Linguistic
You will conduct a linguistic analysis of two aphasic patients. While we do not have direct access to patients, there are several examples on YouTube that we can utilize. You will require to phonetically/phonologically and syntactically analyze the speech of these patients.
Kent
Kent has been diagnosed with an aphasia. Before proceeding, read the following article that provides a solid overview of the articulatory and perceptual deficits observed in aphasic patients. You will need to specifically reference this article in your responses regarding Kent:
Article: Phonological Aspects of Aphasia
- Provide two methods that the interviewer used to confirm that Kent could understand what he was being asked.
- Given our discussion in class, from which type of aphasia might Kent suffer? Provide three reasons why you have arrived upon this conclusion, supported by examples from his speech.
Considering the Dronkers & Baldo (2009) and your observations in response to Q2, where might you expect Kent's lesion to be located in the brain? Reference the reading and provide motivation for your answer.
- Identify six mispronunciations in his speech (some of these can be within the same word).
- Provide the phonetic transcription of how these six words would standardly be produced by a neurologically healthy individual.
- Provide a fine phonetic transcription for how Kent produced these words. Include timestamps for each error so that they can be verified. At least two of these errors should be substitution errors and two should be simplification errors.
- Blumstein identifies four major types of speech production errors in aphasic patients. For your feature substitution errors, provide the features that are being substituted. Blumstein makes a prediction for the number of features that are typically substituted in patients. Using your examples from Kent’s speech, can you verify or disconfirm this prediction?
- For your simplification errors, Blumstein also makes predictions about what is likely to occur.
- Describe Blumstein’s observations about simplification errors. Which segments are deleted and why according to Blumstein?
- Do the substitution errors that you identified in Kent’s speech conform to Blumstein’s observation? Be sure to specifically reference your examples and provide a detailed phonological description (e.g., specify the features, classes of segments, syllabic structure) in your response.
Charles
Charles was also diagnosed with an aphasia, though at the time of his stroke, his exact type of aphasia was not known. Take a look at the clipped video below and consider the nature of Charles' deficit.
- Provide the syntactic structure of the first question he was posed and the final question he was unable to answer. You can either use bracket notation or a tree structure to illustrate the structure of the first question. Moreover, identify the thematic roles in the sentence.
- What are the key differences between the two sentence types? Be specific and relate to the examples.
- (1) what type of aphasia might Charles suffer from and (2) with which aspects of syntax might he actually difficulty considering your response to Q2 just above?
Linguistic
You will conduct a linguistic analysis of two aphasic patients. While we do not have direct access to patients, there are several examples on YouTube that we can utilize. You will require to phonetically/phonologically and syntactically analyze the speech of these patients.
Kent
Kent has been diagnosed with an aphasia. Before proceeding, read the following article that provides a solid overview of the articulatory and perceptual deficits observed in aphasic patients. You will need to specifically reference this article in your responses regarding Kent:
Article: Phonological Aspects of Aphasia
- Provide two methods that the interviewer used to confirm that Kent could understand what he was being asked.
- Given our discussion in class, from which type of aphasia might Kent suffer? Provide three reasons why you have arrived upon this conclusion, supported by examples from his speech.
Considering the Dronkers & Baldo (2009) and your observations in response to Q2, where might you expect Kent's lesion to be located in the brain? Reference the reading and provide motivation for your answer.
- Identify six mispronunciations in his speech (some of these can be within the same word).
- Provide the phonetic transcription of how these six words would standardly be produced by a neurologically healthy individual.
- Provide a fine phonetic transcription for how Kent produced these words. Include timestamps for each error so that they can be verified. At least two of these errors should be substitution errors and two should be simplification errors.
- Blumstein identifies four major types of speech production errors in aphasic patients. For your feature substitution errors, provide the features that are being substituted. Blumstein makes a prediction for the number of features that are typically substituted in patients. Using your examples from Kent’s speech, can you verify or disconfirm this prediction?
- For your simplification errors, Blumstein also makes predictions about what is likely to occur.
- Describe Blumstein’s observations about simplification errors. Which segments are deleted and why according to Blumstein?
- Do the substitution errors that you identified in Kent’s speech conform to Blumstein’s observation? Be sure to specifically reference your examples and provide a detailed phonological description (e.g., specify the features, classes of segments, syllabic structure) in your response.
Charles
Charles was also diagnosed with an aphasia, though at the time of his stroke, his exact type of aphasia was not known. Take a look at the clipped video below and consider the nature of Charles' deficit.
- Provide the syntactic structure of the first question he was posed and the final question he was unable to answer. You can either use bracket notation or a tree structure to illustrate the structure of the first question. Moreover, identify the thematic roles in the sentence.
- What are the key differences between the two sentence types? Be specific and relate to the examples.
- (1) what type of aphasia might Charles suffer from and (2) with which aspects of syntax might he actually difficulty considering your response to Q2 just above?
