Linguistic structure modulates attention in reading: Evidence from negative concord in Italian

ABSTRACT

We report the reading performance of an Italian speaker with egocentric Neglect Dyslexia on sentences with Negative Concord structures, which contain a linguistic cue to the presence of a preceding negative marker and compare it to sentences with no such cue. As predicted, the frequency of reading the whole sentence, including the initial negative marker non, was higher in Negative Concord structures than in sentences which also started with non, but crucially, lacked the medially positioned linguistic cue to the presence of non. These data support the claim that the presence of linguistic cues to sentence structure modulates attention during reading in Neglect Dyslexia.

KEYWORDS:

• Neglect dyslexia
• syntax
• negative concord
• Italian
• unilateral neglect
• visual attention

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Author contributions

AR originally planned the study, searched the literature, constructed the stimuli, and participated in paper writing. AT developed, validated, and implemented the behavioural measures, ran the statistical analyses and theoretically interpreted them, produced all Tables and Figures, wrote the Methods and Results Sections, and participated in the writing of the Introduction and Discussion Sections. SL selected and tested the patient and adapted the stimulus material. PT selected the patient, checked and collected the neurological information and helped organizing the study. CP helped in refining the theoretical aspects and in the choice of the stimuli. GB took care of the psycholinguistic and methodological aspects, participated in the interpretation of the results, and participated in the writing of the Introduction and Discussion Sections. CS originally planned the investigation, searched the literature, and participated in the interpretation of the results as well as in the writing of the Introduction and the Discussion Sections.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2023.2207800)

Notes

1 Another interesting feature of Negative Concord—and another difference with respect to Clitic Left Dislocation—is that the element that act as a cue, the nc-word, has a meaning of its own. By contrast, in Clitic Left Dislocation, the cueing element, the clitic lo, is an “empty” word which does not have a meaning of its own: it takes the meaning from its referent, the moved argument whose initial position the clitic itself is marking.

2 Linguistic tests for unaccusativity (Grewendorf, 1989) were used to define unaccusative verbs as such, and specifically: ne-cliticization (Burzio, 1986), auxiliary selection (Shetreet et al., 2010), and -tore suffix.

3 Multinomial Logistic Regression with Presentation Order as a covariate also allowed us to accurately model the shift from the neglecting-two-words pattern to the correct-reading pattern that occurred about one third of the way through the experiment. Presentation Order proved significant (χ²₄=  25.95, p<.001)—neglect improved over time—while Length (χ²₄=  4.79, p = .309), Verb Type (χ²₄=  5.45, p = .244), and Verb Type x Condition (χ²₈=  11.09, p = .197) did not.

4 Presentation Order showed a significant effect (χ²₁= 6.42, p = .011) in the usual direction of improvement of neglect over time, while Length did not (χ²₁= 1.56, p = .212).

5 All the more so, the strong cueing by an argument phrase was enough to reach the verb in position 2 of Negative sentences, and the attentional focus did not need to go beyond position 2, because the target of the search—the verb—had already been found, and the sentence produced was fully grammatical (even without the initial non).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.