CHRISTINA KNELS

Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich (ALEMANIA)

Use of Tense by patients with primary progressive aphasia (PPA)

Psicolingüística / Psicolinguistics

This paper focuses on PPA-patients’ ability to use tense in various linguistic tasks, first in a semi-standardised interview, then in a narration task and in a special elicitation task. In the latter, the future and past tenses and the subjunctive are elicited. The findings – made after a study of German-speaking patients, are compared with similar tasks done with “regular” aphasics after stroke (Seewald, 1998).

Aphasia is the loss or impairment of the use of language due to brain damage, e.g. after a stroke. The very common signs of aphasia include word-finding deficits, trouble understanding speech, difficulty in reading and/or writing as well as other errors in verbal output. The onset of aphasia is, however, not always sudden. The term “primary progressive aphasia” (PPA), coined by Mesulam (1989), refers to a rare type of dementia related to Alzheimer’s Disease. PPA is described as a language disorder of insidious onset, gradual progression and prolonged course, in the absence of generalized cognitive impairments. PPA can be fluent or non-fluent and the type or pattern of the disorder may vary from patient to patient.

From the corpus gathered from the German-speaking patients under study, several different patterns of tense usage could be found, e.g. for present tense (“und dann haben sie ihn gestrichen..sind dabei” - they have painted the chair...are doing it) or for future tense (“sie werden das Eis auslöffelten” - they will ate the ice-cream). It seems that, unlike “regular” aphasics, PPA-patients are able to build the necessary constructions for the different tenses, but have problems accessing the right verb form.

Mesulam, Marsel (1982). Slowly progressive aphasia without generalized dementia. Annals of Neurology 11: 592-8.
Seewald, Barbara (1998). Aphasie und Natürlichkeit. Westdeutscher Verlag GmbH. Opladen/Wiesbaden.




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