Noun and Verb Impairment in Single-Word Naming and Discourse Production in Mandarin-English Bilingual Adults with Aphasia.
Ran Li, Swathi Kiran
PMID 38344709WHAT IT FOUND
Mandarin-English bilingual adults with aphasia named nouns more accurately than verbs in both languages.
In connected speech, they used more nouns than verbs overall, with the difference stronger in English. Naming scores related to discourse word choice.
Key findings
01In single-word naming, Mandarin-English bilingual adults with aphasia named nouns more accurately than verbs, and this pattern was similar in Mandarin and English.
02In connected speech, participants produced more nouns than verbs overall, but the noun advantage was significant in English and not in Mandarin, and it varied by task.
03Single-word naming scores were associated with word choice in connected speech: people who named objects more accurately than actions also produced more nouns than verbs in discourse.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only 12 participants, so the patterns may not hold for other Mandarin-English bilingual adults with aphasia. There was no matched Mandarin-English bilingual control group, so the researchers could not compare the aphasia group with typical bilingual performance. The participants varied in aphasia severity and premorbid language proficiency, which can affect language performance in either language. Imageability and familiarity ratings from English were used as approximate values for Mandarin items, so the semantic explanation for the verb-noun difference is uncertain. The study examined spoken word production only, so it does not describe writing, reading, or broader discourse coherence.
Declared interests
The first author reported no potential conflict of interest. The second author is a scientific consultant for The Learning Corporation, formerly Constant Therapy, but the paper states there is no scientific overlap with this project.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that the noun advantage in connected speech is the same in Mandarin and English. The proportion of nouns was significantly higher than verbs in English but not Mandarin, and it changed across tasks.