Anna Gavarró

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Centre de Lingüística Teòrica (CLT), Departament de Filologia Catalana, Faculty Member

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about my work: http://filcat.uab.cat/clt/Gavarro/gavarro.html/Welcome.html
and my research group: http://www.imxprs.com/free/apl/apl-website
Address: Departament de Filologia Catalana
Edifici B
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Bellaterra 08193

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Age of Acquisition Norms for Nouns and Verbs in 22 Languages

Word characteristics such as frequency, imageability, concreteness and length are considered good... more Word characteristics such as frequency, imageability, concreteness and length are considered good predictors of performance in lexical tasks like picture naming, word comprehension or lexical decision-making. There is also evidence that the age of acquisition (AoA) of words can partly explain aspects of word processing behaviour in later childhood and adulthood (Morrison et al., 1992; Brysbaert & Cortese, 2010).In the present study, we collected AoA norms for 158 nouns and 142 verbs in 22 languages: Afrikaans, British English, Catalan, Danish, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Irish, IsiXhosa, Italian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, South African English, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. In a preparatory picture naming procedure, adult native speakers of 34 languages were asked to name 508 object and 504 action pictures. Words shared among the target languages were retained for the final corpus. Our study followed the typical procedure for establishing AoA (see Morrison et al. 1997) and was performed on-line (see www.words-psych.org). 804 adult participants (at least 20 for each language) were asked to specify the age at which they learned the words in their native language. The vast majority of words were rated as acquired by the age of 7 years, demonstrating overlap in early vocabulary across diverse languages. Significant correlations between all language pairs point to a similar developmental sequence for the words under investigation. No previous study has compared AoA judgements on a shared set of words in a wide range of languages. 'The AoA data collected in the 22 languages provides word characteristics that should assist the design of cross-linguistic psycholinguistic experiments and the preparation of materials for use in the assessment and treatment of language disorders in preschool children. The AoA data are currently being used to control for AoA in the construction of cross-linguistic lexical tasks assessing word knowledge in monolingual and bilingual children

To what extent does the development of conceptual categories depend on language?

Relative Clauses in Iraqi Arabic and the Status of Resumptive Pronouns

Not much has been said about the grammar of Iraqi Arabic. There is important work on wh-movement,... more Not much has been said about the grammar of Iraqi Arabic. There is important work on wh-movement, which Basilico (1998) and Wahba (1991) discuss in depth. This research is an attempt to shed light on another, yet equally important, issue concerning Iraqi Arabic: the nature of relative clauses. The research focuses on the behavior of the resumptive strategy as opposed to the gap strategy that is often found in wh-interrogatives. We establish a comparison with other Arabic varieties such as Lebanese and Jordanian, as well as other languages such as Hebrew. In this research we consider (i) islandhood, (ii) Weak and Strong Cross Over (iii) reconstruction and (iv) scope binding, in order to further understand the behavior of resumption. The final conclusion reached is that in Iraqi Arabic the resumptive strategy is actually related to the gap strategy in several respects; and in those where it differs we propose that gaps (traces) are replaced by trace+pronoun complex which results in a category which preserves the properties of gaping and resumption.

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Merging Features

This book presents new work on how Merge and formal features, two Basic factors in the Minimalist... more This book presents new work on how Merge and formal features, two Basic factors in the Minimalist program, should determine the syntactic computation of natural language. Merge combines similar objects into more complex ones. Formal features establish dependencies within objects. This book examines the intricate ways in which these two factors interact to generate well-formed derivations in natural language. It is divided into two parts concerned with formal features and interpretable features — a subset of formal features. The book combines grammatical theory with the analysis of data drawn form a wide range of languages, both in the adult grammar and in first language acquisition. The mechanisms at work in linguistic computation are considered in relation to a variety of linguistic phenomena, including A-binding, A'-dependencies and reconstruction, agreement, word order, adjuncts, pronouns, and complementizers.

Susann Fischer: The Catalan Clitic System. A Diachronic Perspective on its Syntax and Phonology

Zeitschrift für Katalanistik: Revista d'Estudis Catalans, 2004

A Note on Catalan Clitics

The purpose of this paper is to suggest an interpretation of the colloquial clitic system of Barc... more The purpose of this paper is to suggest an interpretation of the colloquial clitic system of Barcelona Catalan (and other dialects) in the light of the notion of "phonetically empty object". The analysis proposed draws on some considerations on empty objects in Brazilian Portupese found in Farrell(1990).

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The Adaptation and Standardization of the Catalan Version of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT-CAT): a Preliminary Study

L'aprenentatge dels relatius en català

UAB divulga, 2013

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Subject position and verb class in L2 Greek and L2 Spanish

Second Language Research, May 24, 2023

Greek and Spanish are two languages that display a similar subject distribution with unergative/u... more Greek and Spanish are two languages that display a similar subject distribution with unergative/unaccusative verbs, but different word orders with focused subjects (SV in Greek and VS in Spanish). Here we consider subject–verb word order in second language (L2) Greek and L2 Spanish in order to test the Interface Hypothesis (IH). To this end, we report a word-order selection task, with a Greek and a Spanish version. The two versions of the task were administered to L2 intermediate and advanced learners and native speakers of Greek and Spanish. The results show that the first language (L1) Spanish learners of Greek approximated more closely native word orders than the L1 Greek learners of Spanish. For the Spanish learners of Greek, the advanced group performed at ceiling, while the intermediate group performed native-like only with unergatives in neutral and direct interrogative subject-focused contexts. On the other hand, for the Greek learners of Spanish, the intermediate group failed in all contexts, while the advanced group performed native-like with unaccusatives in neutral contexts. This asymmetry between L2 Greek and L2 Spanish reveals that the L1–L2 combination determines the learners’ performance, and this is unexpected under the IH.

The Distribution of Subjects in L2 Spanish by Greek Learners

Frontiers in Psychology, Jan 20, 2022

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First language acquisition of relativisation in Moroccan Arabic

Studies in Arabic linguistics, Jan 6, 2023

Short-term memory and sentence comprehension in Catalan aphasia

Frontiers in Psychology, Oct 10, 2022

The main goal of the present study is to investigate visual and verbal shortterm memory side to s... more The main goal of the present study is to investigate visual and verbal shortterm memory side to side with sentence comprehension in Catalan-speaking subjects with aphasia in comparison with subjects without brain damage. We aim to examine whether there are any significant correlations between their performance on short-term memory and comprehension tasks in order to evaluate the hypothesis that linguistic and memory deficits in aphasia are the result of a dysfunction of a common mechanism, usually shortterm memory. Eigthy-four control subjects and twelve individuals su ering from di erent types of aphasia were assessed using the Catalan version of the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT-CAT), which includes one recognition task and two digit and word span tests to evaluate visual and verbal shortterm memory, respectively, as well as a sentence-to-picture comprehension task. The results showed that the performance of subjects with aphasia was significantly low on all tasks. Yet, the logistic regression analysis revealed that the magnitude of the di erences between the control and experimental group varied across subtests, and that visual short-term memory was better preserved than verbal memory. The results also showed that there were no significant correlations between memory and language comprehension, which rules out the hypothesis that the deficits observed are due to a common underlying mechanism. Individual variation was also observed, specially on memory subtests, which suggest that memory impairments cannot explain the comprehension deficit in aphasia.

format_quoteNo significant correlation between memory and comprehension in aphasia; individual memory variations suggest distinct mechanisms instead of a shared deficit.format_quote

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Parameter setting in language acquisition

Knowing where to dig was only a start. But during this stage I have received invaluable advice fr... more Knowing where to dig was only a start. But during this stage I have received invaluable advice from my teachers and colleagues. Dr. Anna Gavarró and many other professors from the Master in Cognitive Science and Language are jointly responsible for almost every step in my intellectual development. Thank you very much! Especially, I would like to express my deepest heartfelt thanks to Dr. Anna Gavarró, my supervisor, for her energy and vast knowledge of child language. Her critical and thought-provoking questioning always pushed me to look deeper. Without her trust and brilliant suggestions, I would have been unable to complete the dissertation. I also want to thank Dr. Josep Brucart and Dr. María Lluïsa Hernanz for teaching me to think like a linguist and continuing to fascinate me with their careful and innovative approach to syntax. Their expertise in linguistics provided me with so many useful resources. I also wish to thank all the committee members for being incredibly generous with their time despite the multiple academic responsibilities that they already had. My deep thanks also go to all of the classmates in the department for becoming colleagues and genuine friends. Besides, I want to acknowledge the China Scholarship Council for funding. Thanks to the Acquisition and Pathology Lab in Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona for creating a really friendly working environment and to Celina, Maya and Myriam, with whom I had the opportunity to discuss aspects of my work during my writing period.

format_quoteThe average percentage of null objects in Chinese children's speech was 33.19%, comparable to 34.42% in adults, showing early acquisition.format_quote

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Comprehension of passives in Persian speaking children with ASD

Investigating Grammar in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Frontiers research topics, 2018

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD hereafter) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by defic... more Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD hereafter) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by deficits in communicative and social skills. The vast majority of research on language in ASD has focused on pragmatic difficulties, while less is known about structural aspects of language in this population. Work on syntax and phonology is not only sparse, but the heterogeneity in these grammatical domains has moreover led to conflicting reports that they are either intact or impaired. More remains to be understood about variations in grammatical profiles in ASD, as well as the relation of grammar to other cognitive abilities. The body of research gathered here increases our understanding of the grammatical strengths and weaknesses in ASD. The contributions carefully elucidate the relations between grammar and other areas of cognition, as well as unveil the similarities and differences of grammar in ASD compared to other conditions. The result is a volume that provides new ways to think about language and communication in ASD, and beyond, which should be of interest to both linguists and clinicians

Intonational patterns and comprehension in Broca's aphasia

format_quoteAphasic participants performed similarly to control subjects across multiple conditions, indicating no significant impairment in recognizing prosodic elements.format_quote

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Empty Objects in Catalan

It is the purpose of this paper to consider the characteristics of Catalan null objects in the co... more It is the purpose of this paper to consider the characteristics of Catalan null objects in the context of the theory of empty categories in general. The licensing of an empty category and recovery of its content are made fully independent and thus it is postulated that the difference between subject and object pro-drop is not one of licensing but rather should be placed in the way in which their features are identified. In this way, I propose a unified treatment of empty subject and object licensing.

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Laura y un hombre sin palabras: una reseña

Revista de Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología, 1993

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Agrammatic comprehension of contrastive focus and clitic left dislocation in Catalan

Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB, Apr 3, 2022

Previous studies on the comprehension of focalisation. . 4.1.2 Previous studies on the comprehens... more

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Word imageability from a cross-linguistic perspective

Anna Gavarró

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