On the interweaving of functions of intonation and discourse markers in Wernicke's aphasia

Abstract

Wernicke’s aphasia is a neurological condition characterized mainly by a deficit in linguistic understanding and production. Most of the clinical descriptions state that patients affected by this disorder cannot engage in conversation, since they are unable to manage any verbal interaction. Additionally, these patients have been described as lacking a discursive level, since their conversational interventions are a set of randomly bound utterances. This work discusses these descriptions. Through a prosodic analysis of the discursive marker ¿no? and an analysis of its position within the patients interventions we observed that our patient shows some skills to manage and engage in a communicative interaction; besides, they constantly track the conversation to confirm the level of attention and understanding of their interlocutor. This suggests that these patients are aware of their clinical condition.