LINGUIST List 14.451

Fri Feb 14 2003

Qs: Broca's Aphasia, Inflected Adjectives

Editor for this issue: Renee Galvis <reneelinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. sps15, Student with Broca's Aphasia
2. Michael Hughes, Inflected adjectives

I have the unusual situation of having in my second language
acquisition course a student who has Broca's Aphasia. He was
encouraged by others to enroll in the course because they told him it
would help him re-learn language. I've told him, and his tutor, that
that is not the case, that that is not what SLA is about.

Today, after class he asked me how he should work on regaining his
language. (He is in his 20s, and was injured when he was 12.) Should
he focus on drilling nouns, as he forgets them, he asked? ( I think
this is what his point was--of course, it's difficult to garner his
meaning, and this point took about 20 minutes of us negotiating before
he agreed that I understood him.)

My question is this: can anyone recommend any short, relatively clear
materials on the re-acquisition of language for people with Broca's?
I don't have the time to explore this, and would like to provide any
new information I can to our Disability Services people and to my
student.

Thanks,
Suzanne Scott
Humboldt State University

*Does anybody know of a language in which adjectives, but not
determiners, are inflected for gender/case/number?
 
*Are there other languages (like English) where the Determiner but not
the adjective can be inflected? (compare 'this big book' to 'these big
books').

*Are there any (non-germanic) languages where an adjective and
determiner that modify the same head noun can have different suffixes?
(German: dies-er gross-e Mann 'this big man'.

Many thanks for your consideration.
Michael Hughes