A functional approach to telegraphic style utterances: contribution to the study of the relation between thought and language

• Grant number: 19/24150-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: March 02, 2020
• End date: February 26, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Rosana Do Carmo Novaes Pinto
• Grantee: Arnaldo Rodrigues de Lima
• Supervisor: Mathilde Eveline Keizer
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Vienna, Austria
• Associated to the scholarship: 17/26777-2 - A neurolinguistic study on telegraphic style utterances in Aphasia: the challenge of understanding inter- and intra-case variations, BP.DR

Abstract

This BEPE proposal is related to the project: "A neurolinguistic study on telegraphic style utterances in aphasia: the challenge of understanding the inter- and intracases variation". It compounds, therefore, a broader research held at Institute of Language Studies of Campinas University and it is sheltered by Group of Language Studies on Aging and Pathologies (IEL/UNICAMP/GELEP). Agrammatism is one of the most studied types of aphasia in the field of Neurolinguistics and it has been described, more specifically, by the presence of a telegraphic speech. The term agrammatism, either if taken as a syndrome or as a symptom, appoints the belief that grammatical aspects are severely impacted, and emphasizes losses in verbal language, especially absences of functional elements, such as: prepositions, articles, conjunctions as well as the inflectional, and the derivational morphology. Traditionally, the instability with the grammatical resources has been explained and approached by different hypotheses grounded on formal linguistic theories. However, the most recent studies are scrutinizing the phenomenon under a psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics approaches which consider, overall, the process involved in the utterance production. These perspectives postulate that grammatical and cognitive aspects are strictly interconnected. Considering this theoretical context, this research proposal aims to investigate the relationship between thought and language (or still, language and cognition) through the analyses of telegraphic style utterances produced by non-fluent aphasic individuals. The main contribution of this proposal is in the attempting to articulate the Functional Discourse Grammar assumptions with those theoretical-methodological aspects that guide the investigation held by the enunciative-discursive Neurolinguistics - which is grounded on socio-historic-cultural approaches. Finally, we consider that this articulation enables an innovative approach to better understand the linguistic-cognitive functioning both in normal states and in pathological cases. (AU)