Two Forms of Negation in Korean Broca’s Aphasia

Abstract

Lee, Miseon. 2007. Two Forms of Negation in Korean Broca's Aphasia. Korean Journal of Linguistics, 32-2, 319-335. This study investigated agrammatic Broca's aphasic comprehension and production of two forms of negation in Korean (i.e., the short-form negation and the long-form negation). Although the internal structure of a NegP is controversial, it is generally agreed that both forms have the same syntactic status within a NegP, as either the head or the specifier of a NegP. Under these theories, some accounts (e.g., Ouhalla 1990; Rispens et al. 2001) predict the same disruption to the short-form negation (SFN) and the long-form negation (LFN). As predicted, this study found no difference between SFN and LFN in near-normal comprehension. The results from the elicited production task, however, showed a dissociation between the preserved SFN and the impaired LFN although both are elements from the same functional category NegP. It is suggested, then, that while syntactic representation of negation is intact in Broca's aphasia, appropriate processing of LFN in production is hindered by its syntactic status as the functional category and its syntactic complexity. Error patterns observed supported these possibilities.