Implications of Research on Bilingual and Polyglot Aphasia :: Essays Papers

Implications of Research on Bilingual and Polyglot Aphasia Research conducted on bilingual and polyglot aphasics has brought interest into the field of linguistics mainly because of its constituent to L2 research, especially in providing explanations for the organization of distinct rows in the brain. Since there exists much(prenominal) a variation between individual cases, the most important social function to come out of this research is a set of factors involved in these aphasia cases as well as theories emerging from research. Some of these factors include the language environment in which the aphasic recovers, influence of the L1, language mixing, brain handedness for language, and the question of whether structurally similar languages follow a similar bod of deficits and recovery. The main pathological implicationdetermining what is missing or place inside a bilingual or polyglot aphasics brainalso shares importance with determining how different languages are str uctured in the brain. The history of research on bilingual aphasia into the 20th light speed begins with the work of two Frenchmen at the end of the 19th century by the names of Ribot and Pitres. Ribot wrote his paper, Les maladies de la memoire, in 1881 (Lebrun 12). Pitres, using seven polyglot aphasic patients as the basis for his work, published Etude sur laphasie des polyglottes in 1895 (Lebrun 11). Ribots conclusion about recovery in polyglot aphasics is know as Ribots rule, which basically states that L1 will recover more than every L2s. Pitres rule, built off of Ribots, takes a different approach in formula that the language used most often pre-morbidly(i.e. before the onset of aphasia) is the angiotensin converting enzyme which will be regained the fullest, irregard slight of that language being an L1 or L2. diverse individual cases have cropped up which match both theories, so upgrade research has attempted to explain variances in recovery of specific languages by dint of other means. Also, after Pitres, the research focus became more one of examining deficits in syntax and morphology in an attempt to explain brain construction, and less of an analysis of interesting language recovery in these patients. Examining Theoretical Issues some other important component of the study of polyglot aphasia came with the distinction between fuse and co-ordinate bilingualism, as examined by Lambert and Fillenbaum (1959). Although the state of being a bilingual is a hazy one, the distinction between the two concepts comes with the scope of acquisition.