Research Article

Presence or Absence of the Object Marker “Râ” in the Speech of Aphasic Patients With Agrammatic Broca’s Aphasia

Abstract

Introduction: The aims and the importance of the study: Regarding the importance of the object marker “râ” as one of the components of Persian sentences and its little investigation in aphasic Persian speakers, we decided to study its usage in the speech of aphasic patients with agrammatic Broca’s aphasia to know whether aphasic Persian speakers use “râ” in comparison to normal Persian speakers. The agrammatic aphasics are known for not using function words (like the object marker “râ”).
Materials and Methods: In this experimental-descriptive study, two groups were employed. In the first group, six Persian children with Broca’s aphasia participated as the experimental group. The general linguistic capabilities of these patients were evaluated with the Persian aphasic test by speech therapy specialists. In the second group, six Persian-speaking normal persons participated as the control group. Two similar tests were administered to the aphasic and control groups, inspired by Caplan et al. 's test, to know whether they use “râ”. As there was a difference between the two groups, 1-way ANOVA was utilized to see if this difference was statistically significant. To analyze linguistic data, the approaches of Garman, Saffran, Kolk, Friedman, and Dolfić and Fabijanić were applied.
Results: While the control group produced “râ” in all cases, the aphasic group never used it.
Conclusion: It seems that using content words (like “nouns and verbs”) may be more vital than using function words (like “râ”).

1. Shokouhi H, Kipka P. A discourse study of Persian “râ”. Lingua. 2003; 46:953-66. [DOI:10.1016/S0024-3841(02)00145-6]
2. Garman M. Psycholinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1990.
3. Saffran EM. Aphasia and the relationship of language and brain. Seminars in Neurology. 2000; 20(4):409-18. [DOI:10.1055/s-2000-13173] [PMID]
4. Dolfić M, Fabijanić I. Aphasia and agrammatism. A published project of Zadar University; 2017.
5. Haarmann HJ, Kolk H. On-line sensitivity to subject-verb agreement violations in Broca’s aphasics: The role of complexity and time. Brain and Language. 1994; 46(4):493-516. [DOI:10.1006/brln.1994.1028] [PMID]
6. Nilipour R. The Farsi Aphasic Test. Tehran: The Welfare Sciences University Publishers; 1993. http://salmandj.uswr.ac.ir/article-1-835-en.html
7. Peterson DJ. Noun Phrase specificity [Unpublished PhD dissertation]. Michigan: University of Michigan; 1974.
8. Karimi S. Aspects of Persian syntax: Specificity and the Theory of grammar. [Unpublished PhD dissertation]. Washington: University of Washington; 1989.
9. Karimi S. Obliqueness, specificity, and discourse functions: “râ” in Persian. Linguistic Analysis. 1990; 20(3-4):139-91.
10. Windfuhr GL. Persian grammar: History and state of its study. Mouton, The Hague; 1979. [DOI:10.1515/9783110800425]
11. Dabir-Moghaddam M. On postposition “râ” in Persian. Iranian Journal of Linguistics. 1990; 7: 2-60.
12. Darzi A. Small clauses in Persian. Iranian Journal of Humanities. 2006; 13(1):13-30.
13. Ghomeshi J. Projection and inflection: A study of Persian phrase structure [Unpublished Ph.D dissertation]. Toronto: University of Toronto; 1996.
14. Hosseini Fatemi M. The semantics of the Persian object marker “râ”. [Unpublished thesis]. Ottawa: Institute of Cognitive Science, Carlton University; 2013.
15. Bahrami F, Rezai V. Information structure and direct object indexation in Persian. Theory and Practice in Language Studies. 2014; 4(3):551-61. [DOI:10.4304/tpls.4.3.551-561]
16. Aameri H. Investigating the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic capabilities among Persian-speaking aphasics [Ph.D dissertation]. Tehran: Tarbiat Modarres University; 2007.
17. Caplan D. Neurolinguistics and linguistic aphasiology: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1995.
18. Walsh K. Neuropsycology: A clinical approach. 2nd edition. London: Longman; 1987.
19. Jackson H. On affections of speech from disease of the brain. Brain. 1878; 1:304-30. [DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195177640.003.0019]
20. Goodglass H, Kaplan E. The assessment of aphasia and related disorders. 2nd edtion. Philadelphia: Lea Press; 1983.
21. Friedmann N. Speech production in Broca’s agrammatic aphasia: Syntactic tree pruning. In: Grodzinsky Y, Amunts K. Broca’s Region. New York: Oxford University Press; 2006: 63-83. [DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195177640.003.0005]
22. Kolk H, Hofstede B. The choice for ellipsis: A case study of stylistic shifts in an agrammatic speaker. Brain and Language. 1994; 47(3):507-9.
23. Saffran EM, Boygo LC, Schwartz MF, Marin OSM. Does deep dyslexia reflect right hemisphere reading? In: Coltheart M, Patterson KE, Marshall JC, editors. Deep Dyslexia Is Right-Hemisphere Reading. 1980; 71(2):299-309. [DOI:10.1006/brln.1999.2183] [PMID]
24. Kolk, H, Heiling, G, and Keyser, A. Agrammatism in Dutch: two case studies. In: Menn, L and Obler, L (Eds.), Agrammatic aphasia: a cross-language narrative sourcebook. Amesterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins;1990: 179-280.
25. Friedmann N, Grodzinsky Y. Tense and agreement in agrammatic production: Pruning the syntactic tree. Brain and Language. 1997; 56(3):397-425. [DOI:10.1006/brln.1997.1795] [PMID]
26. Kolk H. Agrammatism. In: Kent RD, editor. The MIT encyclopedia of communication disorders. Massachusetts: MIT Press; 2004: 70-8.
27. Kolk H. How language adapts to the brain: An analysis of agrammatic aphasia. In: Progovac L, Paesani K, Casielles E, Barton E. The Syntax of Monsententials: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; 2006: 229-58. https://benjamins.com/catalog/la.93.11kol
28. Nilipour R. Task-specific agrammatism in a Farsi-English patient. Journal of Neurolinguistics. 1989; 4:243-53. [DOI:10.1016/0911-6044(89)90016-X]
29. Nilipour R. Agrammatic language: Two cases from Persian. Aphasialogy. 2000; 14(12):1205-52. [DOI:10.1080/02687030050205723]
30. Ameri H, Golfam A. Aphasia and cognitive disorders: A new view on the modularity of language. Advances in Cognitive Science. 2009; 11(3):24-36. [http://icssjournal.ir/article-1-61-en.html]
31. Taffaroji Yeganeh M. Investigating the disorders of functional categories among bilingual aphasics of Kurdish-Persian [Ph.D. dissertation]. Tehran: Allameh Tabatabaee University; 2010.
Files
IssueVol 14 No 3 (2020) QRcode
SectionResearch Article(s)
DOI https://doi.org/10.18502/jmr.v14i3.7717
Keywords
Broca’s aphasia Agrammatism The object marker “râ”

Rights and permissions
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
1.
Tarkashvand Z, Rovshan B, Mehri A, Karimi Doostan G. Presence or Absence of the Object Marker “Râ” in the Speech of Aphasic Patients With Agrammatic Broca’s Aphasia. jmr. 2020;14(3):191-206.