Tegou1, G; (2007) Object and action naming in Greek aphasic patients and the effect of verbs with alternating transitivity and intransitive constructions in Greek language. Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The primary aim of this project was to investigate object and action naming in aphasic patients in Greek language, which distinguishes morphologically between nouns and verbs. Moreover, it aimed to explore the differences in patients' use of nouns and verbs in connected speech and compare their availability in both picture naming and connected speech. Furthermore, it investigated different verb categories, such as those with alternating transitivity, and intransitive verbs. Claims were made of whether different verb categories such as unaccusatives are more difficult than others in Greek, as it has been found in current literature for other languages. The aims of the project arose from the theoretical background that relates to aphasia and dissociations between nouns and verbs, as well as from the debate regarding the transitivity effects of verbs and the interference of underlying syntactic movement operations in the production of unaccusative verbs. Both debates on noun and verb differences and on transitivity and unaccusativity still remain unresolved. Nine Greek speaking Broca's aphasic patients and nine neurologically unimpaired individuals, matched for age and years of education, participated in the study. For the naming study, a Greek adaptation of the Object and Action naming Battery (Druks and Masterson, 2000) was used and the participants' performance was analyzed in terms of errors and latencies. Picture description and spontaneous speech data was also collected and analyzed. For the investigation of the patients performance in the production of verbs with alternating transitivity and unaccusative and unergative intransitive verbs two sentence completion tasks were implemented. Results in naming study were found to be consistent with current literature claiming that action naming poses greater and different demands on the language process than object naming. However, in the study of unaccusative verbs, different findings from the current literature emerged which were discussed in relation to methodology used in eliciting such complex constructions.

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