The need for awareness of aphasia symptoms in different languages

Abstract

The likelihood of encountering aphasic patients who speak a language other than that of the clinic in which they are assessed is rapidly increasing to the point of becoming commonplace. It is therefore more important than ever to become aware of the manifestations of aphasia in languages other than one's own. A number of factors conspire to influence the symptoms in each language, from the phonological and morphosyntactic structure of the language to the frequency of obligatory contexts, the importance of the form for the derivation of meaning, and the degree of redundancy. Therefore, the same underlying deficit may cause different surface manifestations in different languages. It is important to recognize these different manifestations as language-specific instantiations of the same underlying cause rather than symptoms of different types of aphasia.