Exploring tense and agreement verbal inflection processing in Argentinian-Spanish speakers with aphasia

CAMILA STECHER; MARÍA ELINA SÁNCHEZ; JAICHENCO, VIRGINIA

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Conferencia; 65. Academy of Aphasia 61th Annual Meeting; 2023

Academy of Aphasia

IntroductionNumerous cross-linguistic studies have demonstrated the impairment of verb morphosyntax in individuals with aphasia, highlighting the unequal impact on inflectional tense morphology (Benedet et al., 1998; Caramazza & Hillis, 1991; Friedmann & Grodzinsky, 1997). Faroqi-Shah and Thompson (2007) propose that there’s a specific difficulty in retrieving accurate verb forms in people with aphasia (PWA), that affects temporal reference in general, including both regularly and irregularly inflected verbs, while leaving non-finite forms relatively unaffected. In contrast, the Past Discourse Linking Hypothesis (PADILIH; Bastiaanse et al., 2011) suggests that referencing the past poses a heightened challenge due to compromised discourse linking abilities in aphasia. The present study aims to investigate these difficulties in Spanish-speakers with aphasia. Spanish time reference in verbs is always marked with a morpheme, distinct to the one used to convey agreement. By comparing our findings with existing literature on other languages, we aim to assess if these patterns align with previously reported phenomena and critically evaluate whether the current hypotheses adequately account for them.MethodsParticipantsSix native Argentinian Spanish speakers with non-fluent aphasia, mean age 46.2 y/o (SD: 18.03), with high education level (mean: 16 years; SD: 2.24).Procedure and materialsWe designed four tasks to assess verbal inflection concerning tense and agreement in isolated verbs and sentences. The first two tap on the production of these forms and the other two on the comprehension: Sentence completion task (SC), Sentence elicitation task (SE), Grammaticality judgment task (GJ), Sentence-picture matching task (SPM).For the stimuli we manipulated both time reference (past, present, and future) as well as different subject forms (first person singular, third person singular/plural). All sentences followed an Adverb-Subject-Verb-Object structure, as in: “Ayer Juan juntó flores" / “Yesterday Juan picked flowers”, “Ahora Juan y María escuchan un disco” / “Now Juan and María listen to a record”, “Ayer yo besé a mi hijo” / “Yesterday I kissed my son”, “Mañana Juan cosechará las uvas” / “Tomorrow Juan will harvest the grapes”.ResultsPWA had statistically significant lower accuracy when processing Tense inflection (p