5.5.1 Materials
MC was presented with a large reading list which included 177 adverbs, 101 of which had adjectival congeners that were also included in the list. M ost o f the adverbs had been assigned a semantic classification, which was based on the traditional notation employed by Quirk et al (1985) in their discussion of the syntax and semantics of adverbs. 137 of the adverbs had an -ly suffix; the remainder were not affixal adverbs (non-/y adverbs). The reading list had to be presented on a single occasion due to time constraints, which was less than ideal; however, it was split into several smaller sections and reading of each section was separated by other activities, coffee breaks and so on. All the results from this reading test, along with the semantic classification of each item, and all the error classifications, are given in Appendix XV.
5.5.2 Results
A djectives A dverbs
-ly adverbs non-Zy ad v erb s
n 101 137 40 C o rre c t (% ) 72 (71.287) 16(11.679) 14 (35.0) Function word substitution errors (%) 4 (3.96) 9 (6.569) 24 (60.0) Morphological errors resulting in category change (%) 9(8.911) -ly omission 85 (62.044) 0 other 17 (12.409) Morphological errors resulting in no category change (%) 3 (2.970) 0 0 Affîxation added (%) 6 (5.941) 0 0 Visual errors (%) 2 (2.970) 6 (4.379) 2 (5.0) O ther errors (%) 6(5.941) 4(2.919) 0
Table 1: summary of M C ’s responses on adverbs and adjectives reading list
MC read 72 of the 101 adjectives correctly (71.287%). His errors on this category were mainly the usual mixed bag of morphological and visual errors. There were nine instances of affix omission and substitution which resulted in a category change of the target; however, he read the stems correctly on all these occasions. For example, he read skilful as ‘skilV; fortunate as fo rtu n e ’’, amusing as ‘amusement’. Other morphological errors did not result in a category change; these all affected comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, of which only six were included in the reading list. He omitted the superlative ending on two occasions, and the comparative once, x&dLdimg farthest as ‘fa r ’ and both sooner and soonest as ‘so o n ’. Six targets were affixed by MC, five of them resulting in an adverbial reading - for example, he produced ‘frequently’ and ‘habitually’ when presented with their adjectival counterparts to read. He also added a negating prefix -un to the target usual. Three of M C’s errors were classified as visual - gradual ‘gradient’’,
inherent ‘inherit’', and typical -> ‘typing, typed’ - though the last one of these may represent a morphological rather than visual error. Other errors were pronunciation difficulties, probably dyspraxic in origin, and one possible semantic error {sudden was read as ‘ju m p ’), MC failed to respond to just one item - thorough. Surprisingly, he also made a few (4) function word substitution errors, perhaps in one case at least reflecting a visual error (for instance, he may have read fa r as fo r, leading to his actual production of ‘after’ in response to this item). In a second case, the function word error {‘alw ays’ produced in response to evident^) seems to reflect some perseveration effect, as identical errors also appeared on several adverbs (see below). The other two instances of function word errors are not so straightforwardly accounted for, however; he read probable as ‘before or because ’ and further as ‘before, after’. It may be that such errors were induced by some feature of these adjectives which renders them somehow functional. A candidate may be their non- intersectivity. Most adjectives are intersective; that is, when they are used to modify a noun, together the noun and adjective denote the intersection of two classes. So a clever boy is a member of the set of things which are clever and a member of the set of boys - clever is an intersective adjective. By contrast, a probable outcome is not a member of the set of things that are probable and the set of things which are outcomes; it has membership only of the former set. So probable does not have an intersective interpretation. As Siegel (1980:172) claims, ‘non-intersective adjectives are of the same semantic type as verb-phrase modifying adverbs’. So these function word errors may perhaps reflect some commonality in representation between adverbs and these particular adjectives. However, the result is inconclusive in this respect; for instance, another non-intersective adjective, apparent, was read correctly by MC. This is mere speculation, therefore, and, pending a repeat attempt at this particular reading list, I must simply accept these responses as unexplained anomalies (for now).
Performance on adverbs was quite a different matter. O f the total of 177 adverbs, MC read just 30 correctly (16.949%); of these, 16 were -ly adverbs and 14 were not.
Errors on the 137 -ly adverbs were mainly omissions of the -ly affix, resulting in a correctly produced stem. This happened 85 times (62.044%). Interestingly, MC
^ Analysing this response as a function word error is not entirely straightforward. However, up to now I have tacitly accepted that production of adverbs in response to a function word target is indeed a
did on two occasions show that he was aware of the presence of the -ly affix, though he was unable to produce it appropriately: he read badly as ‘b a d ’ with a strong emphasis on the final consonant ( /b æ d i'a /) and made a similar response to characteristically, which he read as ‘characteristic’ with a strong emphasis on the final / k / ( / k æ j i k t e j i s t i k : '0/). When questioned about these responses, he explained that it was ‘that bit’ (indicating the -ly affix on the stimulus word) which caused the strong final consonant.
His remaining errors on adverbs were largely morphological, resulting in a category change (where more than just the -ly affix had been omitted or substituted, such errors were counted separately). For example, awkwardly was read as ‘awkw ardness’', customarily as ‘custom s’’, irrationally as ‘rational’. There were 17 such errors in total. MC also made some visual and other types of errors (a further 10). And, most interestingly, he made 9 (6.569%) function word substitution errors on -ly adverbs: completely, fairly, nearly and regularly were all read as ‘before’", possibly and supposedly were read as ‘because’-, probably was read as ‘before or because’’, and recently and unbelievably were read as ‘before, after’.
The reading data for non-/y adverbs are still more telling in this respect, because MC does not have the option of omitting the adverbialising suffix and reading the target as an adjective, which in turn yields a mixed bag of errors typical of his reading of other substantives. On this subset of stimuli, MC read 14 items correctly (35%). The remaining 26 items were all misidentified as function words, with a few caveats which are discussed below.
5.5.3 Discussion of results
Six of M C ’s erroneous responses to the non-/y adverbs involved production of the word ‘alw ays’. It was mentioned above that there may be some perseveration effect, since this word cropped up in many responses; such an effect would have been avoided had the reading list been spread over several occasions of testing, rather than being administered under less than ideal circumstances; and I would expect a diminution of this effect upon a retest of M C ’s reading of this list. However, rather than dismiss these responses as artefacts, I have attempted to account for them
cautiously in order to avoid claiming a stronger result than I should. ,
On two occasions the target word was visually related to this response (targets: almost and already), so these were classified as visual errors. (One o f the other function word substitutions has also been classified as visual: somewhat was produced as ‘something’.) On two other occasions the word always was produced together with one of M C ’s ‘favourite’ function word responses, ‘because’’, this has been taken as evidence that he was indeed attempting to produce something functional, and those two responses have been classified as function word substitution errors. The remaining two problematic items, however and nevertheless, both of which were read as ‘alw ays’, have been classified as function word errors (with a note to the effect that there is a possible perseveration effect). The production of an adverb in response to a function word has occasionally been observed in M C ’s single word reading before (e.g. any was read as ‘alw ays’’, could was read as ‘again’ - see Appendix V), and although I do not wish to argue that adverbs themselves are functional, I will suggest that Cinque’s view of adverbs as being associated with functional heads in the syntax (and presumably prior to this) provides a way to capture M C ’s function word errors when adverbs are the targets. In light of this, it seems to me unproblematic to maintain that, when MC produces an adverb as a response to some other function word target, it is indeed an attempt to produce ‘something functional’. In other words, I maintain a view of such errors as function word substitutions.
The statistical evaluation of these results yielded a surprise. There is no significant difference between the numbers of general errors and function word substitution errors made by MC on the adjectives and the -ly adverbs (%^ = 0.372, df = 2), but he made significantly more function word substitution errors on the non-Zy adverbs than on the -ly adverbs (%^ = 96.05, df = 2, p < 0.001 for a two-tailed test). This is surprising because (as discussed above) no function word errors at all were expected on the adjectives, and there was not predicted to be a difference between M C ’s treatment of affixed adverbs and those without the -ly affix. It seems likely, however, that this contrast reflects only the fact that he will make morphological substitution and omission errors when these are available - that is, when the target is one which must undergo a morphological operation in order to be appropriately realised. Non-/y adverbs are not morphologically active in this sense, and they therefore provide the real test of M C ’s representation of adverbial elements; if these
are underlyingly associated with functional heads, as he does indeed seem to demonstrate, then function word errors are expected. In fact, all that is demonstrated by this strongly significant result is that M C’s deficit is truly morphological in nature; and affixation errors involving derived adverbs precede, as expected, the identification of functional aspects of their nature (see section 2.11 for some discussion as to why affixation necessarily precedes the specification of functional categories in the morphological component). To clarify, when MC attempts to read an adverb with the -ly affix, it may first be affected by an affixation error which is a result of the deficit at his morphological component. If he does not make such an affixation error, then he may be able to realise the word appropriately, or he may still make a function word error, because there is something in the feature specification of adverbs which entails that they are immediately dominated by the maximal projection of a functional head. Affixation errors are less likely to affect adverbs which are not - ly affixed; and as a consequence, function word errors are more likely to affect such target words, because they will not have changed their category (morphologically) before a realisation can be assigned to them and their functional nature is recognised
and reacted to. ,
Even with such difficulties in interpreting the data, however, these results remain strong, and it is clear that MC associates some degree of functionality with adverbials, in particular those which are not morphological (derived) adverbs. He makes no distinction on the basis of the semantic properties of these items - for instance, amongst those non-/y adverbs which he read as functional categories are sentential adverbs (indeed, therefore), degree adverbs (rather, downright), those which can take scope over events (ever, never, once, seldom), temporal adverbs (later, then), and modality adverbs (perhaps, maybe). The fact that a particular semantic class (or classes) is not differentially poorly affected does tend to support an analysis of adverbs as being associated with (a variety of) functional heads. It is unfortunate that non /y adverbs tend to be those which are associated with the sentential level - there are few (if any) manner adverbs, for instance, which are non affixed. The few that there are, like fast, well, hard, are ambiguous with respect to word class - they can also be adjectives, and in some cases verbs, nouns and so on - so would not be expected to give a true indication of M C’s ability to read adverbial elements.
are somewhat on the way to an explanation for M C ’s function word substitution errors on this category. However, as mentioned earlier, Cinque assumes that adverbs are associated with the relevant functional heads in the syntax and not at some level prior to this. M C’s performance, on the contrary, suggests that association of an adverb with a functional category is in fact pre-syntactic; given our understanding of his other deficits, presumably this association (in the undamaged system) takes place at the morphological interface. What are the possible consequences of shifting this operation out of the syntax and into the morphological component? *
I would suggest that the consequences of such a shift would be minimal. Cinque states that adverb phrases are base-generated as the specifiers of functional heads. If, as proposed by Kayne (1994), specifiers are in fact adjuncts, then it seems straightforward to propose that the adjunction of an adverb to a functional head is a morphological operation, essentially akin to that proposed in chapter 3 for unaccusatives and the like (cf. Alexiadou 1997; she suggests that adverbs are indeed realised as specifiers of functional heads, and proposes that, in the light of Kayne 1994, this is a process of ‘base-adjunction’). Then all that happens is that the adverb and its associated head project in the syntax as a single unit, illustrated in (8) below. Such an account has the advantage that the adverb is both sister and daughter to a functional head, which renders function word substitution errors more likely; but it retains the utility of other approaches in that head movement across adverbial elements is not ruled out. I assume, following Cinque, that the relative ordering of the functional heads to which adverbs are adjoined is determined by their scopal properties with respect to each other.
(8) In the morphological component:
In the syntax: F i P Adv(P) Adv(P) Adv(P) etc.
In the final section of this chapter, I consider two previous investigations into the representation of adverbs in aphasia, and show how the approach outlined here may provide a degree of insight into those cases, too.