TY - JOUR

T1 - Non-fluent aphasia in a polysynthetic language

T2 - five case studies

AU - Nedergård, Johanne Sofie Krog

AU - Martinez-Ferreiro, Silvia

AU - Fortescue, Michael David

AU - Boye, Kasper

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - Background: Polysynthetic languages can be roughly defined as languages which have an extreme morphological complexity. They present a range of challenges to linguistic and neurolinguistics theories that are based on standard average European languages. Yet, no studies exist on aphasia in such languages, and the communities that speak them have little or no access to assessment and language therapy. Aims: The aim of this paper is to provide a first attempt at a characterisation of aphasia in a polysynthetic language, West Greenlandic. Methods and procedures: We recorded semi-spontaneous speech from five participants with aphasia and compared their speech on several parameters with that of matched non-brain-damaged control participants. These parameters included standard production measures, measures of morphological complexity, and measures of syntactic complexity. Outcomes and results: Our findings indicate that non-fluent aphasia in West Greenlandic is not associated with morphological impairment; instead, participants with aphasia produce shorter utterances, and there are trends indicating lower complexity across measures of syntax. Conclusions: While somewhat surprising from the point of view of research on aphasia in standard average European languages, our findings align well with findings from other languages with complex morphology such as Finnish, Turkish, and Japanese. Our study highlights the need for a diverse range of crosslinguistic studies to inform linguistic and neurolinguistic theories.

AB - Background: Polysynthetic languages can be roughly defined as languages which have an extreme morphological complexity. They present a range of challenges to linguistic and neurolinguistics theories that are based on standard average European languages. Yet, no studies exist on aphasia in such languages, and the communities that speak them have little or no access to assessment and language therapy. Aims: The aim of this paper is to provide a first attempt at a characterisation of aphasia in a polysynthetic language, West Greenlandic. Methods and procedures: We recorded semi-spontaneous speech from five participants with aphasia and compared their speech on several parameters with that of matched non-brain-damaged control participants. These parameters included standard production measures, measures of morphological complexity, and measures of syntactic complexity. Outcomes and results: Our findings indicate that non-fluent aphasia in West Greenlandic is not associated with morphological impairment; instead, participants with aphasia produce shorter utterances, and there are trends indicating lower complexity across measures of syntax. Conclusions: While somewhat surprising from the point of view of research on aphasia in standard average European languages, our findings align well with findings from other languages with complex morphology such as Finnish, Turkish, and Japanese. Our study highlights the need for a diverse range of crosslinguistic studies to inform linguistic and neurolinguistic theories.

U2 - 10.1080/02687038.2019.1643000

DO - 10.1080/02687038.2019.1643000

M3 - Journal article

VL - 34

SP - 675

EP - 694

JO - Aphasiology

JF - Aphasiology

SN - 0268-7038

IS - 6

ER -