چكيده لاتين :
1. Introduction
This paper presents the report of Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) on a trilingual
(German-L1, Persian-L2 & English-L3) aphasic patient's speech disorders. Having
had a precise neurological report that has been done in a neurology clinic 2
(including
the patient's type of aphasia that has been described as Broca, the exact size and
locations of his traumatism, his age in acquiring each language in his life before the
accident, his level of education, …), a detailed linguistic analysis of his speaking
disorders has been carried out.
2. Methodology
To assess the current condition of the patient's amount of impairment and disorders
in the levels of phonology, syntax and lexicon, "Bilingual Aphasia Test-part B" has
been used to determine the amount of his speech abilities through the linguistic skills
of "repetition and reading" (applying repetition and reading skills is in that, he is not
able to speak spontaneously fluently) in his three languages through comparison of
them, English-Farsi, German-Farsi and German-English after analyzing the
transcriptions, linguistically in both qualitative and quantitative methods. In the
quantitative way, sores are based on 10 points and their percentage; and in the
qualitative method (according to Garman, 1990), the achieved scores have been
interpreted into a description by using some expressions such as, very good, good,
with difficulty or with a lot of difficulties.
3. Results and Discussion
According to the gained scores, it is concluded that:
A. The patient's speaking skill in three levels (phonology, syntax and lexicon) of his
three known languages in average is 72.7 % in German, 59% in Farsi, 59.7% in
English. Also, the mean percentage of each level in three languages is 85.3% in
phonology, 56% in syntax and 78% in lexicon.
B. According to the test's results, the patient speaking is impaired in his three
languages. It could be interpreted qualitatively (based on Garman, 1990: scores
higher than 80 percent mean "very good", scores between 75-80 percent indicate
"good", scores of 70-75 percent mean "with difficulty", and less than 70 percent
signify "with a lot of difficulties". The gained scores' could be interpreted as:
"very good" in the level of phonology in his three languages (German, Farsi and
English); in syntax the scores are different: "good" in German, but "with a lot
of difficulties" in Farsi and English. and the level of his lexicon in German is
"very good" while it is "with difficulty" in both Farsi and English.
Generally, the least problem was seen in the phonology part, and the most problems
in syntax. This trend is the same in his three languages.
C. In spite of differences in the features and elements of agrammatism in three
languages, constant omissions of the grammatical elements are observed
(especially free functional morphemes) as their similarity. A few substitutions
were observed as well. Some difficulties such as substitution and addition had
been known as Wernicke's features in other researches; however, they were
seen in this Broca's patient through evaluation.
D. His non-fluent speech in three languages is along with omissions or shortening
of consonant clusters especially in the words having more than one syllable.
E. Comparing the results of test on three levels his known three languages shows
that there is not a significant difference in the speech ability of the levels of
phonology and lexicon between three languages (only 5-10 percent
difference), but the percentage of his correct answers related to the applied
test in syntax is much better in German than two other languages, i.e. Farsi
and English (with 30 percent difference).
4. Conclusion
This case study was done 11 years after the patient's brain stroke and he was living
in his L2 environment (Farsi) during those years (He is bigeneric: German-Persian,
he had lived in Germany before the accident). It was expected and hypothesized that
he be fluent or much better in his L2 i.e. Farsi because of living his last eleven years
(after the accident until now) in Iran. However, the BAT results showed the better
performance of him in German, L1, that is his first language, and his dominant
language before stroke.
It must be mentioned that some other studies on multilingual aphasic patients shows
the dominancy of their L2 or L3 after the brain stroke, quite the contrary in this study.
Ultimately, the results of this case study have proved the previous researchers'
conclusions on Broca's impairments. The main disorders of his speech could be
named as 1) syntactic deficiencies such as, omitting articles, prepositions, and
conjunctions; 2) telegraphic and incomplete speech by producing the key or content
words; 3) omission or shortening the consonant clusters, and at last 4) stuttering.
Key words: BAT, Broca's aphasia, Impaired speech, Reading skills, Repetition
skills, Trilingual.
