The Aktionsart of patients with Alzheimer’s disease: a corpus analysis from a Role and Reference Grammar perspective

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4995/rlyla.2023.18929

Keywords:

Lexical aspect, Alzheimer's disease, Corpus linguistics, Role and Reference Grammar

Abstract

In this paper we use Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin and LaPolla, 1997; Van Valin, 2005), especially its semantic representation through the lexical aspect or Aktionsart, and we apply this linguistic model to samples for each stage from the PerLA corpus of Spanish patients with Alzheimer’s disease (Pérez Mantero, 2014). Thus, we analyze the frequency and relative distribution of verbs in these samples using statistical measures: average, median, mode, variance, standard deviation, interquartile range and coefficient of variation. Our results show that patients systematically use states as preferred Aktionsart with respect to the rest of types of verbs, as well as the existence of some variability in accomplishments and active accomplishments and the absence of specific types of causative verbs. Among our explanations, we highlight that states have an easier way of cognitive processing and causative verbs express static states of affairs, disconnected from one another.

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References

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Published

2023-07-26

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Articles