title: Processing of non-canonical word-order: a case-series on lesion-induced reorganized language and age-effects in typical development.
abstract: Complex grammatical structures are mastered late in language acquisition. We studied age-effects on performance in object topicalization in 48 typically developing German-speaking participants (aged 8-30years) and in five patients (children and adolescents) with lesion-induced atypical language representation. Production was tested by a sentence repetition task, comprehension by an acting out task. Three topicalized conditions with differing disambiguation (agreement, case, and case plus agreement) were contrasted with canonical control sentences. Children's (aged 8-13years) performance was significantly below that of adolescents and adults in all topicalized conditions. All participants made most mistakes in the agreement condition. Patients showed remarkable difficulties as compared with age-appropriate control groups in all topicalization conditions and across age-groups. Despite the small sample size, the consistency of these difficulties might hint to the importance of an intact typical neural language substrate for processing complex grammatical structures even in very early brain lesions.
authors.affiliation: University of Tübingen, Collaborative Research Center 833, Nauklerstr. 35, 72074 Tübingen, Germany; University Children's Hospital, Dept. Pediatric Neurology, Hoppe-Seyler-Str. 1, 72076 Tübingen, Germany. Electronic address: Karen.lidzba@med.uni-tuebingen.de.
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lidzba
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Konietzko
authors.forename: Eleonore
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schwilling
authors.forename: Inge
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Krägeloh-Mann
authors.forename: Susanne
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Winkler
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Early brain lesions; Language development; Non-canonical word-order