The regression hypothesis revisited: Evidence from Turkish

Abstract

The purpose of the study is first to investigate whether there is a significant difference among three study groups in terms of total content words, total nominal and verbal productions, and total nominal and verbal inflections; and secondly to analyse the most frequent words produced in relation to a picture description task. The underlying assumption is to analyse the tendency towards morpho-syntactic regression among the study groups, namely: a group of aphasics, a group of non-brain damaged adults, and a group of normally developing children still acquiring language. Participants were asked to describe two pictures of situations: one related with 'accidents' and the other with 'hospitals'. No regression was found in the group with aphasia towards the level of children in regard to the total number of nouns and verbs produced, save for the number of nominal inflections. The most frequent nouns were almost similar in the three groups, but qualitatively, the verbs with the highest frequency differed in the children.