Dual processing of open- and closed-class words.
A series of articles in the past two decades has suggested differential processing of open- and closed-class lexical items by normal adults. Difficulties in replicating a crucial study (Bradley, 1978), however, have weakened the dual route hypothesis. We matched 16 French open-class items to 16 closed-class items for phonological structure, world length, and relative word frequency. Three agrammatic aphasics revealed strikingly more phonological errors on closed-class than open-class items. Dysfluencies were greater on closed-class items and contributed to greater overall reading time for the closed-class words, consistent with a two-route model for the production of closed- and open-class lexical items in Broca's aphasics and, thus, normals.
Biassou
N
N
Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. nadiab@unagi.cis.upenn.edu
Obler
L K
LK
Nespoulous
J L
JL
Dordain
M
M
Harris
K S
KS
D000368:Aged; D001039:Aphasia, Broca / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D014825:Vocabulary