Processing of classifiers and aspect markers for fluent and non-fluent aphasic Cantonese speakers

Abstract

The study investigated the processing patterns of classifiers and aspect markers for 18 native Cantonese speakers with fluent and non-fluent types of aphasia using tasks with contextual constraints, i.e. a cloze task and a grammaticality judgment task. Stimuli for eliciting classifiers and aspect markers had undergone processes of matching of psycholinguistic variables (age of acquisition, familiarity and imageability) and validating by different groups of normal Cantonese speakers, resulting in a total of 25 stimuli pairs presenting to the participants with aphasia. It was found that significantly better performances were found: (1) on aspect markers than classifiers (at group level and individual level); (2) for the fluent aphasic group than the non-fluent one (though both groups showed difficulty in morpheme processing); and (3) on the judgment than the cloze task, with (1) being consistent with a number of previous findings for Chinese and (2) being consistent with cross-linguistic studies. Adding to findings for tasks, two significant interaction effects were also found between speaker groups and task and between morpheme class and task. These may imply vital effects of task nature on the performance on different morpheme classes for speakers with different types of aphasia.