Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Seminar für Englische Philologie), course: Bilingualism - Multilingualism, language: English, abstract: Brain diseases and disorders are fields of neurology that have still not been fully examined. Neurologists are constantly facing new mysteries concerning the processes that take place on in the brain. Especially the aspect of language offers a wide spectrum for research, from the medical point of view as well as from the linguistic one. As I will concentrate on the aspect of language, or more precisely the affection of the faculty of language, which means its production and comprehension, the affection aphasia offers a good example. Aphasia is a very complex problem, and it is still not totally examined by scientific researchers and brain specialists. The field of aphasia includes many different kinds of aphasia, different clinical pictures, symptoms, and recovery patterns. At any rate, the patients have difficulties in producing or understanding language, although to different degrees. Aphasia in bilingual and multilingual persons is a field of neurology that deserves further research. It offers new aspects to the research on brain activity, and it offers the opportunity of approaching the problem of aphasia in a new way. Nevertheless, there are different, one word even contradicting theories from specialists all over the world concerning the impact of aphasia on speakers of more than one language and the reasons for it, some of which will be presented in this research paper. As this research paper is written in order to take a closer look at the problems with language in aphasia, it is inevitable to present some medical facts and theories in order to explain the impact of aphasia on the production, understanding and recovery of language. I will start with an introduction to the physical structure of the brain, especially on the areas that are associated with language. Further on, a definition of aphasia, its causes, and a description of the different types of aphasia and their specific symptoms will be given. As the process of recovery is extremely interesting and the observation of it important because it allows us to draw conclusions on how the brain works, a section of the research paper will be devoted to this point. Moreover, the case studies of bilingual and multilingual aphasic patients offer interesting aspects for linguistic and medical research because of the possibility of understanding how language is stored in the brain, and whether different languages are stored in different parts of the brain, perhaps even in the other hemisphere.

Aphasia is a language disorder in which there is an impairment (but not loss) of speech and of comprehension of speech. Depending on the area and extent of the damage, someone suffering from aphasia may be able to speak but not write, or vice versa, or display any of a wide variety of other deficiencies in language comprehension and production. This book will review grammatical world class processing by aphasic individuals and bilingual aphasia, each of which is essential to an understanding of the topic. This book will also examine the role of the right hemisphere for language processing and successful therapeutic interventions in aphasic patients. Furthermore, new findings for the understanding of neural processes involved in the recovery of language functions in aphasic subjects are discussed. This book also expands and improves upon the currently accepted methodology used in the diagnosis of dementia, particularly when aphasia is a core symptom. Finally, dual-route models and right-hemispheric accounts are examined to predict comprehension of figurative language in healthy speakers as well as in patients with language disorders.

This volume presents a broad overview of current research and thought on aphasia in individuals who speak more than one language. The range of topics covered, and their in-depth treatment, should be of interest to researchers, clinicians, and students.

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1.0, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, language: English, abstract: At present, approximately two thirds of the world's population is bilingual. Globalisation, migration and decreasing gaps between different cultures and countries make the ability to speak two or more languages necessary, and, consequently, the number of bilingual people increases steadily. The ever-increasing, significant number of people speaking two or more languages has caused high interest, among psychologists, educators and also psycholinguists, in the cognitive and cerebral study of the bilingual. An important part of the research is the study of bilingual aphasia, meaning the loss of the capability to comprehend and/or speak a language, either totally or in part, which is a result of brain injuries often caused by diseases, such as strokes or tumours, war injuries or car accidents (cf. Myers-Scotton 2006: 317). Studying bilingual aphasia and its impacts on the bilingual's different languages contributes to finding an answer to the question of how two or more languages are organised and represented in the brain. In so doing, this field of research posits hypotheses concerning the cerebral organisation of language in general and the parts of the brain which function for its production. After having defined the terms bilingualism and bilingual, which is a necessary prerequisite to avoid confusing ambiguities in the following text, this essay will illustrate the most common patterns of language recovery and their relative incidence. This illustration will be followed by an overview of early suggested and attempted explanations for the questions about which brain mechanisms are responsible for the various patterns, why a certain patient shows a certain recovery pattern and why one language in some cases remains more intact than the other, or why sometimes one is preserved, while the oth

"Non-fluent Aphasia in a Multilingual World" is an up-to-date introduction to the language of patients with non-fluent aphasia. Recent research in languages other than English has challenged our old descriptions of aphasia syndromes: while their patterns can be recognized across languages, the structure of each language has a profound effect on the symptoms of aphasic speech. However, the basic linguistic concepts needed to understand these effects in languages other than English have rarely been part of the training of the clinician."Non-fluent Aphasia in a Multilingual World" introduces these concepts plainly and concretely, in the context of dozens of examples from the narratives and conversations of patients speaking most of the major languages of Europe, North America and Asia. Linguistic and clinical terms are carefully defined and kept as theory neutral as possible."Non-Fluent Aphasia in a Multilingual World" is especially useful for speech-language pathologists whose patients are immigrants and guestworkers, and for the clinician who must deal creatively with the challenges of providing aphasia diagnosis and therapy in a multicultural, multidialectical setting.