Why is 'Red Cross' different from 'Yellow cross'? A neuropsychological study of noun-adjective agreement with Italian compounds

This study investigates the performance of two Italian non-fluent aphasic
patients on noun-adjective agreement in compounds and in noun phrases. A
completion, a reading, and a repetition task were administered. Results
show that both patients were able to correctly inflect adjectives within
compounds, but not in noun phrases. Moreover, they were sensitive to
constituent order (noun-adjective vs. adjective-noun) within noun phrases,
but less so within compounds. These results suggest differential
processing for compounds as compared to noun phrases: while the latter
require standard morphosyntactic operations that are often impaired in
aphasic patients, the former can be accessed as whole words at the lexical
level.

Publication type: 
Articolo
Author or Creator: 
Mondini S.
Jarema G.
Luzzatti C.
Burani C.
Semenza C.
Publisher: 
Academic Press., San Diego [etc.], Stati Uniti d'America
Source: 
Brain and language (Print) 81 (2002): 621–634.
info:cnr-pdr/source/autori:Mondini S., Jarema G., Luzzatti C., Burani C., Semenza C./titolo:Why is 'Red Cross' different from 'Yellow cross'? A neuropsychological study of noun-adjective agreement with Italian compounds/doi:/rivista:Brain and language (Pr
Date: 
2002
Resource Identifier: 
http://www.cnr.it/prodotto/i/46703