The manifestation of grammatical deficit in the speech of the Azerbaijani-speaking monolingual Broca’s aphasics

Abstract

This research explores how Broca’s aphasia manifests itself in Azerbaijani-speaking monolingual patients. Many patients are in need of customized diagnosis tests and rehabilitation plans designed by neurolinguists and this work is the first step. As Azerbaijani aphasics are among the underrepresented populations in the field, the paper explores the main grammatical deficits in their speeches. This paper tests the findings against the most popular theses and hypotheses in the area to see if a language with a typologically different structure from English aligns with them. It also aims to uncover the universal and language-specific deficits in the participants to create a pioneer characterization of Azerbaijani aphasia. To fulfill this aim, 10 participants with mild aphasia have been involved in 15-30 minutes’ interviews where their speeches were recorded with a high-quality microphone. Special tasks targeting Azerbaijani grammar have been developed for this purpose. The recordings have been transcribed and analyzed to estimate the frequency and quality of deficits. The results show that there are more morphological errors than syntactic ones which can be explained by a low cue cost of Azerbaijani syntax. The results were also contrasted to secondary data of English-speaking patients as this is a typologically polar language to Azerbaijani. The comparison has shown a vital role of language-specific features in aphasia. Furthermore, vulnerability and resistance patterns of grammatical forms in Azerbaijani patients supported the Competition model. Interestingly, the most recent and popular PADILIH theory has not been supported by the data set presented in the work. These findings are unique as they play an indispensable role in developing the first diagnosis and rehabilitation batteries for Azerbaijani-speaking aphasia patients.