Semantic Jargonaphasia: A Taiwanese-Japanese bilingual case

Abstract

In this paper, we intend to explore the nature of semantic Jargonaphasia in a Taiwanese-Japanese bilingual who was fluent in both languages prior to illness. Even now, aside from his jargon phrases, he is still fluent in both languages. We, therefore, conducted a series of neurolinguistic tests to see if a pattern can be found regarding his use of the two languages and so as to determine the degree of damage with respect to his language functions. Although jargon would come out on occasions when the tests were conducted in Taiwanese, we discovered that his jargon involved code-switching in that the jargon came out in Japanese even though the tests in progress were in Taiwanese. This was particularly true when testing his abilities for naming. He had very little trouble in pointing, however, which means that his comprehension was probably intact in both languages. Paraphasias of this nature were not infrequent when the target language was Taiwanese, which is his native tongue, but became very frequent when the target language was Japanese, which he used to handle very well and can still do so other than his semantic jargon. We are, thus, inclined to believe that the amount of jargon in a bilingual depends very much on which language is the patient's first (or possibly native) language: the second or nonnative language will most likely show up more often as jargon than the first or native language notwithstanding that further evidence is needed for this claim. The patient was admitted to the VA Hospital in Taichung due to internal capsule hemorrhage involving the left putamen. It will be of significance to theorize how this subcortical lesion caused semantic jargon.