Binding Processing in Turkish-German Bilingual Aphasia: a Multiple Case Study

Abstract

Aim: The current multiple case study investigates whether Turkish-German bilinguals with aphasia extend to binding constructions and whether pronoun variables show selectivity in bilingual people with aphasia (PWA). These constructions involve referential dependencies, which are difficult for PWAs to compute. Methods: Three Turkish-German bilingual people with aphasia participated in this study and received an offline Picture Verification Task. It is predicted that bilingual PWA would perform worse with pronouns than reflexives or show similar levels of impairment in both pronoun and reflexive conditions in the conditions that involved anaphoric elements with referential antecedents for both languages. On the other hand, it is predicted that they would perform much better in pronouns than in reflexives if the antecedent is quantificational, as they would tend to reject the bound interpretation of pronouns according to the quantificational asymmetry phenomenon. Results: Each subject's performance was analyzed individually to see if there were any differences between the PWAs' bilingual profiles. The results align with the literature findings that there is a selectivity in PWAs regarding the binding of referential elements to their antecedents. Conclusion: The onset of bilingualism and premorbid language imbalance influences the different impairment patterns observed in Turkish-speaking bilingual PWA.

Keywords

• aphasia
• bilingualism
• bilingual aphasia
• binding
• syntax

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