| dc.description.abstract | The present study focuses on the use of prepositions by Spanish agrammatic Broca aphasics. Previous works of various investigators such as Bennis, Prins & Vermeulen (1983) and Trofimova (2009) show that Broca aphasics encounter more difficulties with words of functional categories than with words of lexical categories. An interesting field of study is the group of prepositions: this group can be divided in prepositions with a syntactic, subcategorized or lexical function. In line with previous studies on the use of prepositions by aphasics, a higher percentage of loss of syntactic prepositions is expected in the Spanish aphasics.
The transcripts of interviews with five participants who are diagnosed with agrammatic Broca aphasia (through a cerebrovascular accident (CVA), also known as a stroke) are being analysed, in order to obtain a clear view of their use of the three types of prepositions. Also, a comparison is being made between the results of the present study and a parallel investigation on the use of English prepositions by Anne Koster (2015). Because of the fact that many studies mention the omission of articles in aphasic speech, a small investigation of the use of articles in Dutch, English and Spanish is being added as a way of control.
The results of this investigation show that there is no significant relation between the three different types of prepositions and their use (incorrect use, correct use and omission) by the Spanish aphasics. Also, there are no significant differences between the Spanish group in the present study and the English group in the study of Koster (2015), except for a difference in the correct use of lexical prepositions: the Spanish participants produce a higher amount of correct lexical prepositions. Finally, the results of the small investigation of the articles show that the Spanish group omit the lowest percentage of articles, followed by the Dutch group and the English group, respectively. Because of the insignificance of the results of this investigation, more research is necessary on this topic. | |
