Adapting the Bilingual Aphasia Test to Rarotongan (Cook Islands Maori): Linguistic and clinical considerations

Abstract

This article describes the adaptation of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) to the Rarotongan dialect of Cook Islands Maori, a Polynesian language spoken in the Cook Islands and expatriate communities. A brief linguistic sketch of Rarotongan is presented. As Rarotongan is characterised by a complex pronominal system, ‘a’ versus ‘o’ possession and optional topicalisation and focus constructions, particular issues arose in obtaining a rigorous adaptation of the BAT. Methods for ensuring effective adaptation across contrastive language pairs and sociocultural aspects of adapting the BAT to Rarotongan are discussed. Obtaining adaptations from several proficient bilingual consultants, comparing versions and group discussion to resolve discrepancies were used for this adaptation and are recommended. It is asserted that every individual has the right to receive accurate, detailed language assessment in each of their languages, irrespective of the languages spoken in the wider community. Further adaptations of the BAT will assist this to be achieved.

• aphasia
• multilingualism
• Bilingual Aphasia Test
• Rarotongan
• Cook Islands Maori
• language assessment
• Polynesian

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the expertise, insight and advice of our Cook Islands consultants especially Ngametua Aukino, Pati Ribeiro and members of the Cook Islands Maori School, Sydney. Any errors or oversights remain our own. It is hoped that this work will contribute to the development of resources for the Cook Islands community. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments. This work was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award and Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science Postgraduate Grant to the author.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of this paper.

Notes

1. For example, Australian census data show a steadily rising proportion of households speaking a language other than English (22.5% in 2006) and residents born overseas in a non-English-speaking country overseas (approximately 26.1% in 2006), an increase from 20% to 21% in 2001 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006) and from 15% and 13% in 1991 (reported in Baker, 1993). Moreover, these figures do not capture the full extent of bilingualism, for example, bilingual Australian-born residents speaking English at home. Previous Australian estimates suggested 16% of aphasic patients in capital cities were multi/bilingual (Sjardin and Whitworth, 1985); however, this figure is likely to be considerably higher now.

2. In this article we refer to CI Maori when discussing the language situation in general. We refer to Rarotongan for precision when discussing the linguistic details as this is the dialect that we have dealt with and is accepted as the standard dialect. It is expected that much of what we discuss is pertinent to the other dialects of CI Maori; however, there may well be some dialectal differences. We look forward to this being followed up in future research. Note that Horton (2000) refers to CI Maori and Buse (1960, 1963a, b, c, 1965) to Rarotongan. Furthermore, we have used the spelling consistent with the Cook Islands government website (http://www.cook-islands.gov.ck/) when referring to Cook Islands Maori in the main text. Examples of data are glossed as in Note 3.

3. Examples are glossed for their source and, where unattributed, have been obtained by the author. Interlinear glosses are added by the author. Glosses used are 1PL = first person plural, 3SG = third person singular, 3PL = third person plural, ACC = accusative case, CAUS = causative, DET = determiner, FOC = focus marker, Imp = imperfective aspect, NEG = negation, PART = particle, PASS = passive, Perf = perfective aspect, POSS = possessive, glossed for ‘O’ or ‘A’ possession as required, PL = plural, TAM = the tense/aspect/mood marker that is glossed for the corresponding value: past, future, present. Examples have been cross-checked with our bilingual consultants, any errors remain our own.

4. The interlinear gloss is as follows: See sections on clause structure and verb structure for further examples.

• (2) Kāre  e      nā  te  tamaiti i  opera i  te  tamaine

•       NEG PART.Imp PART.A DET boy  PART.Perf push ACC   DET   girl

•       ‘The girl is not pushed by the boy.’

•     (literally, ‘not is of/by the boy was push the girl’).

5. Words that are ambiguous with respect to noun/verb class (word-class ambiguous items) elicit a distinct neural pattern of activation compared with unambiguous nouns and verbs and utilise different neural resources (Federmeier, Segal, Lombrozo, and Kutas, 2000). Clinical testing shows that some Rarotongan–English aphasic bilinguals have difficulty with such class-ambiguous items.