PREDICATE-ARGUMENT STRUCTURE AS A LINK BETWEEN LINGUISTIC AND NONLINGUISTIC REPRESENTATIONS

We present a study wherein a severe Broca's aphasic patient was trained to learn symbols representing both pure transitive and dative predicates-predicates differing in argument structure-in a visually based artificial language (c-ViC). We found a decrease in performance when two symbols, rather than one, were used to depict these "verbs." However, this decrease in performance was more pronounced for symbols representing pure transitive verbs-those that allow only one argument structure-than for symbols representing dative verbs-those that allow two different argument structures. Also, dative "verbs" yielded better performance when they were inserted in more complex, three-argument "sentences" than when they were inserted in two-argument "sentences." The opposite pattern was found for pure transitives. These results are discussed in terms of our claim that argument structure serves as a point of connection between linguistic information and non-linguistic visual information and in terms of the possibility that argument structure entries are shaped by the form in which visual information is parsed. © 1990.