Corpora as norms in language pathology

Elisabeth Ahlsén

Department of Linguistics

Göteborg University

Corpora as norms in language pathology What is ”pathological”, ”normal”? Lack of data and information on everyday

language use Corpora as reference material Development of pragmatics, language in context

and interaction WHO norms Diagnosis, remediation, evaluation Demands on corpora Examples of use of corpora

What is ”pathological” - ”normal”? Speech and language pathology (research,

clinical work): describe, understand, diagnose, explain, remediate, evaluate remediation

”Normality” Intuition Test results Additional data (lesion, disease, other symptoms)

Or… Is there any problem? If there is, what can be done? How can we see if we succeeded?

Lack of data and information about everyday language use Almost no such information in speech

pathology Necessary for treating most kinds of

language and communication disorders

Pragmatics, context, interaction Development of research in pragmatics,

spoken language interaction, body communication

Has to become integrated in language and communication pathology

Trends in language pathology Pragmatic tests and scales Conversation analysis Narration -quantitative measurements Social approach, supported

communication AAC (augmentative and alternative

communication)

WHO norms - shift in focus Impairment - Disability - Handicap

Structure - Activity - Participation

Corpora for… Diagnosis Remediation Evaluation

Corpora as reference material Multimodal corpora needed Sampling problem - representativity Reference material and description Individual variation Activity variation Samples of communication disorders

…

Examples of use of spoken language corpus data Discourse patterns in aphasia

– Aphasic interaction corpus + matched controls

Word finding problems - strategies Body Communication

SSPI children– SSPI children + matched controls + GSLC

Use of corpora GSLC subcorpus

- Word frequencies

- TraSA measurements, e.g. Overlaps, pauses, feedback, word classes

- Different activity types

…

Matched controls Quantitative and qualitative comparisons:

- body communication

- word finding problems

- story structure & cohesion - coherence

- reference

- word classes

- word frequencies

- TraSA measurements

Some findings People with (fairly specific) language

disorders use more BC (aphasia, SLI) Some individuals are extremely dependent on

BC BC can be compensatory: when spoken

language better, less BC Types of iconic gestures related to type of

language disorder (sem-lex, comprehension affects)

More findings Child-parent interaction (at meal times)

differs considerably in- pausing- overlap- topics- vocabularydepending on whether the child has SSPI or not (case comparison only)