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Article Dans Une Revue Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences Année : 2010

Encoding Motion Events in Aphasia: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives in Monolingual and Bilingual Agrammatism

Résumé

Languages differ considerably in how they lexicalize and grammaticalize spatial information (Talmy, 2000). Satellite-framed languages such as English express Manner in the verb root and Path in satellites, while Verb-framed languages such as French lexicalize Path in the verb, leaving Manner implicit or expressing it in the periphery of the sentence. Such properties constrain how speakers encode motion in discourse (Hickmann, et al. 2009), thereby raising new questions concerning the relationship between language and cognition. They are also of great relevance for the study of aphasia in a cross-linguistic perspective, particularly in comparison to monolingual or bilingual aphasics who show dissociations between lexical/grammatical knowledge and who possess one or two languages with typologically divergent patterns. Despite a few crosslinguistic studies of aphasia (Menn & Obler, 1990; Nespoulous, 1999), little is still known about universal vs. language-specific aspects of aphasics’ linguistic deficits and compensatory strategies. We compared the productions of two French monolingual and three French-English bilingual agrammatics to those of two control groups of monolingual French and English speakers. Participants were asked to describe voluntary motion events presented visually. Bilinguals did so first in French, then in English. We examined what information (Path and/or Manner) was expressed, by what verbal means (verbs, particles, prepositions, etc.), and with which compensation strategies in the case of agrammatic speakers. The analyses show that English controls typically encoded Manner in verbs together with Path in other devices within compact structures, whereas French controls focused on Path, mainly encoding this information in verbs. The aphasic data show great inter-subject variability. However, both monolingual and bilingual aphasics followed a common strategy in French focusing on lexicalized patterns (e.g. Path in verb roots) and omitting most grammatical elements (e.g. verbal morphology). When expressing motion events in English, bilinguals used either Path particles alone (down), devices marking goals (top), or manner verbs alone, in the latter case omitting tensed auxiliaries (running). Thus the study suggests that typological properties of spatial systems can have an impact on what speakers select to express (e.g. lexicalized or grammaticalized patterns), on the symptomatology of their deficit (e.g. absence of morphology, prepositions), and on their use of adaptive strategies based on preserved encoding capacities or even on patterns borrowed from another language (for bilingual participants). Further research in progress pursues this comparative research by including data that contrast agrammatic vs. anomic speakers, French vs. English aphasic speakers, and a control group of French-English bilinguals.

Dates et versions

hal-04360860 , version 1 (21-12-2023)

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Efstathia Soroli, Maya Hickmann, Jean-Luc Nespoulous, Halima Sharaoui, Thi Mai Tran. Encoding Motion Events in Aphasia: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives in Monolingual and Bilingual Agrammatism. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2010, 6, pp.206-207. ⟨10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.08.103⟩. ⟨hal-04360860⟩
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