Abstract
In this chapter, the authors demonstrate how syntactic analysis combines with interactional methods to form a powerful tool in understanding the language produced by persons with dementia. They discuss the relationship between syntactic structure and interactional behavior in conversations. Specifically, they present two cases of persons with dementia exhibiting great syntactic impairment symptomatic of late-stage dementia. To help caregivers, practitioners, and novice researchers gain a better understanding of the linguistic effects of both dementia and co-participant responses, they examine incidences of speaker error in which co-participants respond to impaired syntax as making sense and the participants with dementia are able to employ better communicative language, if only briefly. From these observations, the authors posit that co-participants’ linguistic and interactional choices may allow syntactic and interactional competency to emerge during interactional collaborations and, as such, serve as possible models of (best) communication practices applicable to home, clinic, and research settings.
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Notes
- 1.
We chose the LGSWE benchmark corpus to be representative of the syntactic patterns reflective of non-impaired conversational participants as it contains over 3.9 million words in the British English conversation sub-corpus and approximately 2.5 million words in the American English conversation sub-corpus. We compared the LGSWE conversation data to our corpus of 11,482 words obtained from 20 conversations between persons with dementia and their non-impaired co-participants.
- 2.
The most frequently occurring ten verbs in the LGSWE conversation corpus, presented here in descending frequency, are (1) say, (2) get, (3) go, (4) know, (5) think, (6) see, (7) make, (8) come, (9) take, and (10) want (Biber et al., 1999, p. 375). The most frequently occurring ten verbs in the talk of persons with dementia in our corpus, in descending frequency, are (1) have, (2) know, (3) get, (4) come, (5) go, (6) think, (7) do, (8) take, (9) want, (10) make/give (Stickle & Wanner, 2017, p. 53). Verbs shared by each are emboldened.
- 3.
Reports that persons with dementia have difficulty with closed class grammatical items are few. Alegria et al. (2013) showed that preposition use in the talk of persons in moderate stages of Alzheimer’s disease were lower than non-impaired persons, but this study concerns comparative usage, not selection error. Meteyard and Patterson (2009) discuss the debate on effects of dementia on closed class retrieval while reporting evidence in their data indicating possible difficulties in preposition selection in the talk of persons diagnosed with semantic dementia.
- 4.
Also referred to as recurrent perseveration, e.g., Bayles, Tomoeda, Kaszniak, Stern, and Eagans (1985).
- 5.
This area is composed of premotor, posterior parietal and frontal-parietal opercula cortices, right inferior frontal, superior temporal cortices, and basal ganglia.
- 6.
This evidence supports the view that syntactic evidence is housed in the lemma stratum (Pickering & Branigan, 1998; Roelofs, 1992) and the psycholinguistic model positing that language production relies on a three stage process: (1) a prelinguistic phase, (2) a phase of linguistic formulation that is aligned with and fitted to the intended interlocutor prior to linguistic expression, and (3) linguistic expression (Dell, 1986; Levelt, 1989; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999).
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Recommended Readings
Guendouzi, J., & Muller, N. (2006). Approaches to discourse in dementia. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hamilton, H. E. (2005). Conversations with an Alzheimer’s patient: An interactional sociolinguistic study. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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Foundational Studies
Davis, B. H. (Ed.). (2005). Alzheimer talk, text and context: Enhancing communication. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Emerging Research
Banovic, S., Zunic, L. J., & Sinanovic, O. (2018). Communication difficulties as a result of dementia. Materia Socio-Medica, 30(3), 221–224.
Davis, B. H., & Maclagan, M. (2018). Narrative and ageing: Exploring the range of narrative types in dementia conversation. European Journal of English Studies, 22(1), 76–90.
Leiros, B. G., Méndez, L. P., Huerta, M. Z., Eguinoa, L. M., García-Bragado, F., Alvarez, T. T., & Larreta, J. R. (2018). Prevalence and concordance between the clinical and the post-mortem diagnosis of dementia in a psychogeriatric clinic. Neurología (English Edition), 33(1), 13–17.
McGilton, K. S., Rochon, E., Sidani, S., Shaw, A., Ben-David, B. M., Saragosa, M., … Pichora-Fuller, M. K. (2017). Can we help care providers communicate more effectively with persons having dementia living in long-term care homes? American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease & Other Dementias, 32(1), 41–50.
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Stickle, T., Wanner, A. (2020). Making Sense of Syntactic Error in Conversations Between Persons with Dementia and Their Non-impaired Co-participants. In: Stickle, T. (eds) Learning from the Talk of Persons with Dementia. The Language of Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43977-4_6
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