Clitics in Spanish Agrammatic Aphasia: A Study of the Production of Unaccusative, Reflexive and Object Clitics

摘要

Cross-linguistic research on language pathologies has shown that production of clitic pronominals is problematic for patients with aphasia. The current contribution provides the first data on production of the unaccusative/middle clitic SE and considers how pronominal interpretation influences verb production. Two morphologically similar constructions are studied: unaccusative and refexive sentences. Results are compared with production of direct object clitics. The data show that transitive sentences with DO clitics are harder to produce than unaccusative, reflexive and transitive (will full DPs in object position) constructions. These findings are explained by the increase in difficulty that processing of DO clitics involves: discourse linking and clitic placement. Finally, reflexive verbs were not more difficult to produce than transitive sentences. The current study therefore supports the analysis of reflexives as structurally similar to unergative entries.