title: Language and syntactic impairment following stroke in late bilingual aphasics.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Bilingual aphasia generally affects both languages. However, the age of acquisition of the second language (L2) seems to play a role in the anatomo-functional correlation of the syntactical/grammatical processes, thus potentially influencing the L2 syntactic impairment following a stroke. The present study aims to analyze the influence of late age of acquisition of the L2 on syntactic impairment in bilingual aphasic patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twelve late bilingual participants (speaking French as L2 and either English, German, Italian or Spanish as L1) with stroke-induced aphasia participated in the study. The MAST or BAT aphasia batteries were used to evaluate overall aphasia score. An auditory syntactic judgement task was developed and used to test participants syntactic performance.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The overall aphasia scores did not differ between L1 and L2. In a multiple case analysis, only one patient had lower scores in L2. However, four patients presented significantly lower performances in syntactic processing in the late L2 than in their native language (L1). In these four patients the infarct was localized, either exclusively or at least partially, in the pre-rolandic region.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This pilot study suggests that, in late bilingual aphasics, syntactic judgment abilities may be more severely impaired in L2, and that this syntactic deficit is most likely to occur following anterior lesions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Geneva University Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Muriel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tschirren
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Laganaro
authors.forename: Patrik
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Michel
authors.forename: Marie-Dominique
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Martory
authors.forename: Marie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Di Pietro
authors.forename: Jubin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Abutalebi
authors.forename: Jean-Marie
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Annoni
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001037:Aphasia / Q000209:etiology / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019303:Multilingualism; D010865:Pilot Projects; D020521:Stroke / Q000150:complications / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology*