
10.1.3. Summary of the single word tasks

The production of agreement marking inflections in single verbs is impaired for all patients.
There were errors involving both person and number. Plural was more impaired than singular but
no significant differences were found between different person forms. Both types of aspect were
problematic; for tense there was poor performance with the present perfect, simple past, simple
future and past continuous, whereas the simple present was somewhat better preserved. In the
following tasks, performance on the same features in sentential context is explored.
11. Task 5
11.1. Tense and agreement within sentences

The method was based on Friedmann and Grodzinsky (1997). The production of five tenses
and person and number agreement were assessed. The stimuli consisted of 120 target verbs
inserted into sentences. Sixty verbs3 were taken from the Object and Action Naming Battery
(Druks & Masterson, 2000) and 60 were selected from the Greek grammar of Holton et al.
(1997). Monolectic tenses (simple present, simple past and past continuous) and the two most
common periphrastic tenses (simple future and present perfect) were included in the test.
The stimuli were constructed by devising three sentences, each of which contained a temporal
adverbial. The first sentence contained a verb form appropriately tensed for the temporal
adverbial and inflected for agreement with the subject. The second sentence was identical to the
first except that the temporal adverbial was changed and the verb was omitted. The third
sentence was identical to the first except that the subject changed to one requiring a different
agreement inflection and the verb was omitted. The sentences were presented to the patients as
triads: 120 pairs assessing tense (e.g. from simera emis diavazume ta pada ‘today we read
everything’ to avrio emis ta pada ‘tomorrow we everything’, target: tha diavasume
‘we will read’) and 120 pairs assessing agreement (e.g. from simera emis diavazume ta pada
3
These were the same verbs used in the single word tasks assessing agreement and tense reported previously.
‘today we read everything’ to simera ekini ta pada ‘today they everything’, target:
diavazun ‘they read’).
There were 24 trials for each of the five tenses. With respect to agreement, number change
was tested while person remained constant and person change was tested while number
remained constant. In the case of number change, the form of the target verb in the third sentence
was signaled to the patients either by an overt pronominal subject, or by a clitic or an anaphoric
pronoun with the required person features. In 30 trials the subject in the initial sentence was
inflected for singular and in the third sentence the plural was required, while in the remaining 30
trials the opposite pattern held. As for the person changes, there were 20 sentences for each
person in which every person was contrasted with the other two. Thus, when in the initial
sentence the subject was inflected for 1st person in the second sentence the 3rd person was
required. Alternatively, when in the initial sentence the subject was again in the 1st person, in the
second sentence the 2nd person was required.
11.1.2. Results and conclusion

The patients’ performance with tense and agreement inflections is summarized in Table 8.
There was no significant difference between singular and plural, t(5)Z805, pZ.457. There
was no significant effect of person, F(2)Z.788, pZ.481. All errors were errors of substitution
and not of omission. As in the single word version of this task each person was substituted with
other persons roughly an equal number of times. A one-way ANOVA showed a significant effect
of tense, F(4)Z7.189, pZ.001. Post hoc comparisons indicated that simple past was more
difficult than simple present, t(5)Z7.95, pZ.001, simple future was more difficult than simple
present, t(5)Z4.603, pZ.006, simple past was more difficult than past continuous, t(5)Z3.226,
pZ.023, and finally, simple future was more difficult than past continuous, t(5)Z3.828, pZ
.012. Errors consisted of all tenses being substituted by all other tenses without a predominant
pattern emerging.
The findings in the present study indicate that production of tense yielded more errors (40%)
than production of agreement (14%). Impairment in tense and not agreement was also reported
in the studies of Friedmann and Grodzinsky (1997) for Hebrew, Nadeau and Gonzalez-Rothi
Table 8
Percentage of errors in the production of tense and agreement within sentences
Tense
Simple present (nZ24) 21 17 33 25 42 29 28
Past continuous (nZ24) 42 29 38 21 29 33 32
Simple past (nZ24) 50 29 58 54 63 46 50
Simple future (nZ24) 46 54 50 33 58 42 47
Present perfect (nZ24) 38 38 54 42 33 58 44
Mean 39 33 47 35 45 42 40
Agreement-number
Singular (nZ30) 7 7 10 10 7 13 9
Plural (nZ30) 13 10 17 0 20 10 12
Mean 10 9 14 5 14 12 10
Agreement-person
First person (nZ20) 20 10 30 15 10 5 15
Second person (nZ20) 30 15 25 10 20 35 23
Third person (nZ20) 10 10 15 25 35 5 17
Mean 20 12 23 17 22 15 18
(1992) for English, Nespoulous et al. (1988) for French and Wenzlaff and Clahsen (2004) for
German. Overall, the patients performed better on tense and agreement within sentences than in
the single word tasks for the same features.
12. Task 6
12.1. Aspect within sentence contexts: forced choice sentence completion

Seventy-two sentence frames were constructed in which a verb was missing. Sixty of the
verbs used were the same as those used in the single word task eliciting aspect. The
remaining verbs were selected from Holton et al. (1997). Sentence frames were presented
with a choice of verb forms comprising either a verb inflected for all three future tenses
(future continuous, simple future, future perfect) or a verb inflected for all three past tenses
(past continuous, simple past and past perfect) or verbs inflected for simple present, simple
past and present perfect. In each case, the three verb forms express different aspects, i.e.
imperfective, perfective and perfect, respectively. For example, chtes oli tin mera i varvari
tin poli ‘yesterday the barbarians the city all day long’ options: poliorkisan
‘besought’, poliorkusan ‘they were besieging’ ichan poliorkisi ‘they had besought’. In this
example, the simple present is an imperfective form, the simple past is perfective and the
past perfect is perfect.
There were 24 sentences where the target was imperfective, 24 where the target was
perfective and 24 where the target was perfect. Throughout the task, the pointer to the
correct choice was always an adverbial or an adverbial expression indicating frequency.
Patients were required to select and produce the verb form that they thought was
appropriate for the sentence.
12.1.2. Results
A one-way ANOVA with three levels (imperfective, perfective and perfect) yielded a
significant effect of aspect, F(2)Z22.21, pZ.000. Post hoc comparisons showed that perfect
aspect was more difficult than imperfective t(5)Z5.54, pZ.003, perfective was more
difficult than imperfective, t(5)Z3.34, pZ.02, and perfect was more difficult than perfective
t(5)Z4.55, pZ.006. When the target was imperfective, the patients selected both
perfectives and the perfects (although the latter less often). When the target was perfective
the patients selected both imperfectives and perfects (although, again, the latter were
selected less often). Finally, when the target was perfect, the patients selected both
perfectives and imperfectives roughly an equal numbers of times.
Table 9
Percentage of errors in the choice of the imperfective, perfective or perfect aspect
Imperfective (nZ24) 38 29 42 21 25 33 31
Perfective (nZ24) 33 42 54 38 46 50 44
Perfect (nZ24) 50 46 58 50 63 67 56
Mean 40 39 51 36 45 50 44
13. Task 7
13.1. Aspect within sentence contexts: free sentence completion

In this task, the patients had to produce the appropriate verb form to express the required type
of aspect. The focus was on the simple present, past continuous and simple past. The logic
behind this selection of forms was that while the simple present expresses imperfective aspect
and the simple past perfective, the past continuous has properties of both. It is related to the
simple present as far as its formal properties are concerned (both are formed from the
imperfective stem) and it is related to the simple past on the basis of temporal reference. Using
these three forms, the investigation of the following issues is possible: (1) whether common
formal properties such as a common stem facilitate the production of aspectual forms so as to
override differences of temporal reference [simple pres4past cont: tense]; e.g. from pada i
Lena episkeptete taktika tin giagia tis ‘Helen always visits regularly her grandmother’ to
paliotera i Lena diarkos tin giagia tis ‘formerly Helen her grandmother constantly’
target: episkeptotan, past cont; (2) whether lack of common formal properties influences
performance in circumstances where temporal reference is kept constant [simple past4past
cont: aspect]; e.g. from paliotera i Lena episkeptotan diarkos tin giagia tis ‘formerly Helen
visited her grandmother constantly’ to chtes i Lena gia proti fora tin giagia tis ‘yesterday
Helen her grandmother for the first time’ target: episkeftike ‘visited’; (3) whether lack of
both common formal properties and common temporal reference has a summative effect on
patients’ performance [simple past4simple pres: tense/aspect]; e.g. chtes i Lena episkeftike gia
proti fora tin giagia tis ‘yesterday Helen visited her grandmother for the first time’ to pada i
Lena taktika tin giagia tis ‘Helen always regularly her grandmother’ target:
episkeptete ‘visits’.
All verbs were selected from Holton et al. (1997). Stimuli consisted of triads of sentences,
each of which contained a temporal adverbial. The first sentence in the triad contained a verb
form appropriate for the temporal adverbial. The second sentence was identical to the first,
except that the temporal adverbial was changed to one requiring a different verb form and the
verb was omitted. The third sentence was identical to the first and the second except that the
temporal adverbial was again different. Similarly to the elicitation of tense and agreement within
sentences, the sentences in this task were also presented to the patients in pairs. In 12 triads, the
verb of the initial sentence was inflected for simple present, a simple past verb form was required
in the second sentence and a past continuous in the third. In a further 12 triads, the verb in the
first sentence was inflected for simple past, a simple present was required in the second sentence,
and a past continuous in the third. Finally, in 12 triads the verb in the first sentence was inflected
for past continuous, the second sentence required a simple past form and the third a simple
present. Altogether there were 36 triads and 72 targets. In 24 of these the perfective was correct,
and in 48 the imperfective.
13.1.2. Results
Paired samples t-tests were carried out for the three versions of the task and showed: (1) there
was a significant difference (t(5)Z8.905, pZ.000) in the difficulty of producing perfective from
imperfective and imperfective from imperfective (the former was more difficult than the latter),
(2) there was a significant difference (t(5)Z5.3414, pZ.003) between moving from perfective to
Table 10
Percentage of errors in the production of aspect using the simple present, simple past and past continuous within
sentences
Imperfective from 17 21 29 21 25 21 22
imperfective (nZ24)
Perfective from 50 58 79 46 79 58 62
imperfective (nZ24)
Imperfective from 46 33 38 13 46 29 34
perfective (nZ24)
Mean 38 37 49 27 50 36 39
imperfective forms and from imperfective to perfective forms (perfective from imperfective
harder than imperfective from perfective) and (3) there was no significant difference (t(5)Z2.29,
pZ.07) in the production of imperfective from perfective and imperfective from imperfective.
The errors produced were of substitution: the perfective was mainly substituted by the
imperfective while the imperfective was mainly substituted by the perfective.
13.1.3. Summary for the production of aspect within sentences

The results obtained from the two tasks involving the production of aspect revealed problems
with the perfect aspect and with the perfective, while the imperfective appeared to be relatively
less impaired. These results are in accord with those reported in the studies of Stavrakaki and
Kouvava (2003) and Tsapkini et al. (2001, 2002) at least with respect to the distinction between
perfective and imperfective types of aspect, where problems with the perfective aspect and better
retention of the imperfective aspect was observed. Overall, performance was better in the
production of aspect when a sentential frame is available.
14. Summary of the production tasks: a comparison between single word

and sentential tasks
The patients performed somewhat differently in single word and sentential tasks. Overall,
verbal inflectional features were impaired in both single word and sentential tasks but in single
word tasks, tense, aspect and agreement were all impaired to a similar extent, while in the
sentential tasks, tense and aspect yielded more errors than agreement.
More specifically, in relation to tense, different substitution errors were made in single word
tasks and sentences. For agreement, the data revealed a complex pattern. Person was more
impaired than number in sentential tasks, while the opposite pattern was observed in the single
word tasks. Also, there were simultaneous person and number substitutions in the single word
tasks but not in the sentential tasks. Since, agreement is a prototypical morphosyntactic feature
(Chomsky, 1995) and necessitates a syntactic frame to operate, it might be suggested that the
errors in the single word tasks are a consequence of the lack of a sentential frame that facilitate
the required changes. Finally, for aspect, more errors were made in the single word tasks than in
the sentential tasks but the errors were similar: substitution errors involving the interchange of
the imperfective and perfective. These data suggest that the difficulty with aspect relates to the
morphophonological specification of the stem, since aspect is signalled exclusively in the stem
of the verb. Table 11 compares performance on the single word and sentential tasks.
Table 11
Percentage of errors in the production of tense, agreement and aspect across single word and sentential tasks
Grammatical Features Single word tasks Sentential tasks

Number 63 10
Person 55 18
Tense 57 40
Aspect 66 44
The following three tasks were grammaticality judgment tasks that investigated the patients’
ability to distinguish between correct and incorrect sentences involving tense, agreement and
aspect violations. All tasks are based on Friedmann and Grodzinsky (1997).
15. Task 8
15.1. Free grammaticality judgment task

The free grammaticality judgment task comprised 292 sentences. Of these, 146 were
grammatical, with violations of tense, aspect or agreement. Patients were asked to indicate
whether sentences were correct or incorrect. In 48 sentences aspect was violated, in 50 sentences
tense was violated and in 48 sentences there were agreement mismatches between subjects and
verb forms.
In sentences in which aspect was violated, tense and agreement were kept correct. For
example, the sentence Apo edo ke pera diarkos tha ichame sopasi. ‘From now on we will
constantly had kept silent’ is ungrammatical, because perfect is used instead of imperfective. All
three types of aspect were examined (16 sentences each). Thus, in 16 sentences the perfective
aspect was correct; in eight of these sentences the verb appeared in the imperfective and in eight,
the verb appeared in the perfect. The same procedure was followed for the other two types of
aspect.
In the sentences with tense violations, aspect and agreement were appropriate (e.g. I gonis
chtes the figun noris apo to spiti ‘The parents yesterday will leave early from the house’). The
following tenses were used:
† Past continuous (in five sentences) and future continuous (in five sentences) when the correct
sentence required the simple present.
† Simple past (in ten sentences) when the correct sentence required the simple future.
† Simple present (in five sentences) and future continuous (in another five sentences) when the
correct sentence required the past continuous.
† Simple future (in ten sentences) when the correct sentence required the simple past.
† Past perfect (in five sentences) and future perfect (in another five sentences) when the correct
sentence required the present perfect tense.
In sentences with agreement mismatches between the subject and the verb forms, tense and
aspect were kept correct. The mismatches involved different person and/or number in the verbal
inflection from what the subject of the sentence required (e.g. An ke itan astia i tenia, ego den
gela-s-ame ute mia for a ‘Although the movie was funny, I (1st sing.) did not laugh (1st plur.) not
even once’—a mismatch between the 1st person singular pronoun and the 1st person plural verb
inflection). There were 24 ungrammatical sentences for person (eight sentences for each person)
and 24 ungrammatical sentences for number (12 for singular and 12 for plural).
15.1.2. Results
In the free grammaticality judgment task no errors were made on the grammatical
sentences. All errors involved accepting ungrammatical sentences as correct. A one-way
ANOVA was carried out on the errors and revealed a significant effect of type of violation,
F(2,10)Z34.22, p!.001. Performance with aspect was somewhat more impaired than with
tense, t(5)Z3.5, pZ.02. However, errors with sentences testing agreement were far greater
than with the other two types (agreement vs. tense, t(5)Z5.12, pZ.004, agreement vs. aspect,
t(5)Z7.4, pZ.001). The tense errors involved all tenses but mainly the simple present and past
continuous, while the fewest errors were produced for the simple future. When the correct
tense was the simple present, it was mainly sentences containing the future continuous that
were erroneously judged as correct. In the cases of past continuous and present perfect, no
specific pattern was observed. Errors for simple past and simple future involved accepting the
simple past when the simple future was appropriate and vice versa. In judging agreement,
the errors involved both person and number in roughly equal numbers. As regards person, the
errors involved first and second person only, while for number, the errors involved plural and
singular in equal numbers.
In relation to aspect, the errors involved all three types of aspect, in roughly equal
numbers. When the required form was imperfective, the perfect was predominantly judged
as correct. When the perfective was correct, both perfect and imperfective were judged as
correct, roughly an equal number of times. Finally, when the perfect was correct, the
patients judged in almost equal numbers as correct, both the imperfective and perfective.
The performance of the patients is summarized in Table 12. This table also contains the
results from two further grammaticality judgment tasks, which are described in the
following two sections.
Table 12
Percentage of errors in the three grammaticality judgment tasks
Free grammaticality judgment task
Tense (nZ50) 20 12 24 20 22 28 21
Agreement (nZ48) 10 8 17 15 17 13 13
Aspect (nZ48) 25 23 29 21 25 31 26
Mean 18 14 23 19 21 24 20
Contrastive grammaticality judgment task
Tense (nZ50) 16 10 20 12 18 18 16
Agreement (nZ48) 8 6 13 4 13 10 9
Aspect (nZ48) 23 10 19 10 25 15 17
Mean 16 9 17 9 19 14 14
Forced choice completion task
Tense (nZ50) 10 12 14 16 20 18 15
Agreement (nZ98) 6 4 7 2 9 5 6
Aspect (nZ48) 17 15 19 8 13 21 16
Mean 11 10 13 9 14 15 12
16. Task 9
16.1. Contrastive grammaticality judgment task

The materials comprised a set of 146 sentence pairs, with one grammatical and one
ungrammatical sentence in each pair. The patients had to indicate, by pointing, the correct
sentence in the pair. As in the previous task, the grammaticality violations in this task were
violations of tense, aspect or agreement. In testing tense, 50 sentence pairs were used. In each
sentence pair the same verb was used; however, in one sentence it was inflected for the correct
tense while in the other it was inflected for the wrong tense. In all items, aspect and tense were
kept correct across pairs. The following types of sentence pairs were used:
† Simple present vs. past continuous (nZ5)

† Simple present vs. future continuous (nZ5)
† Past continuous vs. simple present (nZ5)
† Past continuous vs. future continuous (nZ5)
† Simple past vs. simple future (nZ10)
† Simple future vs. simple past (nZ10)
† Present perfect vs. future perfect (nZ5)
† Present perfect vs. past perfect (nZ5).
Examples of a trial testing tense:

Ean den ikanopiithun ta etimata tus, iagrotes den tha liksun tin apergia
‘If their demands are not satisfied the farmers will not stop the strike’
* Ean den ikanopiithun ta etimata tus, iagrotes den eliksan tin apergia
‘If their demands are not satisfied the farmers did not stop the strike’
Forty-eight sentence pairs were used in exploring aspect, with tense and agreement correct
and constant across pairs. All three types of aspect i.e. imperfective, perfective and perfect were
targeted (16 sentences for each). In 16 sentence pairs, the verb was inflected for perfective aspect
in the correct sentence. The contrasting sentences in these pairs had the same verb inflected for
imperfective aspect (in eight pairs) and perfect (in the other eight pairs). An identical procedure
was adopted for the testing of the other two types of aspect. An example of a trial testing aspect:
An me rotisi o Petros pu ise tha po tin alithia
‘If Peter asks me where you are I will say the truth’
*An me rotisi o Petros pu ise tha leo tin alithia
‘If Peter asks me where you are I will be saying the truth’
The first sentence respects the semantic/syntactic constraints of the sentence (it is a
conditional construction in which the apodosis must use the simple future). The second sentence
is ungrammatical, using the imperfective future continuous.
Forty-eight sentence pairs tested the availability of agreement. There were 24 sentence pairs
for person (eight sentence pairs for each) and 24 for number (12 for singular and 12 for plural).
Each person was contrasted with the other two. The agreement violations in the sentence pairs
were mismatches between the inflectional ending of the verb form and the person and number
features of the subject of the sentence. Thus, in one of the sentences the verb form appeared
correctly inflected for person and number, while in the other sentence the same verb form was
inflected for the wrong person and/or number. Tense and aspect were kept correct. Example of a
trial testing agreement:
Simera vrechi astamatita. Gia afto ke emis den tha vg-ume ekso
‘Today it rains constantly. That’s why we will not (1st plur.) go out’
Simera vrechi astamatita. *Gia afto ke emis den tha vg-un ekso
‘Today it rains constantly. That’s why we will not (3rd plur.) go out’
In the first sentence the verb form is correctly inflected for the person and number
corresponding to the personal pronoun emis ‘we’, which is the subject of the sentence. In the
second sentence, the verb form is inflected for the wrong person (3rd plur.).
16.1.2. Results
A one-factor ANOVA revealed a significant effect of type of violation, F(2,10)Z15.35,
pZ.001. Tense and aspect gave rise to similar error rates, t(5)Z1.11, pZ.32, while
agreement yielded fewer errors than the other two types, (agreement vs. tense, t(5)Z5.81,
pZ.002, agreement vs. aspect, t(5)Z4.39, pZ.007). Errors were made in all tense forms in
roughly equal numbers. Interestingly, the pattern of incorrect tense forms was similar to that
reported for the previous experiment. In relation to agreement and aspect, no particular
pattern emerged in the errors made. The performance of the patients is summarized in
Table 12.
17. Task 10
17.1. Forced choice completion task

The task comprised a set of 98 sentences from which the verb was missing. Below every
sentence, four inflected words were printed and the patients were instructed to point to the best
alternative. In 48 sentences, aspect and agreement were examined through different foils: (1)
target (2) correct agreement, wrong aspect, (3) correct aspect, wrong agreement and (4) correct
inflection for a different, phonologically similar verb. In 50 sentences, tense and agreement were
examined through the following foils: (1) target (2) correct agreement, wrong tense, (3) correct
tense, wrong agreement and (4) correct inflection for a different, phonologically similar verb. The
following are examples used in the task. An example of a trial examining aspect and agreement:
Mexri tin ora pu tha girisis apo tin dulia su ego idi olo to spiti
‘When you will come back from work, I already all the house’
† target: tha echo sigirisi ‘will have tidied up (1st sing.)’

† tha sigirizo ‘will be tidying up (1st sing.)’
† tha echi sigirisi ‘will have tidied up (3rd sing.)’
† tha echo periorisi ‘will have confined (1st sing.)’
An example of a trial examining tense:

Oti ki an pite emis den gnomi
‘Whatever you say, we (not) opinion’
† target: tha alaksume ‘will change (1st plur.)’

† allaksame ‘changed (1st plur.)’
† tha alaksete ‘will change (2nd plur.)’

† tha anapsume ‘will light (1st plur.)’
17.1.2. Results
The results supported the findings of the two previous grammaticality judgment tasks,
although, a one-way ANOVA revealed that the effect of type was not significant in this task, F(2,
10)Z1.92, n.s. inspection of Table 12 reveals that correct tense selection was more difficult than
agreement selection and aspect selection was as difficult as tense selection. Tense errors
occurred in all tenses. Errors for agreement involved person and number in roughly equal
numbers, and a similar number of errors occurred in all three types of aspect.
17.1.3. Summary of the grammaticality judgment tasks

The overall performance of patients in the grammaticality judgment tasks for all three
features under investigation appeared to be better than performance on the same features in the
production tasks. However, all tenses were prone to errors, with simple present, past continuous,
simple past and present perfect yielding similar errors rates and with simple future being
somewhat better preserved. There were errors both for person and number without any particular
pattern emerging and finally similar error rates were obtained for the three types of aspect. The
results here are, therefore, different from those in Friedmann and Grodzinsky (1997) who
reported very good performance in all comprehension and grammaticality judgment tasks.
18. Summary of the experimental investigations
1. There was a difference in the production of verbal inflectional morphology in sentences and
single word tasks. Tense and aspect were more impaired than agreement in tasks involving
sentences (tasks 5–7) but not in single word tasks (tasks 2 and 3). That is, in the sentential
tasks, the error rate for tense and aspect was comparable (40, and 44 and 39%) but higher
than for agreement (14%), whereas in the single word tasks the error rate was similar in all
three (57, 66 and 59%).
2. There was a difference in performance in production and grammaticality judgment tasks.
That is, performance in the grammaticality judgment tasks assessing tense, aspect and
agreement (tasks 8–10) was impaired to a lesser degree than in production (tasks 5–7).
Although in both production and grammaticality judgment tasks, tense and aspect were more
impaired than agreement, the errors were different. The tense forms that were particularly
impaired in production were not similarly impaired in the judgment tasks. There was a
difference between person and number in production but not in grammaticality judgment. All
three person inflections were error prone but yielded fewer errors in the grammaticality
judgment tasks. Perfect and perfective aspect were more vulnerable than the imperfective in
production, whereas in grammaticality judgment, performance was similar for the three types
of aspect.
3. There was dissociation between tense/aspect on the one hand, and agreement on the other in
both sentence production and grammaticality judgment. That is, in both production and
grammaticality judgment, tense and aspect were more impaired than agreement. To
illustrate, in the production tasks tense yielded an error rate of 40% and aspect 44 and 39%
but agreement only 14%. Likewise, in the grammaticality judgment tasks, tense yielded 15,
16 and 21% error, aspect 26, 17 and 16% error, but agreement only 13, 9 and 6% error.
The dissociation among verbal features that was observed in our data has important
implications for the claims of the TPH and particularly for the predictions that it makes for the
impairment/preservation of the functional categories as a function of their position on
the syntactic tree. Our data also shows that deficits with verbal inflections are not restricted to the
output modality.
19. Discussion
The objective of this study was to examine whether dissociations in the availability of
grammatical morphemes reported in previous studies in different languages are also evident in
Greek, and if so, whether the impairment is restricted to the T node and to nodes above it, and to
the output modality, as was reported by Friedmann (e.g. Friedmann, 2001; Friedmann &
Grodzinsky, 1997). The data from the present study led to two observations. Our data provide
evidence against the TPH’s prediction that functional categories located higher (than the pruning
site) will be impaired while nodes located lower (than the pruning site) will be better preserved.
The data also show that problems with verbal inflections are not restricted to the output modality
but also arise in grammaticality judgment. Second, a difference in performance in single word
and sentential tasks was found. That is, tense and aspect were more impaired than agreement in
sentential tasks, while in single word tasks all three features were almost equally impaired.
These points will be discussed in the following sections.
19.1. The TPH and the findings of the present study
In order to evaluate the findings of the present study in relation to the TPH, it is important to
compare the ordering of functional categories on the syntactic tree structure and in particular, the
relative order of Agr and T in Greek, on the one hand, and in Hebrew and Arabic, on the other. In
Hebrew and Arabic the proposed order is the following: COTOAgr, while in Greek Agr is located
higher than T, that is, COAgrOT. According to the TPH the T node is (often) the locus of
breakdown in agrammatism and it blocks access to higher functional categories.4 In relation to
Greek then, if the T node was defective it would be expected that there would be no access to nodes
situated higher than T such as Agr and Fut. As a result there should be problems in the production of
subject–verb agreement, with the formation of future tenses, and negation and mood markers would
be absent from the patients’ speech. In addition, there should be problems with the formation of
periphrastic tenses with the auxiliary echo ‘have’, since the auxiliary must move first to T and then to
Agr, which is located above T. At the same time, functional heads in positions below T, such as Asp,
should remain intact. The findings from the present study, however, suggest otherwise. Agr was
found to be relatively well preserved. With respect to the T node, although it was more impaired than
Agr, it was, nevertheless, partially accessible. The patients were able to produce monolectic tenses
such as simple present, simple past and past continuous that depend on T and the TP projection. They
were also able to form periphrastic tenses such as the present perfect, where the auxiliary must move
up to T and then to Agr to check its tense and agreement features. There was also evidence for the
patients’ ability to form future tenses that rely not only on the T node but also on the future head tha
4
According to Friedmann (2001) the tense node does not have to be the locus of breakdown. In patients with more
severe deficit the breakdown could be the lower Agr node, and in patients with better preserved language, the breakdown
could be at the C node. What is important, however, for Friedmann’s theory is that the breakdown node is a barrier and
movement to higher nodes is not possible.
‘will’ which is located in the projection of the FutP, located above the AgrP and TP. Finally, the
prediction that the lower functional categories will be well preserved was not supported by the data
of the present study. That is, the Asp node, although located below T was impaired. In conclusion,
despite the fact that T and Asp were impaired, they did not inhibit movement to higher nodes, such as
Agr or Fut. On the whole, the findings from the present study cannot be explained in terms of a
specific point of breakdown in the syntactic representation as assumed by the TPH, even if Tsimpli’s
(1990) proposal is correct and T is above Agr in modern Greek (see footnote 1).
The dissociation between tense, aspect and agreement was evident also in the grammaticality
judgment tasks, although these were not entirely parallel to the deficits in the production tasks
(tasks 5–10). The present study, therefore, provide partial support to the ‘parallel deficit’
hypothesis (e.g. Berndt & Caramazza, 1980; Caramazza & Zurif, 1976). The findings here are
compatible with Grodzinsky’s (2000) proposal of partially distinct mechanisms underlying input
and output. According to Grodzinsky, the left anterior frontal cortex is, at least in part, the neural
antecedent of both comprehension and production, and a lesion in this area is expected to disrupt
both, albeit differently. This is a position of weak parallelism.
20. Towards an alternative account for the agrammatic deficits
Taking account of the patients’ performance in the present study, agrammatism, cannot be
described in terms of a global simplification process by which all inflectional morphemes are
unavailable or lost from the grammar both for production and comprehension. Similarly,
impairments arising due to a disruption of a specific node in the syntactic tree are also not
compatible with our findings.
Instead, we propose to interpret our data in terms of a distinction made within recent versions
of minimalism (Chomsky, 2000, 2001), between interpretable and uninterpretable features and
with the associated operations that are responsible for their phonological valuation. The notion
of interpretability is relevant for the grammaticality of a given syntactic derivation (structure).
That is, according to Chomsky, uninterpretable features must be removed from the derivation in
order for it to converge, while interpretable features, may remain in the derivation. For Chomsky
(1995, 2000, 2001), the f (person, number and gender) -features of nominals are interpretable
while the f-features of verbs and the structural case features of nominals are uninterpretable.
The f-features of nominals (e.g. of plurality) are interpretable because they are semantically
meaningful. Singular and plural inflections are semantically distinct and can be interpreted by
the cognitive systems with which the language system interacts. However, this is not the case for
the f-features of verbs and structural case of nouns (nominative and accusative), since they do
not have interpretive significance. Chomsky argues that there is an asymmetrical agreement
relationship established between a verb and a noun. It is always the verb that agrees with the
noun and not conversely, and verb inflections take on their form via the noun inflections they are
in agreement with. Likewise for nominative and accusative case, Chomsky suggested that since
they can receive many interpretive roles (a nominative, for example, can be an agent as in ‘he
wrote a letter’, a theme as in ‘he fell’, or a patient as in ‘he was felled by a cruel blow’) they do
not to mark semantic relations. Tense and aspect features, on the other hand are interpretable
features since they are semantically transparent and meaningful. Tense makes a semantic
distinction between past, present and future, and aspect between a habitually repeated action
(imperfective), a single completed event (perfective) and an action that is in progression
(imperfective).
While in single word tasks in our study, no dissociation between interpretable and
uninterpretable features was observed, in sentential tasks, uninterpretable features (agreement)
were better preserved than interpretable features (tense and aspect). This is a surprising finding
since intuitively it would be expected that interpretable features, features with semantic value,
would be better preserved than uninterpretable ones.
According to Chomsky (2000, 2001) the distinction between semantically interpretable and
uninterpretable morphosyntactic features plays a crucial role in the syntactic operation of Agree.
Agree establishes a structural relation between two elements in a given clause: uninterpretable
features enter into an agreement relation with the interpretable inflectional features. The role of
Agree is to check, or within the recent terminology, to delete and ‘value’ the uninterpretable
features of person and number of a verb that are hosted with the functional category of tense
against the interpretable person and number features of the subject. The subject carries the
interpretable features of person and number and the uninterpretable case feature, which it is
deleted and valued under Agree by an interpretable feature of T. According to the theory, T acts
as a probe seeking a matching goal—a matching element that carries the interpretable features
lacking in T. A probe in this framework is a head while a goal occurs in the complement of this
head. Both the probe and the goal must be active, that is, contain at least one uninterpretable
feature along with the relevant interpretable ones, in order for a structural relation to be
established between the two. When the probe finds its appropriate goal, Agree comes into
operation. Agree deletes the uninterpretable features of probe and goal and simultaneously
values them for phonological purposes. Agree, encompasses the sub-processes of copying and
assignment. Copying is responsible for the phonological valuation of the uninterpretable
f-features of verbs while assignment is responsible for the phonological valuation of the
uninterpretable structural case features. Agree can, thus, be viewed as a conversion operation
whereby the uninterpretable and unvalued morphosyntactic features are replaced by their valued
phonological analogues, i.e. the corresponding phonological properties (Atkinson, 2001). Thus,
in the recent minimalist framework, in contrast to earlier versions of the theory (Chomsky, 1993)
where verbs entered the derivation fully inflected, morphophonological properties of a verb
emerge under the operation of agree, implying that the verb initially enters a derivation lacking
such morphophonological properties. When the uninterpretable features are valued they are
removed from the syntactic derivation by Spell-out—an operation responsible for demarcating
phonological from semantic features.
It is less clear, however, how interpretable morphosyntactic features are morphophonolo-
gically realized. Interpretable features play a crucial role in the computation to LF or logical
form, the semantically relevant level of syntactic representation, since, by definition, they are
interpretable at this interface. Thus, e.g. [3Person], etc. must be present throughout the
derivation. Second, morphophonological analogues of such features also play a role at PF
(phonetic form), so they must be introduced at some point in the derivation. The question is
how? One possibility is that the operation of spell-out might trigger the introduction of e.g.
[3Person],5 i.e. when a syntactic object is ‘completed’ it is passed over to Spell-out, and one
stage of this process is to introduce morphophonological analogues of interpretable
morphosyntactic features. Overall, then a distinction appears between the ways in which
uninterpretable and interpretable morphosyntactic features are associated with phonologically
relevant values: for uninterpretable features, this is achieved under Agree, while for interpretable
5
Bold in this example indicates a phonologically valued feature.
features this is achieved by some other means and possibly via the operation of Spell-out. The
distinction between different syntactic operations could account for the unexpected preference
of the patients for uninterpretable features. Their syntax, including the operation Agree is, we
suggest, relatively well preserved, but a distinct process, possibly a sub-process of Spell-out, is
impaired.
This interpretation can be linked to the finding that in single word tasks, no dissociation
between interpretable and uninterpretable features was observed. For uninterpretable features,
phonological valuation depends upon Agree, and for interpretable features (possibly) on Spell
out, both being operations of narrow syntax. If narrow syntax is not engaged, as we might
suppose to be the case in the single word tasks, mechanisms of feature valuation will not be in
operation. Differences, therefore, in the relative availability interpretable and uninterpretable
features will not have an effect on single word tasks.
Although agreement was found to be better preserved than tense, patients made errors in all
syntactic tasks, those involving agreement too. To account for these errors, it could be argued
that the operation of Agree and its sub-processes responsible for the valuation of uninterpretable
features did not always function well. Similarly, the operation of Spell-out, while functioning
less reliably than Agree, does succeed in correctly valuing features, on occasions. Indeed, it is
well known that the performance of aphasic patients rarely takes an all-or-nothing pattern.
Interpretations, therefore, by necessity, are made on the basis of relative differences between
different conditions. The TPH, being a structural deficit account in which the tree is pruned at a
specific height, is ill-equipped to explain variable performance. In contrast, the hypothesis put
forward here, that the operation of Agree or Spell-out are impaired, is able to accommodate
performance that is less than perfect or better than at floor.
The poorer production of inflected verbs in single word tasks than in sentential tasks is
attributable to the fact that single words production does not engage syntax with its component
operations of Agree and Spell-out. If so, we need to consider how normal subjects handle single-
word tasks. One possibility is that normal subjects produce single inflected verbs by projecting a
syntactic context appropriate for the target word (see Druks & Froud, 2002 for similar
suggestions) and they activate the syntactic operations of Agree and Spell-out to produce the
appropriate form. It is conceivable that agrammatic patients are incapable of performing this
virtual projection with the consequence that agree and spell-out are not utilized.
The distinction drawn between interpretable and uninterpretable features and the operations
that these involve may account not only for the performance of the patients in the present study,
but also for the reported dissociation between tense and agreement features in other studies (e.g.
Friedmann, 2001; Friedmann & Grodzinsky 1997; Wenzlaff & Clahsen 2004). It is possible that
for these patients too, the operations involved in the morphophonological realisation of
interpretable features are not functioning as they need to. The situation is less clear in with
regard to nominal inflections. It is generally accepted that agrammatic patients have less
problems in producing inflected nouns than inflected verbs. Nevertheless, the omission of the
plural -s, an interpretable feature, is often attested, though admittedly, its impairment is not as
widespread as that of tense. The availability of structural case features has not yet been
extensively studied. These, being uninterpretable, are expected to be well preserved. Indeed,
Ruigendijk (2002) who reports studies in different languages that mark structural case differently
than English, and differently from each other, ends her thesis with the claim that ‘structural case
assignment in unimpaired in agrammatic aphasia’ (p. 209). However, dissociation between the
plural marker and case features still needs to be demonstrated in a relevant patient(s). As to the
question of whether the distinction between interpretable and uninterpretable features is able to
explain the range of deficits associated with agrammatic aphasia, the answer is that it cannot. We
would like to argue, however, that it need not to do so. Since, there is a great deal of evidence
today that the different symptoms of agrammatism—the verb deficit, the omission of
free grammatical morphemes, the structural simplification of speech and agrammatic
comprehension—sometimes dissociate, it seems to us that it is inappropriate to put forward
a single theoretical construct to account for all symptoms. The theory proposed here is restricted
to the deficits these patients often have in relation to bound inflections, in particular, verb
inflections.
To summarize, then, the suggestion made in this paper is that the dissociation between
uninterpretable and interpretable morphosyntactic features can be linked to the distinct
mechanisms responsible for phonologically valuing these types of features. The somewhat
surprising finding that agrammatic patients performed better with uninterpretable than with
interpretable features is put down to differential functioning of the valuation mechanisms
associated with interpretable and uninterpretable features. It is suggested here that agrammatic
patients have access to Agree and its components but are more restricted with regard to Spell-out
mechanisms.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the Greek State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) for the funding they
provided to Vicky Nanousi. We also thank Prof Philippaki-Warburton and Dr Spiridoula
Varlokosta for their valuable guidance to general linguistic theory and to the Greek linguistic
system, at the initial stages of this thesis. We are particularly grateful to Prof. Takis
Papathanasopulos for supporting the study. Without him this research would not be possible.
Finally, many thanks go to patients for participating in the study.
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Interpretable vs. Uninterpretable Features: Evidence From Six Greek-Speaking Agrammatic Patients

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Interpretable vs. uninterpretable features: Evidence

* Corresponding author. Tel.: C44 1206 873712; fax: 44 1206 873801.

2. The Greek verbal morphological system

Tense Imperfective aspect Perfective aspect

Fig. 1. Syntactic representation of the Greek clause1

Patient Age at time Occupation Years since CT scan

3.2. Preliminary language tests

3.2.1. Spontaneous speech

3.2.2. Semantic knowledge, naming and syntactic comprehension

Measure Controls Non-fluent DS PA ZA AS AJ RS

4.1. Materials and procedure

5. Introduction to the experiments

6.1. Repetition of inflected single verbs and tensed sentences

6.1.1. Materials and procedure

6.1.2. Results and discussion

7.1. The production of agreement in single words

7.1.1. Materials and procedure

7.1.2. Production of number

The patients’ performance in this task is summarized in Table 5.

9.1. The production of tense in single words

9.1.1. Materials and procedure

10.1. The production of aspect in single words

10.1.1. Materials and procedure

10.1.3. Summary of the single word tasks

11.1. Tense and agreement within sentences

11.1.1. Materials and procedure

11.1.2. Results and conclusion

12.1. Aspect within sentence contexts: forced choice sentence completion

12.1.1. Materials and procedure

13.1. Aspect within sentence contexts: free sentence completion

13.1.1. Materials and procedure

13.1.3. Summary for the production of aspect within sentences

14. Summary of the production tasks: a comparison between single word

Grammatical Features Single word tasks Sentential tasks

15.1. Free grammaticality judgment task

15.1.1. Materials and procedure

16.1. Contrastive grammaticality judgment task

16.1.1. Materials and procedure

† Simple present vs. past continuous (nZ5)

Examples of a trial testing tense:

17.1. Forced choice completion task

17.1.1. Materials and procedure

† target: tha echo sigirisi ‘will have tidied up (1st sing.)’

An example of a trial examining tense:

† target: tha alaksume ‘will change (1st plur.)’

† tha alaksete ‘will change (2nd plur.)’

17.1.3. Summary of the grammaticality judgment tasks

18. Summary of the experimental investigations

19.1. The TPH and the findings of the present study

20. Towards an alternative account for the agrammatic deficits

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