JCPSLP Vol 19 No 1 March 2017

language such as English may be deemed pathological by the unaware clinician. Of particular interest is the fact that the pronoun systems of SAE and AE are different. Pronoun usage has been fairly extensively researched in aphasia in terms of discourse cohesion with pronouns being said to be both “overused” in many forms of fluent aphasia due to speakers’ word- finding difficulties associated with explicit referents, and confused at times with he often being substituted for she and vice versa (Glosser & Deser, 1990; Nicholas, Obler, Albert, & Helm-Estabrooks, 1985; Williams, Li, Della Volpe, & Ritterman, 1994). In AE, case and gender distinctions are not necessarily maintained in the third person singular (e.g., him used as subject pronoun instead of SAE she ). Also related to reference and cohesion, determiners are often not used in noun phrases (e.g., man came home ). In addition, non-specific lexical referents such as something or someone as referred to above, have also been noted as pathological in fluent aphasic discourse when used extensively, substituting for more explicit referents. Such terms are common in AE and this is thought to be due to the implicit nature of Aboriginal discourse stemming from shared experience among many speakers at a local level. Unless these differences were known to the assessor, the resulting patterns would again be marked as “errors” of reference. Further research would have to explore whether or not the referencing system is affected in AE and how this might manifest itself. Event and story schemas (macrostructure) As narrative analysis is arguably the most commonly used discourse analysis in aphasiology (Olness & Engelbretson, 2011), and as elicitation of narrative as the individual’s personal story and way of working through identity issues is being increasingly encouraged in clinical practice (Hinckley, 2007; Shadden, Hagstrom, & Koski, 2008), it is important to note that Aboriginal stories can reflect schemas which are not necessarily shared with non-Aboriginal listeners (McGregor, 1987; Malcolm & Rochecouste, 2000). Stories told using these schemas (genres) do not necessarily sound like “real” stories to non-Aboriginal listeners because they lack elements considered to be key in western narratives such as complication and resolution. For Aboriginal listeners and storytellers this is not something they notice since their story schemas/genres are different. In the early 1970s, prior to the formal identification of such schemas, co-author Graham McKay was collecting stories in the Rembarrnga language of Arnhem Land from a Rembarrnga speaking man (BN). This narrator mentioned in conversation that he and his extended family had recently been travelling on foot in the bush and that one night their camp had been invaded by a buffalo. In anticipation of a “good” story – because that sounded like a great complication – Graham asked him to tell the story for the tape recorder. He began his story (in Rembarrnga) “ We left from… ” and he continued along the lines of “ we went to x, we ate a, we slept, we got up, we went to y, we ate b, we slept, we got up, we went to z, we met so and so there… ” etc. The story continued in this vein (classic Travel schema) covering about a fortnight’s travels before coming to an end back at their starting point. The buffalo in the camp episode never appeared. When this was pointed out to him after conclusion of the story BN graciously told a very short story that contained only the buffalo in the camp episode – an exciting Complication that had had no place in his Travel schema story. The Narrative genre was not so culturally relevant to him as a Rembarrnga speaker.

would not expect to see the speaker before 4.30 or 5 p.m. or so. In this AE, the word afternoon signifies “late in the afternoon when the sun is no longer high overhead and the day has got cooler”. (This aligns directly with the way the day is classified in local Aboriginal languages. The period roughly 10 a.m. to 4.30 p.m., (when the sun is high in the sky and the day is hot), is called, in Aboriginal English of that area, dinner , this being also the term for the midday meal. There are obvious implications of these lexical differences in terms of standardised testing and analysis of word usage during discourse. While different usage could again result in attributing semantic “errors” – semantic paraphasias for example – apparent “misunderstandings” by Aboriginal speakers could be seen as being representative of an aphasic comprehension deficit rather than accurate comprehension in their own semantic framework. Grammatical features In terms of morphology, overall there is reduced functional morphology and fewer function words in AE compared with SAE. Malcolm and Grote (2007) summarise the morphological features of Aboriginal English as follows: Many morphological features which are obligatory in Standard English are optional, if present at all, in Aboriginal English. This may be seen in part as a carry- over of the processes of simplification from earlier contact varieties from which the dialect has evolved, but also the result of deliberate communicative strategies, as the users of this dialect tend to avoid explicitness and to expect a significant interpretive role on the part of the listener, taking due account of context. (p. 155) For instance, an important feature of AE is lexical substitution, where a pro form such as thing/ting/sing takes the place of a noun – when it is assumed that the meaning can be found in the surrounding physical context, rather than in the text. Explicitness is not a feature of AE. This will be referred to later in terms of pragmatics and discourse as well. Among the morphological features not used or optionally used in Aboriginal English are plural marking on nouns (e.g., tell me how many stroke you had ), possessive marking on nouns, past tense and third person singular present tense marking on verbs (e.g., she come down and pick me up; he work at the hospital ) and the verb to be as an auxiliary or copula (e.g, you speaking to people; she only down in my house ). In some cases distinctive alternative morphemes or constructions may be used in AE, such as the preverbs bin for past tense (e.g., we bin see ) and gonna or gotta for future tense (e.g., we gonna start ) or the use of juxtaposition to mark possession (e.g., my mum mum = my mum’s mum ; one little boy trouser = one little boy’s trousers ) (Malcolm & Grote, 2007, pp. 155–157; Malcolm & Koscielecki, 1997, p. 68). While such specific grammatical markers are not typically a focus of clinical aphasia assessments, they are relevant to studies investigating cross-linguistic differences in manifestations of Broca’s aphasia, and again, are important to note as they may be erroneously considered to be grammatical “errors” indicating pathology for diagnostic purposes rather than normal usage. In particular, the difference in verb usage is relevant to judgements of grammaticality in aphasic discourse where the verb has become a focus of both assessment and treatment in recent years (Webster & Whitworth, 2012). Again, while different patterns of verb usage are acknowledged in cross-linguistic studies, such patterns of difference within a

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JCPSLP Volume 19, Number 1 2017

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