New patterns of pathological language mixing in bilingual aphasia.

Aphasiology · 2026 · Case Report · SLP
Celine Davis, David I Ajayi, Clarissa Salas, Kathleen-Linnea Poindexter, Gerald C Imaezue

In one woman with severe Broca's aphasia in both Spanish and English, Spanish words intruded more into her English grammar (articles, prepositions) than into her content words — the opposite of what most studies report. This is one person, not a pattern.

Key findings

1

Spanish closed-class words (articles, prepositions, conjunctions) intruded into P3's English speech more often than Spanish open-class words (nouns, verbs, adjectives), a pattern the authors note is not typically reported in the bilingual aphasia literature.

2

Utterance length did not significantly predict how often language mixing occurred; mixing appeared across short and long responses alike.

3

Hesitation pauses before utterances that contained a Spanish intrusion were longer than pauses before utterances without one, though this comparison was descriptive rather than statistically tested.

MethodologyResultsClinical Relevance

Single-blind randomized controlled trial. Sixty-four participants were randomized across two intervention arms and assessed at twelve weeks for the primary outcome…

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