Why Can You Hit Someone On The Arm But Not Break Someone On The Arm?

Why can you hit someone on the arm but not break
someone on the arm?a neuropsychological

investigation of the English body-part possessor
ascension construction
David Kemmerer
a,b,
*
a
Department of Audiology and Speech Sciences and Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University,
1353 Heavilon Hall, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1353, USA
b
Department of Neurology, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA, USA
Received 22 June 2001; received in revised form 13 September 2001
Abstract
Recent developments in linguistic theory suggest that many grammatical constructions (e.g.
datives, passives, locatives, resultatives, etc.) impose semantic restrictions on which verbs can
occur in them. This has led to the `grammatically relevant semantic subsystem hypothesis', which
maintains that features of meaning that determine the interaction between verbs and constructions
are segregated from other features of meaning that are irrelevant to grammar. This paper focuses on
the English body-part possessor ascension constructione.g. Sam hit Bill on the arm vs.
p
Sam broke
Bill on the arm. Previous research suggests that only verbs that include the general notion of
`contact' as an invariant part of their semantic structure can occur in this construction; other idiosyn-
cratic features of verb meaning, such as the specic types of contact encoded by tap, slap, and pat,
are effectively invisible to the construction. In a series of experiments, two brain-damaged patients
with left perisylvian lesions (out of a total of ve tested) manifested the following dissociation: they
passed a verbpicture matching test that required them to discriminate between subtle aspects of
verb meaning that are irrelevant to the construction, but they failed a grammaticality judgment test
that required them to determine whether the same verbs satisfy the semantic conditions of the
construction. Their poor performance on the judgment test could not be attributed to a purely
D. Kemmerer / Journal of Neurolinguistics 16 (2003) 1336 13
Journal of Neurolinguistics 16 (2003) 1336
0911-6044/03/$ - see front matter q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0911-6044(01)00042-2
www.elsevier.com/locate/jneuroling
* Corresponding address: Department of Audiology and Speech Sciences and Department of Psychological
Sciences, Purdue University, 1353 Heavilon Hall, West Lafayette, IN47907-1353, USA. Tel.: 11-765-494-3826;
fax: 11-765-494-0771.
E-mail address: kemmerer@purdue.edu (D. Kemmerer).
syntactic impairment, since they had no trouble with a separate test that evaluated their knowledge of
the basic syntactic structure of the construction. Overall, the results suggest that the patients have a
disorder that selectively affects their appreciation of grammatically relevant aspects of meaning.
q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Neuropsychological investigation; Linguistic theory; Semantic features
1. Introduction
During the past few decades, an increasing amount of research in linguistic theory has
focused on the interaction between the syntactic and semantic properties of words. Much
of this research has been conducted by linguists afliated with rather specialized theore-
tical frameworks, such as Construction Grammar (Bencini & Goldberg, 2000; Davidse,
2000; Fillmore & Kay, 2002; Fillmore, Kay & O'Connor, 1988; Goldberg, 1995; Kay,
1997; Kay & Fillmore, 1999; Michaelis & Lambrecht, 1996), Cognitive Grammar
(Langacker, 1987, 1991, 1999; Verspoor, Lee & Sweetser, 1997), Role and Reference
Grammar (Van Valin, 1993; Van Valin & LaPolla, 1996), and Head-Driven Phrase Struc-
ture Grammar (Davis, 2001; Davis & Koenig, 2000; Webelhuth, Koenig & Kathol, 1999),
as well as by linguists who do not y any particular theoretical ag (Croft, 2001; Heine,
1997; Jackendoff, 1997; Levin, 1993; Levin & Rappaport Hovrav, 1995; Mohanan & Wee,
1999; Pinker, 1986; Rappaport Hovrav & Levin, 1998; Shibatani & Thompson, 1996;
Wierzbicka, 1988; Zwicky, 1994). What unites all these investigators is some version of
the idea that grammatical constructions are directly associated with very schematic mean-
ings that reect common situations in human life, and that in order for a word to occur in a
given construction, its meaning must be compatible with that of the construction.
This notion is illustrated by the following sentences, which exemplify the so-called
locative alternation:
Sam sprinkled salt on the popcorn Sam sprinkled the popcorn with salt
Sam poured water on the plant
p
Sam poured the plant with water
p
Sam lled beer into the glass Sam lled the glass with beer
The verbs in these sentences are very choosy about the syntactic argument structure
frames they allow. This choosiness cannot be explained in purely syntactic terms,
however, because all of the verbs can take a direct object NP and an oblique PP. Instead,
the best strategy is to pursue a semantic analysis. For instance, Pinker (1989) argues that
the different patterns of grammaticality can be accounted for roughly as follows. The rst
construction has the syntactic structure `NP V NP in/on NP' and has the schematic mean-
ing `X causes Y to go to Z in some manner', whereas the second construction has the
syntactic structure `NP V NP with NP' and has the schematic meaning `X causes Z to
change state in some way by adding Y'. Sprinkle can occur in both constructions because it
encodes not only a particular manner of motion (an aggregate of tiny objects moves
downward in a loose pattern) but also a particular change of state (something gets covered
with tiny objects in a fairly even spatial distribution). On the other hand, pour can only
take the rst construction because although it encodes a particular manner of motion (a
liquid moves downward in a cohesive stream), it does not necessarily imply a change of
state (e.g. if I pour some water into a glass that has a gaping hole in the bottom, the water
will go right through without affecting it in any signicant way). Conversely, ll can only
take the second construction because it encodes a change of state (a container becomes
full) but is mute about the specic manner in which this happens (there are clearly myriad
ways of lling containers).
This overall approach to investigating the syntaxsemantics interface has led to what
Pinker (1989) calls `the grammatically relevant semantic subsystem hypothesis' (see also
Mohanan and Wee (1999); Talmy (2000)). This hypothesis maintains that there is a
relatively small set of semantic features that are relevant to the grammatical systems of
languages insofar as they inuence the morphosyntactic possibilities of open-class words
(nouns, verbs, and adjectives), and also tend to be encoded by closed-class items (auxili-
aries, determiners, adpositions, nominal and verbal afxes, etc.) and large-scale construc-
tions (datives, passives, locatives, resultatives, etc.). Many grammatically relevant aspects
of meaning recur with fairly high reliability across genetically and geographically un-
related languagese.g. notions involving space, time, causation, completion, animacy,
deniteness, and boundedness. Other features of grammatical semantics, however, are
found in only a few languagese.g. evidentiality, which pertains to the relative certainty
of the proposition being expressed, and mirativity, which pertains to the degree to which
the proposition being expressed is surprising (Payne, 1997). Crosslinguistic differences in
grammatical semantics may reect variation across cultures with regard to which notions
have been historically signicant enough to warrant incorporation into the morphosyntac-
tic design of the language through the process of grammaticalization (Slobin, 1997). An
additional point, which is especially important for this paper, is that grammatically rele-
vant semantic features are usually less salient to consciousness and harder to characterize
precisely than grammatically irrelevant ones, especially when they are coded by large-
scale constructions instead of by closed-class items. For example, there is an ongoing
debate over the best way to analyze the semantic restrictions on the locative alternation
described earlier (Brinkmann, 1997; Rosen, 1996).
One of the most interesting consequences of the grammatically relevant semantic
subsystem hypothesis is that it leads to a distinction between two components of verb
meaning (Hale & Keyser, 1993; Pinker, 1989; Rappaport Hovrav & Levin, 1998). Some
semantic features of verbs are relevant to their grammatical possibilities since these
features are what determine whether the meaning of a particular verb is compatible
with the meaning of a particular construction. Other semantic features, however, are
irrelevant to grammar and instead represent idiosyncratic information about details
concerning the agent's intention, the shape and composition of the entities acted upon,
their rate and path of motion, the internal changes of state they undergo, and so forth. For
example, the verbs pour, drip, dribble, and spill all specify that `X causes Y to go to Z in
some manner', and for this reason they can all occur in the rst locative construction (cf.
Sam poured/dripped/dribbled/spilled water on the plant). The multifarious semantic
details that distinguish the meanings of these verbs are not, however, relevant to their
ability to occur in this construction. Similarly, the verbs drench, soak, saturate, and infuse
all specify that `X causes Z to change state in some way by adding Y', and this is what
licenses the occurrence of these verbs in the second locative construction (cf. Sam
drenched/soaked/saturated/infused the plant with water). Again, the semantic features that
make each of these verbs unique do not inuence their argument structure possibilities. It
is as if the grammar has a special lter that only allows certain critical features of lexical
meaning to pass through; these features are `visible' whereas the remaining features are
ìnvisible' (Mohanan & Wee, 1999).
According to the strong version of Pinker's (1989) hypothesis, grammatically relevant
and grammatically irrelevant components of meaning are segregated in the mind. If this is
true, then it is likely that the two components of meaning are mediated by at least partially
distinct neural mechanisms. Therefore, it may be possible for the two components to be
impaired independently of each other by brain damage. I have been conducting a series of
neuropsychological studies to test this prediction, and have obtained results that are
consistent with it.
The rst study focused on the locative alternation and revealed the following double
dissociation (Kemmerer, 2000a). One brain-damaged patient performed poorly on a
wordpicture matching test that evaluated her ability to discriminate between subtle,
grammatically irrelevant aspects of verb meaning (e.g. pourdripspill), but performed
quite well on a grammaticality judgment test that evaluated her knowledge of the gram-
matically relevant semantic features that determine which constructions the verbs can
occur in (e.g. Sam poured water on the plant vs.
p
Sam poured the plant with water). In
contrast, two other patients exhibited the opposite prolethey passed the matching test
but failed the judgment test. It is worth noting that their errors on the judgment test could
not be attributed to a purely syntactic disorder since they performed well on an indepen-
dent test that addressed simple clausal syntax. This double dissociation supports the view
that grammatically relevant and grammatically irrelevant components of meaning have
distinct mental representations and/or processing operations.
Two other studies reported one-way dissociations involving intact knowledge of gram-
matically irrelevant features of meaning but impaired knowledge of grammatically rele-
vant features. Both of these studies were designed in the same way as the study that
focused on the locative alternation. In one study (Kemmerer, 2000b), six brain-damaged
patients passed a wordpicture matching test that evaluated their understanding of the
basic property concepts encoded by adjectives (e.g. big, brown, etc.), but failed a gram-
maticality judgment test that evaluated their appreciation of the semantic constraints that
govern how the same adjectives are ordered before a noun (e.g. big brown dog vs.
p
brown
big dog); their poor performance on the second test could not be attributed to a purely
syntactic disorder since all of them passed a separate test that addressed basic nounphrase
structure. In another study (Kemmerer & Wright, 2001), the construction of interest was
verbal un-prexation (e.g. wrapunwrap, buckleunbuckle, and zipunzip, but boil
p
un-
boil, simmer
p
unsimmer, and bake
p
unbake). Two brain-damaged patients performed
well on a wordpicture matching test that required them to discriminate between features
of verb meaning that are not relevant to this constructione.g. wrapbucklezip, which
differ in idiosyncratic ways but are equivalent insofar as they all allow un-prexation, and
boilsimmerbake, which also differ in idiosyncratic ways but are equivalent insofar as
they do not allow un-prexation. However, these patients failed a grammaticality judg-
ment test that evaluated their knowledge of the particular semantic features that
determine which verbs can occur in the construction (e.g. wrapunwrap vs. boil
p
unboil).
A separate test showed that the patients' errors were not due to an impaired understanding
of the basic reversative meaning of un- or to problems with various task demands, but were
instead most likely due to a selective disturbance of knowledge and/or processing of the
narrow semantic constraints on un-prexation.
With respect to aphasiological and anatomical considerations, the studies summar-
ized earlier indicate that most of the patients with impairments that affect grammatical
semantics have a history of agrammatism and lesions within the left perisylvian region.
However, the specic details concerning both of these factors are inconsistent. For
example, not all of the patients are agrammatic, and among those that are, there are
differences in severity.
1
In addition, lesion sites vary with regard to which perisylvian
sectors are includedfrontal, temporal, or parietalalthough there appears to be a
trend for involvement of the left inferior premotor/prefrontal region and the left anterior
supramarginal gyrus. These inconsistencies may be due in part to the fact that the
studies have only documented disorders of grammatical semantics in a few patients.
As more research is done with more patients, the neurological prole may become
clearer.
2
The purpose of this paper is to report a new study that provides additional neuro-
psychological evidence for the grammatically relevant semantic subsystem hypothesis.
The focus of this new study is the English body-part possessor ascension alternation,
which is exemplied by the following sentences
Sam hit Bill's arm Sam hit Bill on the arm
Sam broke Bill's arm
p
Sam broke Bill on the arm
As with the various constructions described earlier, the second construction shown
here is associated with a very schematic meaning, and only verbs that are compatible
with this meaning can occur in the construction. In Section 2, I will outline the narrow
semantic constraints on the construction, and in the subsequent sections, I will present a
set of experiments that were conducted with a group of ve brain-damaged patients.
Just like in the previous studies, the experiments were designed to evaluate the patients'
knowledge of grammatically relevant and grammatically irrelevant components of
meaning. One patient performed well on all of the tests; another patient exhibited a
conceptual impairment that seems to affect both components of meaning; and the
remaining three patients displayed one-way dissociations involving good performance
on a test of semantic features that are not relevant to the possessor ascension construc-
tion, but poor performance on a test of semantic features that are relevant to it. In
addition, two of the last three patients passed a test focusing on purely syntactic aspects
of the construction, which suggests that their disorders selectively affect the level of
grammatical semantics.
1
Agrammatism is dened here as omission and/or substitution of function words and inections together with
reduced syntactic complexity.
2
The previous studies, as well as the new study reported in this paper, include some of the same subjects. It is
worth noting, however, that these subjects exhibit different patterns of performance across the studies. A review
paper comparing the studies is currently in preparation.
2. Semantic constraints on English possessor ascension
Like the locative alternation, the body-part possessor ascension alternation provides two
different grammatical constructions for describing the same basic type of event. In the rst
construction, which is illustrated by the sentence Sam hit Bill's arm, the direct object is a
complex syntactic constituent that contains a head NP specifying a particular body part
(arm) and a genitive NP specifying the possessor of the body part (Bill's). In the second
construction, which is illustrated by the sentence Sam hit Bill on the arm, the two NPs are
expressed as separate constituentsthe possessor NP is the direct object (it has àscended'
out of the modier position in the complex NP of the rst construction), and the body-part
NP is the object of a preposition (typically on or in); note that in this construction the
possessive relationship is not overtly marked but is instead inferred. For the sake of
simplicity, I will call the rst construction the non-ascension construction and the second
one the ascension construction.
Also like the locative alternation, the body-part possessor ascension alternation places
restrictions on which verbs are acceptable, except here the most interesting restrictions
apply to just the ascension construction. Consider, for example, the following sentences:
Sam hit/bumped/tapped/whacked Bill on the arm
p
Sam broke/cracked/fractured/snapped Bill on the arm
It is likely that these restrictions are not purely syntactic in nature but instead depend
on semantic factors, and indeed this is the approach that many investigators have
adopted (Croft, 1985; Fillmore, 1967, 1968; Guerssel, Hale, Laughren, Levin &
White Eagle, 1985; Levin, 1993; Massam, 1989; Wierzbicka, 1988); for studies of
related phenomena in a wide range of genetically and geographically diverse languages,
see Chappell and McGregory (1996); Payne and Barshi (1999). Previous research on this
topic has not led to a completely satisfactory account of the precise semantic criteria that
determine which verbs can occur in the construction, but two main semantic features
may be relevant, one involving the notion of `contact' and the other involving the notion
of àffectedness'.
Although both the non-ascension construction and the ascension construction make
reference to physical contact, this semantic feature is more prominent in the ascension
construction. It is explicitly marked by a locative preposition (on or in) that introduces the
body part NP. Even more crucially, as Levin (1993) demonstrates, all of the verbs that can
occur in the construction include the notion of contact (see also Massam (1989)). These
verbs fall into several classes and subclasses based on semantic relatedness and the range
of syntactic argument structure frames that are possible:
Touch verbs: caress, graze, kiss, lick, nudge, pat, peck ( kiss), pinch, prod, sting,
stroke, tickle, touch
Verbs of contact by impact:
(a) Hit verbs: bang, bash, batter, beat, bop, bump, butt, dash, drum, hammer, hit, kick,
knock, lash, pound, rap, slap, smack, strike, tamp, tap, thump, thwack, whack
(b) Swat verbs: bite, claw, paw, punch (person), shoot, slug, stab, swat, swipe
(c) Spank verbs (some): ?bonk, ?cane, clobber, ?club, ?conk, og, knife, pummel,
sock, spank, ?strap, thrash, wallop, whip
Poke verbs: dig, jab, pierce, poke, prick, stick
Cut verbs: cut, hack, scrape, scratch, slash
`Touch verbs' indicate different manners of contact; verbs in the `hit', `swat', and
`spank' classes indicate different types of contact by impact; `poke verbs' indicate contact
by means of a sharp object; and `cut verbs' indicate contact which brings about a linear
separation in the object acted upon.
In contrast, most of the verbs that can freely occur in the non-ascension construction but
are precluded from occurring in the ascension construction belong to a class that Levin
(1993) calls `break verbs':
Break verbs: break, crack, fracture, rip, shatter, smash, snap, splinter, split, tear
What is distinctive about these verbs? As several researchers have pointed out, the
critical factor seems to be that they do not necessarily encode contact but instead can
focus on just the change of statethe transformation of structural integritythat an entity
undergoes (Fillmore, 1967, 1968; Hale & Keyser, 1987; Levin, 1993; Levin & Rappaport
Hovrav, 1995; Pinker, 1989; Richardson, 1983; Ruhl, 1989, 1997). This becomes clear
when one goes beyond hackneyed examples like Sam broke the window, in which contact
is obviously implied, and considers less familiar situations like He swings at curve balls
that break toward him rather than away from him or The ghter planes broke formation
and returned to the base, in which contact is not present at all (see especially Ruhl (1997),
whose analysis is based on a corpus of 8000 examples of break). Because the feature of
contact is not part of the invariant semantic structure of `break verbs', they are not able to
occur in the ascension construction. This is quite interesting because it shows how incred-
ibly selective some constructional meanings can be, and how they can even defy what
seems to be common sense. Few people would argue with the statement that when some-
one's arm or leg gets broken, this is usually because the body part is violently contacted by
some other entity. But it is important to note that this is only how things look from the
point of view of non-linguistic cognition, which is often biased by prototype-based frames
or scripts that capture probable or characteristic features of events. When the perspective
shifts to grammatical semantics, it does not matter any more that in the real world, the
cause of broken arms and legs is usually violent contact; all that matters is that the verb
break does not necessarily specify contact and hence cannot occur in the ascension
construction, ruling out sentences like
p
Sam broke Bill on the arm. Actually, it only
takes a bit of reection to realize that arms and legs can break without there being any
contact with other entities. Consider, for instance, stress fractures.
In addition to the notion of contact, the ascension construction is associated with the
notion of affectedness, which is widely recognized as being important in many domains of
grammar. Research within the broad construction-based framework has led to the view
that verb-based grammatical constructions not only encode very abstract schematizations
of event types, but also impose highly subjective construals or perspectives on them. Thus
two constructions that participate in an alternation can describe the same objective kind of
event but conceptualize it in different ways.
3
Often these gestalt shifts, as Pinker (1989)
calls them, are accomplished by taking advantage of certain general principles that guide
the mapping between syntax and semantics. For instance, the àffectedness principle'
states that the entity that is syntactically expressed as the direct object NP (or, more
precisely, as the head of the direct object NP) is interpreted as being most affected by
the action, so constructional alternations that change which entity is mapped into the direct
object position can create subtle semantic contrasts (Croft, 1991; Gropen, Pinker,
Hollander & Goldberg, 1991; Hopper & Thompson, 1980; Pinker, 1989; Van Valin &
LaPolla, 1996).
This can be observed in the body-part possessor ascension alternation. Both construc-
tions describe an objective state of affairs in which something comes into contact with part
of someone's body, but they package the information differently. In line with the affected-
ness principle, the non-ascension construction seems to focus more on the body part than
the person since the body part is mapped into the (head) direct object position (Sam hit
Bill's arm), whereas the ascension construction seems to focus more on the person than the
body part since the person is mapped into this privileged syntactic position (Sam hit Bill on
the arm). To elaborate this a bit further, the ascension construction conveys the impression
that what is really being affected is the person as a sentient beingthat is, the person's
inner sensations, thoughts, or feelingsand that this happens because a particular part of
the person's body is contacted. Empirical support for this aspect of the constructional
meaning comes from the observation that the direct object NP must refer to an animate
entity, as shown by the following sentences (Wierzbicka, 1988):
The puppy bit Sam on the leg
p
The puppy bit the table on the leg
Sam touched Kate on the arm
p
Sam touched the library on the window
A rock hit Sam on the head
p
A rock hit the house on the roof
Taken together, the foregoing considerations suggest that the ascension construction has
a schematic meaning that can be described roughly as follows: `X acted on person Y,
causing Y to feel something, by contacting part Z of Y's body'. In linking from semantics
to syntax, the X and Y roles are mapped onto the syntactic positions of subject and object,
respectively, and the Z role is mapped onto the object of a preposition (typically on or in).
The semantic formula indicates that the main affected entity is Y's mental state, and that
the action is carried out via contact with a particular body part. Hence only verbs of contact
are compatible with the semantic structure of the construction.
Although this analysis appears to be on the right track, there are some residual dif-
culties concerning a set of verbs that are collectively referred to as `carve verbs'
4
:
Carve verbs: bruise, carve, chop, crush, drill, le, gash, gouge, mangle, mash, nick,
slice, slit, spear, squash, squish
3
The cognitive ability to exibly manipulate different perspectives on the same situation, which appears to be
critical for acquiring and using language, may be unique to the human species (Tomasello, 2000).
4
The class of `carve verbs' has more members than are listed here. I deliberately omitted those that would be
pragmatically bizarre in the context of body parts (e.g. dice, grate, mince).
Levin (1993) states that these verbs are unacceptable in the ascension construction, but
if this is true it presents a problem because the verbs specify contact and hence should be
permitted in the construction. An important point that makes some headway in resolving
this puzzle is that a few of the `carve verbs' do not really sound that bad in the ascension
construction:
You gashed me on the arm!
Steve accidentally nicked/sliced/slit himself on the neck with his razor.
Bill turned around and gouged Tom in the leg with his pencil.
The gladiator speared his opponent in the chest.
Gash, nick, slice, and slit are similar to `cut verbs' insofar as they designate specic
kinds of linear separation in an entity, and gouge and spear are similar to `poke verbs'
insofar as they designate specic kinds of sharp contact by means of a pointed instru-
ment. Since these verbs seem to be acceptable in the ascension construction, they do not
pose a serious challenge to the hypothesis that occurrence in the construction hinges on
the semantic feature of contact. However, the explanation for why the other `carve
verbs' are disallowed from the construction remains a mystery. Further investigation
is necessary in order to determine how the analysis based on contact should be modied
to accommodate these unusual verbs. The inadequacy of the original analysis is hardly
surprising, though, given that previous research in the construction-based framework
has shown that in many cases it is extremely difcult to characterize precisely and
accurately the semantic constraints that dictate which verbs can occur in which
constructions.
It is worth emphasizing that for the purposes of this paper, identifying all the nuances
of the ascension construction is not essential because what really matters is not the
exact nature of the semantic restrictions, but simply the fact that there are such restric-
tions. The goal of the experiments described below was to test certain neuropsycho-
logical predictions that follow from this overall conception of the interface between
lexicon and grammar, predictions that depend critically on the general distinction
between grammatically relevant and grammatically irrelevant features of meaning,
but not on the minutiae of these features. In short, if this general distinction is valid,
then it may be the case that the two components of meaning are mediated by partially
independent neural subsystems. This in turn predicts that brain damage could, at least in
principle, selectively impair one component while leaving the other intact. As I will
show, the experiments focusing on the ascension construction yielded results that
support this prediction.
3. Experiment 1
3.1. Methods
3.1.1. Subjects
Five brain-damaged patients with left perisylvian lesions were selected from the Patient
Registry of the University of Iowa's Division of Cognitive Neuroscience. All patients gave
informed consent in accordance with the Human Subjects Committee of the University of
Iowa. The information provided here about the patients' lesion sites comes from magnetic
resonance imaging data obtained in a 1.5 T scanner with an Spg sequence of thin (1.5 mm)
and contiguous T
1
weighted coronal cuts. The neuroimaging data were used to reconstruct
each patient's lesion in three dimensions using Brainvox (Damasio, 1995; Damasio &
Frank, 1992). The information about the patients' language status comes from tests that are
part of the battery of standard protocols of the Benton Neuropsychology Laboratory
(Tranel, 1996; Tranel, Damasio & Damasio, 1997). All of the patients had undergone
extensive neuropsychological investigation according to these protocols prior to the
experiments reported here, and none of them had aphasia severe enough to prevent the
comprehension of instructions or the production of scorable responses, nor did they
manifest any difculty attending to or perceiving visual stimuli.
1. 1760KS is a 47-year-old right-handed man with 12 years of education. He suffered a
left-hemisphere CVA in 1991 that damaged a large portion of the inferior premotor/
prefrontal cortex and underlying white matter, the supramarginal and angular gyri, the
insula, and the posterior sector of the superior temporal cortex, extending into the
sylvian ssure. The lesion caused a severe Broca's aphasia, which has remained stable.
2. 1076GS is a 76-year-old right-handed man with 16 years of education. In 1986, he
suffered a left-hemisphere CVA that damaged the entire middle and superior temporal
gyri, as well as the insula and portions of the supramarginal and angular gyri. He
satises the criteria for a moderate, stable Wernicke's aphasia.
3. 1978JB is a 54-year-old right-handed woman with 12 years of education. A left-
hemisphere CVA in 1995 caused a lesion involving the inferior premotor/prefrontal
cortex extending deep into the basal ganglia, the inferior half of the pre- and postcentral
gyri, the most anterior sector of the supramarginal gyrus, and the insula. She was
initially a global aphasic; however, this resolved into a persisting severe Broca's
aphasia.
4. 1962RR is a 70-year-old right-handed man with 18 years of education. He experienced a
left-hemisphere CVA in 1991, which damaged a small portion of the inferior premotor/
prefrontal cortex, the entire supramarginal and angular gyri, and the posterior two-thirds of
the superior temporal gyrus, extending into the sylvian ssure. His lesion is similar to that
of 1760KS, except the parietal and temporal components of his lesion are larger, whereas
the frontal component of 1760KS's is larger. Initially he displayed global aphasia, but this
gradually resolved into a predominantly anomic aphasia with some residual agrammatism.
In August 1999, he had another CVA, which disturbed sensation and mobility in his right
hand and leg; however, no changes were observed in an MRI.
5. 1726RO is a 65-year-old right-handed man with 12 years of education. He had a CVA in
1991 that affected the posterior inferior frontal cortex and extended deep into the basal
ganglia; the lesion also tapered back to the anterior part of the supramarginal gyrus. At the
time of testing, he manifested a mild Broca's aphasia.
These ve brain-damaged patients were compared with ve normal right-handed control
subjects, three male and two female. Age ranged from 49 to 80 years mean 58:2; SD
12:6; and education ranged from 12 to 16 years mean 14:4; SD 2:2:
3.1.2. Materials
The subjects were given a test that evaluated knowledge of idiosyncratic features of
verb meaning that are not relevant to whether the verbs can occur in the ascension
construction. The test employed a verbpicture matching paradigm and contained 20
items. It was designed in the same way as the verbpicture matching tests that were
used in the previous studies of the locative alteration (Kemmerer, 2000a) and verbal
un-prexation (Kemmerer & Wright, 2001). The stimuli were presented on 8.5 11 in.
plain white pages in a three-ring binder notebook. In the middle of each page was a
3.5 5 in. color photograph of a person performing a particular type of action; usually
the action was directed at another person, but sometimes it was directed at an inanimate
object. Above each photograph were three verbs aligned horizontally across the page and
printed in boldface upper-case 18-point font. The subject's task was to indicate which verb
best describes the action depicted in the photograph. The target verb occurred in rst
position in seven items, in second position in six items, and in third position in seven
items. The sequence of target verb positions was random, subject to the proviso that the
same target position could not occur more than three consecutive times. All of the items
are listed in Appendix A.
For each item, the two distractor verbs were similar to the target verb with respect to a
variety of semantic features such as the agent's intention, the spatiotemporal details of
manner of motion or contact, the nature of the effect on the undergoer of the action, and so
forth. The purpose of making the verb triplets so similar in meaning was to increase the
difculty of the test and force the subjects to access and compare very subtle, idiosyncratic
properties of the meaning of each verb. For instance, for one item, the picture showed a
girl patting the head of a large stuffed tiger, and the verbs at the top of the page were prod,
poke, and pat. All three verbs specify motion and contact, but prod and poke designate
contact by means of a pointed object (with poke indicating a quicker and sharper action
than prod), whereas pat species gentle contact by means of a at surface; in addition,
prod and poke refer to single-instance actions, whereas pat often refers to a repeated
actionthat is, it is often aspectually iterative.
In addition, the three verbs for each test item were always the same with respect to the
ascension constructioneither all three verbs could appear in it, or all three could not. For
instance, prod, poke, and pat are all compatible with the meaning of the construction. In
contrast, a different test item had three verbssplit, tear, and crackthat cannot appear
in the construction because their semantic structures are not compatible with its meaning.
What this implies is that the test evaluates the ability to discriminate between features of
event concepts that are irrelevant to the ascension construction. There was, however, a cost
to making sure that the verbs for each item were equivalent from the point of view of the
construction. Specically, it was necessary to use some of the same verbs for several
different itemsa few verbs served as a target in one item and as a distractor in other
items, while a few other verbs served only as distractors in a number of items (see
Appendix A for details). The multiple instances of particular verbs were deliberately
scattered through the test so that subjects would not encounter them in consecutive items.
Information about the frequencies of all the verbs was obtained from Francis and
Kucera (1982). This reference book provides the number of occurrences of a given verb
stem in a corpus of just over one million words drawn from a wide range of styles and
varieties of prose. Using this source, comparison of the frequencies of the target verbs with
the frequencies of the distractor verbs revealed a signicant difference (target verbs:
mean 32:3; SD 50:8; distractor verbs: mean 16:4; SD 25:1; one-tailed t-test:
p 0:04). However, this difference was due to a single outrider target verb with an
unusually high frequency, namely break frequency 228: When this verb was removed
from the comparison, there was no longer a signicant difference between the two sets of
verbs (target verbs: mean 21:9; SD 21:9; distractor verbs: mean 16:4; SD 25:1;
one-tailed t-test: p 0:13).
3.1.3. Procedure
The subjects were tested individually in a quiet examination room. All subjects were
given the same items in the same order. One practice item was given so as to familiarize
the subjects with the nature of the task. The photograph showed a man seasoning a pizza
with hot pepper, and the three verbs were season, garnish, and decorate. For all of the
items in the test, the verbs were not only presented in written format, but were also read
aloud by the experimenter. Subjects' responses were recorded in writing. Before the test
items were administered, subjects were told that many of the pictures showed rather
violent actions, and that they should try to not let this bother them.
3.2. Results and discussion
The control subjects performed well on the test, with a mean of 97.0% correct and a
standard deviation of 2.7. Given the high average score and the low standard deviation, a
fairly conservative method was used to analyze the data for the brain-damaged patients.
Their percentage scores were converted to z-scores, and z-scores that were 24.0 or lower
were classied as defective; this corresponds to 86.2% correct or lower.
The results for the brain-damaged patients are presented in Table 1. All but one of the
patients performed within the normal range. The exception was 1076GS (the Wernicke's
aphasic), who only got 16 of the 20 items right (80%, z-score 26.3). His errors were as
follows (listed in order of appearance in Appendix A). For item 9, where the picture
showed one person poking another with a nger and the three verbs were prick, punch,
and poke, he incorrectly chose prick. For item 11, where the picture showed a person
breaking a ceramic lamp with a hammer and the three verbs were break, rip, and fracture,
he incorrectly chose rip. For item 15, where the picture showed a person squashing a
banana and the three verbs were squash, crack, and grind, he incorrectly chose crack. And
Table 1
Results for the brain-damaged patients in Experiment 1
Subject % Correct z-Score
1760KS 95 20.7
1076GS 80 26.3
1962RR 95 20.7
1726RO 90 22.6
1978JB 90 22.6
for item 16, where the picture showed a person snapping a wooden stick into two pieces
and the three verbs were snap, chop, and split, he incorrectly chose split. The errors were
distributed throughout the test, and there is no evidence that these four items were espe-
cially difcult, since the other patients in the experiment did not miss these particular items
any more than the other items. One patient1978JBmissed item 9, as did one control
subject (both of them chose prick instead of poke, just like 1076GS). But no errors were
made on any of the other three items that 1076GS missed.
The results of this experiment suggest that 1076GS has a mildly impaired ability to
discriminate between the subtle, idiosyncratic features of some verb meanings. In contrast,
this ability appears to be well preserved in the other patients. According to the gramma-
tically relevant semantic subsystem hypothesis, the features of verb meaning that are the
focus of this experiment are independent of grammar, or at least independent of the
construction at issue in this overall study, namely the ascension construction. Instead,
the features vary along grammatically irrelevant conceptual dimensions such as the
precise manner in which an entity moves or the precise way in which an entity changes
state. Although 1076GS's impairment may selectively involve just the level of gramma-
tically irrelevant aspects of verb meaning, it may be more extensive, affecting grammatical
semantics as well. Conversely, although the other patients have intact knowledge of
grammatically irrelevant aspects of verb meaning, they may have disorders that selectively
involve grammatical semantics. These questions were addressed in Experiment 3, which
focused on the semantic constraints of the ascension construction. First, however, Experi-
ment 2 was conducted to assess the integrity of the patients' knowledge of the basic
syntactic structures of both the non-ascension construction and the ascension construction.
4. Experiment 2
4.1. Methods
4.1.1. Subjects
The same brain-damaged patients and normal control subjects that participated in
Experiment 1 also participated in this study.
4.1.2. Materials
The purpose of this experiment was to evaluate the subject's knowledge of the purely
syntactic aspects of the non-ascension and ascension constructions. To accomplish this, a
sentence anagram test was used. The stimuli consisted of 10 sentencesve instances of
the non-ascension construction, and ve instances of the ascension construction. For each
sentence, the words were written on separate index cards. The cards were then given to the
subject in a random order, and the subject's task was to lay them out on a table in an order
that makes a coherent, well-formed sentence. For example, one of the sentences exem-
plifying the non-ascension construction was Susan rubbed Bill's nose, and there was a card
for each wordSusan, rubbed, Bill's, and nose. The examiner scrambled the cards before
giving them to the subject, so that the subject had to gure out the correct linear order.
Some of the verbs for these sentences were also used in Experiment 1, but none of them
served as targets there. All of the sentences were about two charactersSusan and Bill
and described one of them performing an action on part of the other's body. For the ve
sentences exemplifying the non-ascension construction, one of the participants was
marked as possessive and hence could only occur as a modier of the body part NP,
forcing the other participant to be placed in subject position. However, for the ve
sentences exemplifying the ascension construction, neither participant was marked as
possessive, so either one could occur as subject or object; the rest of the sentence could
only be formulated in one way, though, yielding just two possible arrangementse.g.
Susan knocked Bill on the arm or Bill knocked Susan on the arm. All of the items are listed
in Appendix B.
4.1.3. Procedure
For all of the subjects, this test was administered immediately after the verbpicture
matching test in Experiment 1. To familiarize the subjects with the nature of the task, one
practice item was given. For this item, there were ve word-cards that could be arranged as
either Bill nudged Susan on the arm or Susan nudged Bill on the arm. As in Experiment 1,
the subjects were told that many of the sentences described rather violent acts, but that this
was merely because of the kind of language being investigated.
The control subjects performed awlessly on the test. Similarly, all but one of the brain-
damaged patients achieved a score of 100%. The single exception was 1978JB, who made
two errors. For the fth item, she formulated the sentence as Bill whacked on the leg Susan
instead of Bill whacked Susan on the leg, and for the seventh item, she made the same
mistake, formulating the sentence as Bill prodded in the stomach Susan instead of Bill
prodded Susan in the stomach. These errors were not egregious since they preserved most
of the constituent structure of the sentences; however, they were certainly violations of the
standard syntax of the ascension construction, and for this reason they suggest that
1978JB's knowledge of this syntax may be mildly disrupted. In contrast, the other patients
appear to have fully intact knowledge of the basic syntax of both the non-ascension and the
ascension constructions.
The most interesting question remaining to be answered, then, concerns the status of the
patients' knowledge of the semantic constraints on which verbs can occur in the ascension
construction. This issue was the focus of Experiment 3.
5. Experiment 3
5.1. Methods
5.1.1. Subjects
The same brain-damaged patients and normal control subjects that participated in
Experiments 1 and 2 also participated in this study.
5.1.2. Materials
The subjects were given a grammaticality judgment test that was designed to evaluate
their knowledge of the semantic content of the ascension construction, and also their
knowledge of whether the meaning of a given verb is compatible with that of the construc-
tion. The test included 20 pairs of sentences, with each pair consisting of, rst, an instance
of the non-ascension construction, and second, an instance of the ascension construction.
The actor was always expressed by a feminine pronoun (she) and the undergoer was
always expressed by a masculine pronoun (his in the non-ascension sentences, and him
in the ascension sentences). All of the non-ascension sentences were grammatical;
however, only half of the ascension sentences were grammatical. The subjects' task
was to rate the ascension sentences as being either `good' or `bad'. Although this binary
rating system does not reect the inherently graded nature of grammaticality judgments, it
has the advantage of enabling the subjects' responses to be scored as correct or incorrect in
a straightforward way. The complete list of items is shown in Appendix C. The order of
sentence pairs was random, except that no more than three ascension sentences with the
same rating could occur in sequence.
5.1.3. Procedure
For all of the subjects, this test was administered immediately after the sentence
anagram test in Experiment 2. To familiarize the subjects with the nature of the materials
and the task, the examiner provided the following two sentence pairs as examples:
She kissed his forehead She kissed him on the forehead
She drilled his tooth She drilled him in the tooth
The examiner explained that the rst sentence in each pair is `good' insofar as it follows
the rules of `normal English'. The second sentence with kiss also sounds ne and hence
should be rated as `good'; however, the second sentence with drill sounds odd or awkward
and hence should be rated as `bad'. The subjects were told that they would be shown
sentence pairs like these, and that their task was to indicate whether the second sentence
was good or bad. As in Experiments 1 and 2, the subjects were forewarned that many of the
sentences described violent actions. In addition, emphasis was placed on the need to rate
the sentences themselves rather than the actions that they describe. This was done by
pointing out that the rst sentence in each pair always constitutes one grammatical way of
describing an action, and that the subjects' task was to judge whether the second sentence
constitutes another grammatical way of describing the same action. For all of the items in
the test, the sentences were not only presented in written format, but were also read aloud
by the experimenter. The subjects' responses were recorded in writing.
The normal control subjects achieved high scores on the test mean 95:0% correct,
SD 3:5: Just like in Experiment 1, the cutoff for defective performance for the brain-
damaged patients was set at 24.0 standard deviations below the mean for the controls,
which corresponds to a score of 81% correct or lower.
Using this system, all of the patients except 1760KS obtained scores that were classied as
defective. The percent correct and z-scores for all ve patients are shown in Table 2, and the
error patterns for the four patients who failed the test are shown in Table 3. Asalient feature of
Table 3 is that 21 (75%) of the 28 total errors were false positives (i.e. rating ungrammatical
sentences as grammatical) rather than false negatives (i.e. rating grammatical sentences as
ungrammatical). 1978JB even made exclusively false positive errors, and 1726RO came
close to having the same prole. The other two patients1076GS and 1962RRexhibited
more balanced error patterns, with a mixture of false positives and false negatives.
Another interesting feature of Table 3 is the distribution of errors across particular
sentences. Two sentences (the ones with crush and snap) were failed by all four patients;
seven other sentences (the ones with jab, poke, crack, bend, squash, tear, and mangle) were
Table 2
Results for the brain-damaged patients in Experiment 3
Patient % Correct z-Score
1760KS 85 22.9
1076GS 75 25.7
1962RR 70 27.1
1726RO 60 210.0
1978JB 55 211.4
Table 3
Error patterns for the four brain-damaged patients who failed the grammaticality judgment test in Experiment 3.
Xs indicate sentences that were rated incorrectly. The 10 grammatical ascension sentences are listed rst, and
then the 10 ungrammatical ones
Ascension sentence 1076GS 1962RR 1726RO 1978JB
She patted him on the head
She tickled him on the foot
She kicked him in the knee X
She slapped him on the cheek
She smacked him on the hand
She tapped him on shoulder
She punched him in the nose X
She jabbed him in the stomach X X
She poked him in the leg X X
She pricked him on the nger X
p
She broke him on the arm X
p
She cracked him in the rib X X
p
She crushed him on the leg X X X X
p
She bent him on the nger X X
p
She squashed him on the hand X X
p
She snapped him on the wrist X X X X
p
She split him in the lip X
p
She tore him on the ear X X
p
She led him on the ngernails X
p
She mangled him in the foot X
failed by only two patients; and the remaining errors (for the sentences with kick, punch,
prick, break, split, and le) were unique to particular patients. The fact that all four patients
missed the two sentences with crush and snap suggests that the ungrammaticality of these
sentences may not be clear, and evidence supporting this view comes from the nding that
two of the normal control subjects also failed these sentences. Nevertheless, there was still a
considerable amount of diversity in the specic items that the patients failed.
From a theoretical point of view, the most important issue is the relationship between
the patients' performances across all three experimentsthe verbpicture matching test
in Experiment 1, the sentence anagram test in Experiment 2, and the grammaticality
judgment test in the present experiment. 1760KS passed all three tests, which indicates
intact knowledge of the syntactic and semantic features of the ascension construction, as
well as intact knowledge of features of verb meaning that are irrelevant to this construc-
tion. 1076GS failed both the matching test and the judgment test but passed the anagram
testa performance prole which suggests preserved knowledge of the syntactic structure
of the ascension construction, but in the context of a broad conceptual disorder that cuts
across the distinction between grammatically relevant and grammatically irrelevant
aspects of meaning. 1978JB passed the matching test, was mildly impaired on the anagram
test, and was severely impaired on the judgment test. It is possible that she has a dissociation
between, on the one hand, normal knowledge of features of verb meaning that are irrele-
vant to the ascension construction, and on the other hand, disrupted knowledge of the
narrow semantic constraints that determine which verbs can occur in the construction;
however, her poor performance on the judgment test could be due in part to mildly
disrupted knowledge of the syntactic structure of the construction, so the interpretation
of this set of results is not entirely straightforward. Like 1978JB, both 1962RR and
1726RO performed well on the matching test and badly on the judgment test, yet unlike
1978JB, they both obtained perfect scores on the anagram test. Hence these two patients
appear to have selective disorders involving the semantic constraints on the ascension
constructiona nding that is consistent with the grammatically relevant semantic
subsystem hypothesis.
It is important to note, however, that the available data are not sufcient to ascertain the
precise characteristics of the grammatical-semantic disorders exhibited by 1962RR and
1726RO. The disorders could affect the schematic meaning of the ascension construction
and/or the particular semantic features of verbs that make them compatible or incompat-
ible with that meaning. Alternatively, the disorders could spare those representations and
instead affect any of the processing pathways that ow into and out of them. But even
though the specic functional locus of the disorders is an open question, at a more general
level of analysis the data support the notion that the patients do in fact have selective
disorders affecting some aspect of grammatical semantics.
6. General discussion
Recent developments in linguistic theory suggest that grammatical constructions are
directly associated with highly schematic meanings, and in order for a verb to occur in a
particular construction, its meaning must be compatible with that of the construction. I
argued that the body-part possessor ascension construction, exemplied by Sam hit Bill on
the arm, means something like `X acted on person Y, causing Y to feel something, by
contacting part Z of Y's body', so that only verbs that specify contact can occur in the
construction. I pointed out, however, that this semantic analysis is not completely adequate
because it cannot account for some of the verbs in the `carve' class that specify contact but
are nevertheless unacceptable in the construction (e.g. mangle). Despite this limitation, it is
still reasonable to assume that the construction does have a schematic meaning (the precise
nature of which remains a topic for future research) that effectively screens verbs so that only
those that match this meaning can occur in the construction. For example, hit, smack, punch,
and tap are permitted because, although their semantic structures differ in idiosyncratic ways,
they all include certain features that are required by the construction; conversely, break,
crack, snap, and twist are ltered out because they lack these critical semantic features.
The grammatically relevant semantic subsystem hypothesis maintains that `visibility to
grammar' is a major organizing principle that divides linguistic meaning into two distinct
components (Mohanan & Wee, 1999; Pinker, 1989). If this is correct, then it is likely that
the two components of meaninggrammatically relevant and grammatically irrelevant
have at least partially distinct neural substrates. This in turn predicts that brain damage
could selectively disrupt one component independently of the other. The experiments that
I have presented support this prediction since two of the ve brain-damaged patients
1962RR and 1726ROperformed in a manner which suggests that they have impaired
knowledge of the narrow semantic constraints on the ascension construction, but intact
knowledge of various aspects of verb meaning that are completely irrelevant to this
construction.
Both patients obtained high scores on the verbpicture matching test in Experiment 1
which required them to discriminate between features of verb meaning that are invisible to
the ascension constructionfeatures like the precise manner in which objects move, make
contact, or change state. For example, the patients had no difculty comparing and
contrasting the meanings of closely related verbs such as jabpiercestrike (all of
which can take the ascension construction) and breakfracturerip (none of which can
take it). Thus the patients appear to have retained a substantial amount of knowledge about
the kinds of event concepts that verbs encode. In contrast, both patients obtained very low
scores on the grammaticality judgment test in Experiment 3, which required them to
determine whether the same verbs that were used in Experiment 1 satisfy the semantic
criteria of the ascension construction. For instance, although in Experiment 1, 1726RO
correctly selected the verb jab (as opposed to either pierce or strike) to describe a picture
of a woman jabbing a man in the stomach with her elbow, in Experiment 3, he incorrectly
rated the sentence She jabbed him in the stomach as being ungrammatical. Similarly, in
Experiment 1, 1962RR correctly selected the verb break (as opposed to either fracture or
rip) to describe a picture of a person breaking a ceramic lamp with a hammer, but in
Experiment 3, he incorrectly rated the sentence
p
She broke him on the arm as being
perfectly well formed. It is unlikely that the patients' judgment errors arose from an
impaired ability to process the syntactic structure of the sentences, since they did not
make any mistakes on the sentence anagram test in Experiment 2 which probed their
knowledge of the basic syntax of both the non-ascension construction and the ascension
construction. For this reason, the most plausible explanation of the patients' overall
performance proles seems to be that they have selective disorders affecting the level of
grammatical semantics. As I pointed out earlier, however, the exact nature of their dis-
orders is not clear because of limitations of the experimental design. The disorders could
be representational, in which case they could affect either the semantic content of the
ascension construction or the grammatically relevant semantic features of verbs, or both.
Another possibility, though, is that the disorders involve just processing or mapping
operations, in which case they could affect the connections that relate the pertinent
semantic representations to each other, to other conceptual mechanisms, and/or to syntac-
tic mechanisms. Despite this uncertainty about the details, however, the results are still
consistent with the grammatically relevant semantic subsystem hypothesis, since the
patients' lesions apparently disrupted the functioning of precisely this subsystem.
The hypothesis would receive further support if patients could be found who exhibit the
opposite kind of dissociation, namely impaired knowledge of grammatically irrelevant
aspects of meaning and preserved knowledge of grammatically relevant aspects. Although
none of the patients in the present study manifested such a dissociation, one of the patients
in the previous study about the locative alternation (summarized in the Introduction) did
so, indicating that this kind of dissociation is certainly possible (Kemmerer, 2000a).
Turning to the anatomical ndings, as in the previous studies that have addressed the
neural substrates of grammatical semantics (Kemmerer, 2000a,b; Kemmerer & Wright,
2001), this study did not reveal entirely consistent relationships between lesion sites and
performance proles. On the positive side, 1962RR and 1726RO, who have selectively
impaired knowledge of grammatical semantics, have in common damage in part of
Broca's area (Brodmann's area 44) and in the anterior supramarginal gyrus (Brodmann's
area 40). 1978JB's lesion also includes these areas, and it is possible that she too has
selectively impaired knowledge of grammatical semantics; however, her low score on the
grammaticality judgment test in Experiment 3 could reect difculty with the syntax
rather than the semantics of the ascension construction, since she was mildly impaired
on the sentence anagram test in Experiment 2. Thus her results are somewhat ambiguous,
and this complicates the interpretation of brainbehavior relationships. 1076GS failed the
grammaticality judgment test as well as the verbpicture matching test, which suggests
that he has a conceptual disorder that embraces both grammatically relevant and gram-
matically irrelevant components of meaning. His lesion is exclusively temporoparietal and
overlaps with the lesions of 1962RR, 1726RO, and 1978JB in the anterior supramarginal
gyrus, which further supports the possible role of this cortical region in grammatical
semantics. However, the results for 1760KS are problematic. He passed all of the tests,
yet his lesion overlaps with those of 1962RR, 1726RO, 1978JB, and 1076GS in the left
parietal lobe, and with the rst three patients' lesions in the left frontal lobe. Overall, then,
the precise anatomical correlates of grammatical semantics remain uncertain.
5
Returning to the behavioral ndings of this study, I would like to emphasize their
5
Regarding 1760KS, it is worth noting that he also participated in the previous study about un-prexation and
exhibited a dissociation between intact knowledge of grammatically irrelevant aspects of meaning and impaired
knowledge of grammatically relevant aspects (Kemmerer & Wright, 2001). Thus, his knowledge of grammatical
semantics appears to be partially disturbed, which adds some consistency to the lesion data. As I pointed out in
footnote 2, a review paper comparing the different studies is currently in preparation.
implications for linguistic theory. Virtually all of the evidence that has been garnered to
support the grammatically relevant semantic subsystem hypothesis has come from careful
linguistic analyses of words and constructions, (see Bencini & Goldberg, 2000; Davidse,
2000; Fillmore & Kay, 2002; Fillmore et al., 1988; Goldberg, 1995; Kay, 1997; Kay &
Fillmore, 1999; Michaelis & Lambrecht, 1996). Although a few psycholinguistic inves-
tigations have been done with normal subjects (Bencini & Goldberg, 2000; Bley-Vroman
& Yoshinga, 1992; Fisher, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1991; Gropen, Pinker, Hollander,
Goldberg & Wilson, 1989; Gropen et al., 1991) and with brain-damaged patients (Breedin
& Martin, 1996; Kemmerer, 2000a,b; Kemmerer & Wright, 2001; Marshall, Pring, Chiat
& Robson, 1996), there is still a shortage of experimental studies that address this topic.
Hence the present study contributes to the small but growing body of experimental
research that provides convergent evidence for the view that grammatically relevant
and grammatically irrelevant components of meaning are somehow segregated in the
mind/brain.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Jean McCollister and Monika Pirc for their assistance in preparing
the stimuli. This work was supported by Program Project Grant NINDS NS19632.
Appendix A
Stimuli for the verbpicture matching test in Experiment 1. The rst column provides a
brief description of the action shown in the photograph; the second column indicates the
target verb; and the third and fourth columns indicate the two distractor verbs. The order of
items here is not the order in which they occurred in the test; instead it corresponds to the
order of items in Appendix C.
Action in Photograph Target Distractor Distractor
1. Girl patting stuffed tiger on the head Pat Poke Prod
2. One person tickling another in the ribs Tickle Nudge Caress
3. Person kicking a ball Kick Knock Thump
4. One person slapping another on cheek Slap Punch Slug
5. One person smacking another with glove Smack Spank Scratch
6. One person tapping another on shoulder Tap Slap Pat
7. One person punching another in the jaw Punch Swat Bash
8. One person jabbing another with elbow Jab Pierce Strike
9. One person poking another with a nger Poke Prick Punch
10. Person pricking her nger with a pin Prick Tap Stab
11. Person breaking lamp with hammer Break Rip Fracture
12. Person cracking walnut with nutcracker Crack Slice Snap
13. Person crushing a plastic milk jug Crush Splinter Shatter
14. Person bending a plastic spoon Bend Twist Curl
15. Person squashing a banana Squash Crack Grind
16. Person snapping a stick into two pieces Snap Chop Split
17. Person splitting a log with a hatchet Split Tear Crack
18. Person tearing a sheet of paper Tear Shred Crack
19. Person ling a ngernail File Carve Brush
20. Person mangling a cardboard box Mangle Slice Crack
Appendix B
Stimuli for the sentence anagram test in Experiment 2. The words for each sentence
were written on separate index cards, and the examiner scrambled each set of cards before
giving it to the subject. The subject's task was to lay the cards out on a table in a linear
order that represents a coherent, grammatically well-formed sentence. For the sentences
instantiating the ascension construction, the proper nouns Susan and Bill could appear
interchangeably in subject and object position. The order of items was random in the
experiment.
1. Susan rubbed Bill's nose
2. Susan twisted Bill's foot
3. Susan washed Bill's back
4. Susan bumped Bill's arm
5. Susan caressed Bill's hand
6. Susan/Bill clobbered Susan/Bill on the head
7. Susan/Bill whacked Susan/Bill on the leg
8. Susan/Bill knocked Susan/Bill on the arm
9. Susan/Bill swatted Susan/Bill on the behind
10. Susan/Bill prodded Susan/Bill in the stomach
Appendix C
Stimuli for the grammaticality judgment test in Experiment 3. The order of items was
random in the experiment.
Grammatical ascension sentences
1 She patted his head She patted him on the head
2 She tickled his foot She tickled him on the foot
3 She kicked his knee She kicked him in the knee
4 She slapped his cheek She slapped him on the cheek
5 She smacked his hand She smacked him on the hand
6 She tapped his shoulder She tapped him on the shoulder
7 She punched his nose She punched him in the nose
8 She jabbed his stomach She jabbed him in the stomach
9 She poked his leg She poked him in the leg
10 She pricked his nger She pricked him on the nger
Ungrammatical ascension sentences
11 She broke his arm
p
She broke him on the arm
12 She cracked his rib
p
She cracked him in the rib
13 She crushed his leg
p
She crushed him on the leg
14 She bent his nger
p
She bent him on the nger
15 She squashed his hand
p
She squashed him on the hand
16 She snapped his wrist
p
She snapped him on the wrist
17 She split his lip
p
She split him in the lip
18 She tore his ear
p
She tore him on the ear
19 She led his ngernails
p
She led him on the ngernails
20 She mangled his foot
p
She mangled him in the foot
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