Acquired dyslexia affecting the processing of final consonant in French: a morphophonological account

Abstract

This study reports the performance of two French speaking aphasics presenting an impairment in processing gender inflections in adjectives and number inflections in verbs. According to the linguistic analysis proposed by Paradis and El Fenne [1] adopted in this study, two types of verbs and adjectives must be distinguished in French: verbs and adjectives ending with a floating consonant (FC) and those ending with a permanent consonant (PC) in their underlying representation. According to this proposal, the derivation of the feminine form in adjectives and of the plural form in verbs is more complex in FC than in PC word types because a morphological rule is required only in FC words. Two hypotheses were posited: (a) error rates should be higher in FC than in PC stimuli and (b) the error pattern in the two stimuli types should be different because of the contrast in their underlying representation. Results in reading and repetition confirmed both hypotheses. The discussion shows that previous linguistic proposals failed to capture the link between gender inflections in adjectives and number inflections in verbs. It is concluded that both patients suffered from a morphophonological deficit that impaired the processing of inflections in words ending with a FC.