JCPSLP Vol 19 No 1 2017

31 / 60

JCPSLP Volume 19, Number 1 2017 29
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