Impairment caused by non-fluent aphasia often results in the omission and substitution of inflectional markers. Cross-linguistic work has revealed differential patterns of aphasic impairment across languages. This study aims to determine how non-fluent aphasia is manifested in English-based Caribbean creole languages, namely Jamaican Creole English (JCE) and Guyanese Creole (GC). The use of inflectional morphology is variable in English-based Caribbean creole languages. Therefore, in aphasic creole speech, it is difficult to ascertain the status of a grammatical omission as a valid creole feature or as a sign of impairment. I argue that Seymour’s et al. (1998) contrastive-noncontrastive schema can be useful for differentiating between normal and disordered creole features. The data in this study was obtained from a creole speaker with aphasic impairments. The data was later transcribed and analyzed. The results of this study appear to suggest that grammatical markers may form a hierarchy of susceptibility to aphasic impairment. Tense, agreement and aspectual markers along with auxiliaries and copulas appear to be more susceptible to impairment in disordered creole speech than plural markers, personal and demonstrative pronouns and articles.

Non-fluent aphasia is a language disorder caused by stroke and other types of severe brain trauma. This disorder can affect an individual's ability to produce grammatical words and suffixes in different ways depending on the language that they speak. This study seeks to determine how non-fluent aphasia affects English-based Caribbean creole languages, namely Jamaican Creole English (JCE) and Guyanese Creole (GC). Grammatical suffixes are optional in English-based Caribbean creole languages; therefore, it is difficult to determine whether or not an omitted grammatical suffix is a valid creole feature or a sign of impairment. I argue that Seymour’s et al. (1998) contrastive-noncontrastive schema can be useful for differentiating between normal and disordered creole features. The data in this study was obtained from a creole speaker with aphasic impairments. The data was later transcribed and analyzed. The results of this study appear to suggest that certain grammatical markers are more prone error than others in aphasic creole speech. Markers that carry tense, agreement and aspectual information along with auxiliaries and copulas appear to be more susceptible to impairment than plural markers, personal and demonstrative pronouns and articles.

Master of Science (MSc)

Thesis