An aphasia research agenda - a consensus statement from the collaboration of aphasia trialists.

Coordination of international aphasia research would minimise duplication of effort, support synergistic international activities across languages and multidisciplinary perspectives, and promote high-quality conduct and reporting of aphasia research, thereby increasing the relevance, transparency, and implementation of findings. The Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists (CATs) sought to develop an aphasia research agenda to direct future research activities, based on priorities shared by people with aphasia, family members, and healthcare professionals. Our established international research network spanning 33 countries contributed to this activity. Research literature reporting the priorities of stakeholders was reviewed and synthesised (phase 1). Representatives from Working Groups on Aphasia Assessment & Outcomes, Prognosis & Predictors of Recovery, Effectiveness of Interventions, and Societal Impact & Reintegration participated in a two-day research agenda setting meeting. The CATs expert panel refined research objectives and identified constituent components of research and methodological developments required to address these research components. The objectives and research components were grouped into overarching themes (phase 2). The resultant list was then circulated to more than 180 CATs members for review, revision, and approval. Consensus on the final aphasia research agenda and road-map was reached by CATs executive committee (phase 3). The expert panel identified five overarching research themes: (i) evidence-based interventions for people with aphasia, (ii) effective interventions to support those communicating with people with aphasia, (iii) cross-linguistic assessment and core outcomes for aphasia research, (iv) predictors of language recovery, and (v) clinical implementation of research findings. Within these broad themes, 30 research objectives and 91 individual aphasia research components were identified and sequentially ordered. This agenda builds on research priorities identified by people with aphasia and their families, and includes priorities of healthcare professionals and researchers, and will support the rehabilitation and recovery of people with aphasia. Our internationally relevant research agenda promotes rigour in methodology, considers international applicability, synergistic activities, and sharing of resources and expertise

Cross-linguistic adaptations of The Comprehensive Aphasia Test: Challenges and solutions

Comparative research on aphasia and aphasia rehabilitation is challenged by the lack of comparable assessment tools across different languages. In English, a large array of tools is available, while in most other languages, the selection is more limited. Importantly, assessment tools are often simple translations and do not take into consideration specific linguistic and psycholinguistic parameters of the target languages. As a first step in meeting the needs for comparable assessment tools, the Comprehensive Aphasia Test is currently being adapted into a number of languages spoken in Europe. In this article, some key challenges encountered in the adaptation process and the solutions to ensure that the resulting assessment tools are linguistically and culturally equivalent, are proposed. Specifically, we focus on challenges and solutions related to the use of imageability, frequency, word length, spelling-to-sound regularity and sentence length and complexity as underlying properties in the selection of the testing material

From language acquisition to language pathology: cross-linguistic perspectives

International audienceResearch in linguistics has revealed striking differences in how languages represent motion events. At least two types of psycholinguistic studies have begun to explore the implications of this linguistic diversity, showing the impact of language-specific factors on language acquisition in different types of learners as well as on language pathology, particularly aphasia. The present overview discusses both sets of studies, focusing on comparisons between French and English. We begin with a brief overview of these two language systems, showing that they have different ways of distributing information between verb roots and adjuncts (e.g., particles, prefixes, morphology). We then illustrate the implications for language acquisition, as well as for aphasia. In our final remarks, we highlight how comparisons across different languages and types of speakers can shed light on the influence of language-specific factors on speakers' expressions of space, and outline directions for future research

Langage et cognition spatiale en anglais et en français (perspectives translinguistiques en aphasie)

Les langues présentent des variations considérables quant à la façon dont elles lexicalisent ou grammaticalisent l information relative au mouvement. Ainsi, les langues à cadrage satellitaire (par ex. l anglais) lexicalisent la Manière du mouvement dans la racine verbale et expriment la Trajectoire dans des satellites; en revanche, les langues à cadrage verbal (par ex. le français) lexicalisent la Trajectoire et laissent la Manière implicite ou périphérique. Vu leur impact important sur l organisation de l information en production, de telles différences ont renouvelé le débat concernant la relation entre langage et cognition. Par ailleurs, elles sont aussi très pertinentes pour l étude du dysfonctionnement langagier, et plus particulièrement celle du locuteur aphasique qui présente typiquement des dissociations diverses aux niveaux lexical et/ou grammatical. Malgré un intérêt croissant pour les recherches translinguistiques en aphasiologie, peu d informations sont encore disponibles concernant l incidence potentielle de la langue sur les déficits de l agrammatique. Cette recherche comparative examine l impact des propriétés générales et spécifiques de deux langues, l anglais et le français, sur la représentation du mouvement auprès de locuteurs sains et souffrant d agrammatisme dans des contextes monolingues et bilingues. La méthodologie met en relation différents comportements au moyen d une série de tâches expérimentales complémentaires (production, compréhension, catégorisation verbale/non-verbale), qui sont associées à des mesures de l attention (suivi des mouvements oculaires). Les résultats montrent que les propriétés typologiques des langues ont un impact sur les processus de structuration du langage spatial ainsi que sur l organisation conceptuelle de l espace au-delà de l utilisation du langage (par ex. choix catégoriels, mouvements oculaires). Cette étude ouvre des nouvelles perspectives pour une approche translinguistique/typologique de l aphasie et contribue plus généralement aux débats sur les dimensions universelles et variables des processus cognitifs d une langue à l autre.Languages differ strikingly in how they lexicalize and grammaticalize information about motion events. Thus, Satellite-framed languages (e.g., English) express manner in the verb root and path in satellites, while Verb-framed languages (e.g., French) lexicalize Path in the verb, leaving Manner implicit or expressing it in the periphery of the sentence. Such properties constrain how speakers organize spatial information to encode motion in discourse thereby reviving questions concerning the relation between language and thought. They are also of great relevance for the study of language pathology and more specifically for the study of aphasic speakers who typically present dissociations between lexical and grammatical knowledge. Despite a few crosslinguistic studies of aphasia, little is still known about universal vs. language-specific aspects of aphasics deficits. The present comparative study investigates the relative impact of language-independent and language-specific factors on how speakers represent motion events in control groups and in speakers with agrammatism in two languages, English and French, and in monolingual and bilingual contexts. The methodology combines a variety of complementary tasks (production, comprehension, non-verbal and verbal categorization), coupled with an eye-tracking paradigm measuring attention allocation. The findings show that typological properties of languages can have an impact on both linguistic organization and non-linguistic measures (i.e., categorical choices, attention allocation patterns). This research opens new crosslinguistic/typological perspectives on aphasia and contributes more generally to the debates concerning universal and language-specific dimensions of spatial cognition.ST DENIS-BU PARIS8 (930662101) / SudocSudocFranceF

Bilingual Discourse Analysis (BilDA):Research methods in second language acquisition and bilingualism – a manual for transcription, coding and analysis

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Motion events in Greek

In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to languages that cannot be adequately described in Leonard Talmy's traditional framework of Satellite-framed and Verb-framed languages, resulting in cline-based and construction-based typologies. In the current paper, we focus on Greek, which has been said to have both Satellite-framed and Verb-framed characteristics. We compare two datasets, one experimental and one corpus-based, to uncover the impact of coding decisions and the implications for the classification of Greek as compared to Satellite-framed English and Verb-framed French. We situate the results from these two datasets in a wider analysis of motion theory, and show that taking into account semantic, syntactic and morphological aspects fares better than the exclusive focus on lexicalization patterns which was common in earlier work. We demonstrate the impact of the method of data type and the coding schemes on the characterization of linguistic patterns.Depuis ces dernières années, une attention considérable est accordée aux langues qui ne peuvent être caractérisées de manière complète dans le cadre d’analyse traditionnel de Leonard Talmy et ne correspondent ni au type de langue à cadrage verbal ni à celui à cadrage satellitaire. Afin de capter cette diversité, les chercheurs ont été amenés à proposer des typologies basées sur une analyse en constructions ou à proposer des classifications en continua. La présente étude se focalise sur le grec, une langue considérée comme présentant des structures parallèles, comparée à une langue à cadrage satellitaire, l’anglais, et une langue à cadrage verbal, le français. Nous comparons deux ensembles de données, une série expérimentale et une analyse de corpus parallèle, afin d’étudier l'impact du type de données et des décisions de codage sur la classification typologique du grec. Nous situons les résultats de ces deux ensembles de données dans une analyse plus large de la théorie du mouvement et montrons qu’une analyse multidimensionnelle des aspects sémantiques, syntaxiques et morphologiques capte mieux la diversité typologique des langues qui présentent des structures mixtes ou parallèles que ne le font les modèles de lexicalisation traditionnels

Effects of age and language structure in bilingual discourse: evidence from motion verbs, lexical diversity and syntactic compactness in narratives

International audienceFor some authors, age is considered to be one of the main factors that influence discourse abilities in bilinguals (Ramscar et al., 2014), and that typological distance or differences in the grammatical features or lexicalization patterns of the two languages of the bilingual cannot be a barrier for learning processing if the target feature to be learned is processable at the given point in time (Pienemann, 2007). The present study examines the effect of age and language in the bilingual discourse, and more specifically how two age groups of bilingual children (6 and 10 year-olds), speaking two typologically different languages (Talmy, 2000), a satellite-framed (English) and a verb-framed (French) : (a) construct discourse, (b) choose their motion lexicon and (c) organize spatial information in narratives. 18 English-French bilingual children, nine 6 year-olds and nine 10 year-olds, were tested in a semi-controlled narrative task with Mayer’s (1969) Frog Where Are You? storybook in both of their languages. Discourse markers such as pauses, repairs, hesitations, omissions and code-switching, as well as the lexical and morphosyntactic choices made by the two groups of bilingual children were compared in narratives elicited by the same stimuli in the two languages of the participants. The analysis shows that discourse construction and morphosyntactic performance are subject to age influence, while lexical diversity, semantic richness and syntactic compactness largely depend on the specific linguistic, and thus typological, properties of the involved languages in bilinguals' speech

Linguistic encoding of motion events in English and French: Typological constraints on second language acquisition and agrammatic aphasia

International audienceLanguages show differences in how they encode motion in discourse: Verb-framed languages lexicalize Path in the verb, leaving Manner peripheral or implicit; Satellite-framed languages lexicalize Manner together with Path adjuncts. The present study investigates: 1) the extent to which such typological constraints affect the verbalizations of second language learners (English learners of French) and of aphasic speakers (English and French speakers with agrammatism) — who typically show dissociations between lexical and syntactic knowledge — in comparison to controls (English and French native speakers); as well as 2) the role of language-independent factors (level of acquisition, syndrome type). Despite some similarities between learners and speakers with aphasia due to language-independent factors, the findings suggest typologically constrained verbalizations in all groups, as well as diverging strategies that may reflect distinct underlying conceptualization processes

Casting an eye on motion events: Eye tracking and its implications for linguistic typology

International audienceIn the last few decades there have been several attempts to connect language use with cognitive mechanisms underlying event representation. This language-thought interface is difficult to capture and highly debated. This chapter provides an overview of empirical and experimental studies relevant to this debate, focusing on the relation between eye movements, categorization and linguistic variation in the domain of motion events. It raises theoretical and methodological questions that have important implications for linguistic typology and cognitive studies more generally