Cognitive Aphasiology A Usage Based Approach To Language In Aphasia

Aphasia is the most common acquired language disorder in adults, resulting from brain damage, usually stroke. This book firstly explains how aphasia research and clinical practice remain heavily influenced by rule-based, generative theory, and summarizes key shortcomings with this approach. Crucially, it demonstrates how an alternative — the constructivist, usage-based approach — can provide a more plausible theoretical perspective for characterizing language in aphasia. After detailing rigorous transcription and segmentation methods, it presents constructivist, usage-based analyses of spontaneous speech from people with various aphasia ‘types’, challenging a clear-cut distinction between lexis and grammar, emphasizing the need to consider whole-form storage and frequency effects beyond single words, and indicating that individuals fall along a continuum of spoken language capability rather than differing categorically by aphasia ‘type’. It provides original insight into aphasia — with wide-reaching implications for clinical practice —, while equally highlighting how the study of aphasia is important for the development of Cognitive Linguistics.

This groundbreaking work brings together leading scientist-practitioners to review what is known about aphasia and to relate current knowledge to treatment. Integrating traditional linguistic formulations with new insights derived from cognitive neuroscience, this volume explores the neuropsychological bases of both normal and pathologic language. It reflects an understanding of brain structure and function based on new developments in connectionist modeling and functional neuroimaging.

The Handbook of Usage-Based Linguistics The Handbook of Usage-Based Linguistics is the first edited volume to provide a comprehensive, authoritative, and interdisciplinary view of usage-based theory in linguistics. Contributions by an international team of established and emerging scholars discuss the application of used-based approaches in phonology, morphosyntax, psycholinguistics, language variation and change, language development, cognitive linguistics, and other subfields of linguistics. Unprecedented in depth and scope, this groundbreaking work of scholarship addresses all major theoretical and methodological aspects of usage-based linguistics while offering diverse perspectives and key insights into theory, history, and methodology. Throughout the text, in-depth essays explore up-to-date methodologies, emerging approaches, new technologies, and cutting-edge research in usage-based linguistics in many languages and subdisciplines. Topics include used-based approaches to subfields such as anthropological linguistics, computational linguistics, statistical analysis, and corpus linguistics. Covering the conceptual foundations, historical development, and future directions of usage-based theory, The Handbook of Usage-Based Linguistics is a must-have reference work for advanced students and scholars in anthropological linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, corpora analysis, and other subfields of linguistics.

This is a second edition of the highly popular volume used by clinicians and students in the assessment and intervention of aphasia. It provides both a theoretical and practical reference to cognitive neuropsychological approaches for speech-language pathologists and therapists working with people with aphasia. Having evolved from the activity of a group of clinicians working with aphasia, it interprets the theoretical literature as it relates to aphasia, identifying available assessments and published intervention studies, and draws together a complex literature for the practicing clinician. The opening section of the book outlines the cognitive neuropsychological approach, and explains how it can be applied to assessment and interpretation of language processing impairments. Part 2 describes the deficits which can arise from impairments at different stages of language processing, and also provides an accessible guide to the use of assessment tools in identifying underlying impairments. The final part of the book provides systematic summaries of therapies reported in the literature, followed by a comprehensive synopsis of the current themes and issues confronting clinicians when drawing on cognitive neuropsychological theory in planning and evaluating intervention. This new edition has been updated and expanded to include the assessment and treatment of verbs as well as nouns, presenting recently published assessments and intervention studies. It also includes a principled discussion on how to conduct robust evaluations of intervention within the clinical and research settings. The book has been written by clinicians with hands-on experience. Like its predecessor, it will remain an invaluable resource for clinicians and students of speech-language pathology and related disciplines, in working with people with aphasia.

This is the first single-authored book to attempt to bridge the gap between aphasia research and the rehabilitation of patients with this language disorder. Studies of the deficits underlying aphasia and the practice of aphasia rehabilitation have often diverged, and the relationship between theory and practice in aphasiology is loose. The goal of this book is to help close this gap by making explicit the relationship between what is to be rehabilitated and how to rehabilitate it. Early chapters cover the history of aphasia and its therapy from Broca's discoveries to the 1970s, and provide a description of the classic aphasia syndromes. The middle section describes the contribution of cognitive neuropsychology and the treatment models it has inspired. It includes discussion of the relationship between the treatment approach and the functional model upon which it is based. The final chapters deal with aphasia therapy. After providing a sketch of a working theory of aphasia, Basso describes intervention procedures for disorders resulting from damage at the lexical and sentence levels as well as a more general conversation-based intervention for severe aphasics. Anna Basso has run an aphasia rehabilitation unit for more than thirty years. In this book she draws on her considerable experience to provide researchers, clinicians, and their students and trainees in speech-language pathology and therapy, aphasiology, and neuropsychology with comprehensive coverage of the evolution and state of the art of aphasia research and therapy.

This book covers different aspects of speech and language pathology and it offers a fairly comprehensive overview of the complexity and the emerging importance of the field, by identifying and re-examining, from different perspectives, a number of standard assumptions in clinical linguistics and in cognitive sciences. The papers encompass different issues in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, discussed with respect to deafness, stuttering, child acquisition and impairments, SLI, William’s Syndrome deficit, fluent aphasia and agrammatism. The interdisciplinary complexity of the language/cognition interface is also explored by focusing on empirical data from different languages: Bantu, Catalan, Dutch, English, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. The aim of this volume is to stress the growing importance of the theoretical and methodological linguistic tools developed in this area; to bring under scrutiny assumptions taken for granted in recent analyses, which may not be so obvious as they may seem; to investigate how even apparently minimal choices in the description of phenomena may affect the form and complexity of the language/cognition interface.

The Oxford Handbook of Aphasia and Language Disorders' integrates neural and cognitive perspectives, providing a comprehensive overview of the complex language and communication impairments that arise in individuals with acquired brain damage.

Linguistics and Aphasia is a major study of recent developments in applying psycholinguistics and pragmatics to the study of acquired language disorders (aphasia) and their remediation. Psycholinguistic analyses of aphasia interpret disorders in terms of damaged modules and processes within what was once a normal language system. These analyses have progressed to the point that they now routinely provide a model-based rationalefor planning patient therapy. Through a series of case studies, the authors show how the psycholinguistic analysis of aphasia can be assessed for its effectiveness in clinical practice. Pragmatic approaches to the study of aphasia are of more recent origin. Ruth Lesser and Lesley Milroy evaluate their considerable significance to the study of aphasia and their relevance to practical issues of diagnosis and treatment. Controversial analysis, in particular, offers a fruitful and productive framework within which to assess the functional adequacy of the language used by aphasic speakers in everyday contexts.