The role of the particle "le" in the speech of an aphasic individual - a study of language reconstruction in conversational contexts

• Grant number: 12/07941-2
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): July 01, 2012
• Effective date (End): June 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics
• Principal researcher: Edwiges Maria Morato
• Grantee: Nathalia Do Nascimento Epifânio
• Home Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This study is aimed at describing and analysing the linguistic and pragmatic functions of the verbal element "le", which emerges from the speech of an aphasic individual, EC, participant at AC (Aphasia Centre), situated at the University ofCampinas (UNICAMP).Something which draws attention in the speech of EC is the massive occurrence of the particle "le", generally before the evocation of open-class words and, sometimes,in place of closed-class words (such as articles and pronouns), or even as part of open-class words (such as nouns, adjectives and verbs), which results in the production of morphophonological paraphasias (such as "lemorado" instead of "namorado").In this project, we aim to theoretically and methodologically deepen the study of the empirical findings obtained in the previous research, which showed that the element "le" is multifunctional: it has, at once, an interactional/communicational feature(acting as oral prompting for speech implementation) and a reconstruction feature(filling some linguistic categories, which are lacking or have been changed due to deficits in language processing).Our challenge at the Master's degree level is to develop the hypothesis that the presence of "le" in the speech of EC, far from being a simple excrescence imposed by aphasia, is a factor in grammatical and discursive reorganisation, in which various aspects (linguistic, pragmatic, textual, communicational, contextual) stand out.