Early Symptoms of Language Disorders in Bilingual Parkinson's Disease Patients: Microstructural and Social-Pragmatic Narrative Elements.
Saved in:
| Title: | Early Symptoms of Language Disorders in Bilingual Parkinson's Disease Patients: Microstructural and Social-Pragmatic Narrative Elements. |
|---|---|
| Authors: | Savaş, Merve1 merve.savas@atlas.edu.tr, Beğen, Senanur Kahraman1,2 |
| Source: | Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research. May2026, Vol. 69 Issue 5, p2243-2267. 25p. |
| Subject Terms: | *Data analysis, *Multilingualism, *Language disorders, *Speech evaluation, *Comparative studies, *Psychological tests, Cross-sectional method, Kruskal-Wallis Test, Parkinson's disease, Descriptive statistics, Mann Whitney U Test, Analysis of covariance, Linguistics, Physiological aspects of speech, Statistics, Analysis of variance, Data analysis software, Symptoms |
| Abstract: | Purpose: This study examined how bilingualism influences early linguistic and pragmatic alterations in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (IPD), integrating groupbased and factorial analyses to identify early communicative markers. Method: Sixty-five participants (13 bilingual IPD, 14 monolingual IPD, 14 bilingual healthy, 24 monolingual healthy) produced Turkish narratives based on Frog, Where Are You? Group comparisons (Kruskal–Wallis H and Mann–Whitney U tests) were performed across four groups for microstructural indices (mean length of utterance in morphemes [MLU-M], type–token ratio [TTR], morphological errors, verbal fragmentations) and pragmatic markers (enrichment, exclamation, uncertainty, metaphor, emotional terms). Supplementary 2x2 factorial analyses (disease: IPD vs. healthy; bilingualism: bilingual vs. monolingual) were conducted to examine main and interaction effects, with acoustic parameters (fundamental frequency [F0] and intensity ranges) included for prosodic evaluation. Results: Group comparisons revealed that bilingual IPD speakers exhibited the lowest MLU-M (p = .012), highest morphological error (p = .036), and greatest verbal fragmentation (p < .001). Pragmatically, they produced fewer enrichment expressions (p = .041) but more exclamations than monolingual IPD participants (p < .001). Acoustic analysis showed reduced but still broader F0 and intensity ranges in bilingual IPD speakers relative to monolingual IPD speakers (p = .012, p = .047). The 2x2 factorial analysis confirmed significant main effects of disease on MLU-M and TTR (p < .05) and Disease x Bilingualism interactions for morphological errors and enrichment (p < .05), demonstrating that bilingualism amplified morphosyntactic instability but mitigated prosodic flattening. Conclusions: Early-stage IPD involves concurrent microstructural and pragmatic decline, with bilingualism exerting both protective and burdening effects. Crucially, the reduction of enrichment expressions (p < .05) emerged as an early and sensitive indicator of pragmatic deterioration in bilingual Parkinson’s disease, linking executive-control demands with sociopragmatic incompleteness. Discourse-level analyses combining group-based and factorial approaches thus provide a refined framework for identifying subclinical linguistic–pragmatic changes beyond conventional motor or lexical measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
| Copyright of Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research is the property of American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.) | |
| Database: | Education Research Complete |
Be the first to leave a comment!
