Cross-linguistic asymmetries in language production and code-switching patterns in bilingual aphasia

Balasubramanian, A., Hofweber, J. and Bose, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0193-5292 (2025) Cross-linguistic asymmetries in language production and code-switching patterns in bilingual aphasia. Cognitive Neuropsychology. ISSN 1464-0627 doi: 10.1080/02643294.2025.2573171

Abstract/Summary

This study investigates the underlying causes of cross-linguistic asymmetries in noun and verb production in a Hindi-English bilingual with severe Broca’s aphasia (RZ), focusing on the influence of task demands, morphological richness, and code-switching. We compared RZ’s performance on narrative and single word production tasks (noun naming, verb naming, repetition) with that of a non-brain-damaged bilingual control (BC) as well as analysed the frequency and type of code-switching to explore how these patterns reflect aphasic impairments in typologically distinct languages. RZ exhibited features of agrammatism in both languages, with more pronounced deficits in English. A clear grammatical class asymmetry emerged: RZ produced more verbs than nouns in Hindi, likely supported by Hindi’s rich morphological system, while English showed the opposite pattern, reflecting its limited morphological complexity. Task effects were evident, narratives elicited more verbs in Hindi, while naming tasks showed comparable noun-verb production. In English, consistent noun–verb asymmetries across tasks indicated persistent verb retrieval difficulties. Code-switching analysis revealed that RZ engaged in frequent but rigid switching, limited to English noun insertions within a Hindi matrix. This structured pattern, including the use of bilingual compound verbs, suggests a compensatory strategy to overcome a lexico-semantic deficit in Hindi and morphosyntactic challenges in English. These findings underscore the importance of language typology and task demands in shaping aphasic symptomatology in bilinguals.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/125018
Identification Number/DOI	10.1080/02643294.2025.2573171
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Clinical Language Sciences
Publisher	Taylor & Francis
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