Non-fluent aphasia in a polysynthetic language: five case studies

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Non-fluent aphasia
• polysynthesis
• West Greenlandic
• Eskimo languages
• syntax
• morphology

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Hanne Petersen (interpreting, transcription, and translation), Jørgen Jalving, Julie Møller, and Mona Svendsen (medical consulting and participant recruitment), Arnaq Grove (consultant), Mette Larsen Lyberth (acquisition perspectives), and Naja Trondhjem (errors and omissions) for their invaluable assistance. The present project was funded by the Laidlaw Scholars Undergraduate Research & Leadership Programme at the University of Oxford.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Abbreviations for grammatical terms used in this paper: ACT = active; 1 = 1st person; 2 = 2nd person 3 = 3rd person; IND = indicative; COND = conditional; HAB = habitual aspect; TRM = terminalis case; ANA = anaphoric; N = noun; O = object; PL = plural; PTCP = participle; S = subject; SG = singular; V = verb.

2. WG does not display incorporation in the usual sense of noun incorporation. Its ’quasi-incorporation’ is produced by lexically heavy verbal affixes (’have’, ’get’, ’say’, etc.) attaching to any suitable noun base. Finnish and Japanese do not have either typical incorporation or incorporation of affixal “quasi-incorporation” to the same extent. Turkish does have some limited “quasi-incorporation” (a few verbalizers like “have” and “be”), but the Turkish verbalizers are much fewer and not as lexically heavy as the many dozens of verbalizers in WG.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Laidlaw Scholars Undergraduate Research & Leadership Programme at the University of Oxford [N/A].