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Measuring sentence types and complexity of spontaneous discourse productions by Cantonese-speakers with traumatic brain injury in Guangzhou: A pilot study

Michael Siu-Wai Chan1, Anthony Pak Hin Kong2* and Dustin Kai-Yan Lau1
  • 1 The Polytechnic University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR China
  • 2 University of Central Florida, United States

Introduction Previous investigations on sentence production in English-speaking individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) yielded mixed conclusions in their findings. While some studies suggested comparable sentence complexity between TBI and control speakers (Coelho, 2002; Liles et. al., 1989; Mentis and Prutting, 1987), others reported more syntactic and lexical errors, reduced sentence complexity (Coelho, 2005; Glosser & Deser, 1990), erroneous word order transpositions, as well as verb tense and agreement errors (Peach and Schaude, 1986) in TBI production. These contradicting findings could possibly be due to different languages being studied or different measures of sentence complexity being employed. Albeit the significant linguistic differences between Chinese and English, there is currently a lack of studies addressing the characteristics of sentence production and/or symptoms in Cantonese-speaking individuals with TBI. Aims The purposes of this study were: (1) to compare between the sentence complexity of spoken discourse produced by Cantonese speakers with TBI and matched controls; (2) to examine the different distributions of different sentence types (based on their syntactic relationships in spoken discourse) among speakers with TBI and controls; and (3) to determine the effect of language impairment on the frequency of occurrence of grammatical errors in sentences of TBI discourse. Methods Three Cantonese-speaking participants with TBI in Mainland China (Guangzhou) participated. Their mean age and years of education were 35 and 10 years, respectively. Based on the Cantonese version of the Western Aphasia Battery (Yiu, 1992), they were all diagnosed with mild expressive aphasia, with an average aphasia quotient of 90.7/100. Three control speakers with matched age-range and education background were also recruited. Language samples containing two story narratives, including “The tortoise and the hare” and “Cry wolf”, and one spontaneous speech sample describing an important event in ones’ lives were elicited from each speaker. The orthographic transcriptions were parsed using Quantitative Production Analysis adapted for Cantonese (QPA; Law, 2001) to estimate the average sentence complexity as a measure of the number of syntactic levels of all utterances across different tasks. Next, with reference to an adapted framework from the combination of works from Matthews and Yip (2013), Tang (2015), and Cheung (2007), each sentence was classified as simple or composite sentences. Distribution of different verb chains were also counted. Result and Discussion As displayed in Table 1, the TBI group tended to be lower in sentence complexity (mean of 3.35 in TBI vs. 4.33 in control speakers). The TBI discourse also contained fewer composite sentences than controls. Lower variety of types of verb chains was also observed in the TBI group as compared to the normal controls. We proposed that the more refined and linguistically-based measures used in the present study were more sensitive in identifying the reduction and/or deficits in syntactic complexity of TBI production. Interestingly, the two groups were comparable in their number of syntactic errors. Further analyses involving a larger sample size is in progress.

Figure 1
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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Jie Zhu and clinicians in the Speech Therapy Department of the Guangdong Work Injury Rehabilitation Hospital (Guangzhou, China) for their help in subject recruitment and testing.

References

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Keywords: sentence production, Sentence complexity, Traumatic brain injury (TBI), discourse analysis, Cantonese

Conference: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting , Baltimore, United States, 5 Nov - 7 Nov, 2017.

Presentation Type: poster presentation

Topic: Aphasia

Citation: Chan M, Kong A and Lau D (2019). Measuring sentence types and complexity of spontaneous discourse productions by Cantonese-speakers with traumatic brain injury in Guangzhou: A pilot study
. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 55th Annual Meeting . doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2017.223.00084

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Received: 14 Apr 2017; Published Online: 25 Jan 2019.

* Correspondence: Prof. Anthony Pak Hin Kong, University of Central Florida, Orlando, United States, akong@hku.hk