Agrammatism
is a syndrome that occurs in aphasia by brain damage. It is generally admitted
that one of its characteristic is the omission of, or errors in, function
words. – 123
In
Japanese agrammatism, case particles are very often omitted or incorrect case
particles are sometimes substituted for them in spontaneous speech. – 123
The aim
of this paper is to show that the priority of the dative –ni
representing the goal role over the ablative –kara representing the
source role in the sentences produced by Japanese agrammatic patients is in
accord with the goal orientedness observes pervasively in human language. – 123
It also
aims to show that the priority of the dative –ni can be explained using
the notion of action chain proposed in Langacker (1991) – 123
2.
Outline of case particle in Japanese
Japanese
is an SOV language and grammatical and semantic relations between a predicate
and its participants are in principle realized as case particles placed after
hours. – 123
[in
Japanese] word order is relatively free except for the position of verbs. – 123
the
nominative –ga and the accusative –o indicate that the
accompanying nouns are the subject and the object of the sentence respectively.
The other case particles represent semantic roles. As far as
transfer-of-possession verbs are concerned, the dative –ni in principle
represents the goal in GIVE-type verbs and the ablative –kara represents
the source role in RECEIVE-type verbs. – 124
the
dative –ni can be substituted for the ablative –kara with a
limited number of RECEIVE-type verbs. – 124
3.
Characteristics of agrammatism
Aphasia
is a language disorder caused by brain damage after a language has been
acquired, and agrammatism is one kind of aphasic syndrome. It very often
overlaps with one traditionally classified type of aphasia known as Broca’s,
“resulting from a lesion of the anterior part of language zone of the dominant
(in most cases) left hemishphere” (Tonkonogy 1986: 53). The characteristics of
agrammatism are speaking effortfully with phonemic distortion and producing
sentences with minimal syntactic structure (Schwartz et al. 1987). It is
also generally agreed that one of the characteristics is the omission of or
misselection of grammatical markers and function words. (Caramazza & Berndt
1985; Linebarger 1990). 124-125
In the
case of Japanese agrammatism, it is reported that in spontaneous speech case
particles are frequently omitted and sometimes substituted, and in elicited
speech case particles are very often substituted. – 125
4.
Experiments and results
4.1
Experiment
Purpose: To
see whether there is any difference between the rates of errors made in
supplying the dative –ni and the ablative –kara by agrammatic
aphasics as far as transfer-of-possession verbs are concerned, and how the
errors are made. – 125
Materials:
A picture description task was used. – 125
Procedure:
The subjects were asked to describe each picture orally in a complete
sentence, using a given verb. – 125
Subjects:
Three Broca’s aphasics, and two normal controls served as the subjects of
the study. All the subjects were native speakers of Japanese. The aphasic
patients were all right-handed, had lesions in the left hemisphere. – 125
4.2
Results:
It
shows that the rate of the dative –ni correctly supplied is
significantly higher than that of the ablative –kara correctly
supplied. – 125
1.
There is a significant difference between the rate of the goal –ni correctly supplied and that of the
source –kara correctly supplied.
2. When
–kara is not produced, in most cases
either –ni or –ga is substituted for –kara
incorrectly. – 127
5. Discussion
5.1 Goal-orientedness
The
results show a tendency for the goal –ni to
have priority over the source –kara
in sentences produced by agrammatic aphasics. – 127
The priority of goal –ni over the source –kara can be pervasively observed in Japanese, and similar
phenomena showing goal-orientedness can be observed in other languages. – 128
According to Nishida (1977), -kara was used as a case particle representing the source in the Heian
period (794-1192) but –yori was more
frequently used at that time. It was after the Muromachi period (1338-1573)
that –kara was more frequently used
as a source marker. On the other hand, -ni
was used as the goal marker as early as the Nara period (710-794), but it was
not used as the source marker until the middle of the Edo period (1603-1867) as
far as we surveyed. This historican phenomenon suggests a strong possibility
that the goal marker –ni has been
substituted for the source marker –kara.
-131
5.2 Explanation
It is clear that the asymmetry
between the goal –ni and the source –kara observed in the
sentences produced by agrammatic aphasics is not aberrant but is one of the
linguistic phenomena showing goal orientedness. – 132
According to Langacker’s
billiard-ball model (Langacker 1991), the world is viewed as a space full of
physical objects making contact with one another. Some objects move driven by
energy from internal sources, while others put themselves in motion with energy
coming from outside. When one object makes physical contact with another object
as a result of motion, energy is transmitted from the moving object to the
other one, which may then be put in motion. – 132
Goal-orientedness boils down to
the way verbs with the goal marker are conceptualized: their conceptualization
is in accord with an action chain in terms of flow. – 133
|
GIVE-type
-ga -o -ni
Subject Object Goal
Perspective
Prototypical
|
RECEIVE-type
-kara -o -ga
Perspective
Non – prototypical -134
|
The head of the action chain is
intrinsically salient because it serves as the starting point with respect to
energy flow. On the other hand, the subject can be defined as the most
prominent participant in a selected predication according to the cognitive
point of view. Therefore, the prototypical subject represents the starting
point of an action chain. – 133
In the case of GIVE-type verbs,
the subject represents the giver, who is the starting point of an action chain.
On the other hand, in the case of RECEIVE-type verbs, the subject represents
the receiver, who is the tail of an action chain. Therefore, the –ga
that represents the subject of GIVE-type verb is prototypical and the –ga
that represents the subject of RECEIVE-type verbs is nonprototypical. – 133
The results of the experiment
where –ni was supplied correctly in all cases, while –kara was supplied
correctly only in one case reflects the prototypicality of –ga, -o, -ni
and the nonprototypicality of –ga, -o, -kara. In other words, the
prototypical case-marking se t is preserved or reconstructed in agrammatism. -
134
-ga or –ni may be substituted
for –kara when –kara is not correctly produced. In the case of
the substitution of –ga for –kara, -ga representing the
subject erroneously assigned to the head of an action chain for RECEIVE-type
verbs, which assign the subject to the tail. – 134
6. Concluding remarks
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