Time reference in Spanish and Catalan non-fluent aphasia

Abstract The vulnerability of time reference, either marked by means of verbal morphology or by adverbs, has been established in an extensive array of languages in agrammatic aphasia. Recent studies (Bastiaanse, 2008; Lee et al., 2008; Nanousi et al., 2006; Martínez-Ferreiro, 2010; Yarbay Duman and Bastiaanse, 2009; among others) have determined that far from being general, the observed deficit is sensitive to tense differences with a clear asymmetry between past and non-past forms. To account for these findings, Bastiaanse et al. (2011) formulated the PAst DIscourse LInking Hypothesis (PADILIH), in line with Avrutinʹs (2000) claim that discourse linking is impaired in Brocaʹs aphasia. Past forms are impaired in opposition to non-past forms due to the fact that the former are discourse linked. However, this hypothesis entails further predictions: if the problem with tense is restricted to discourse linking, we expect present and future forms to be spared or, at least, damaged to the same extent. In this paper, we investigate time reference in Catalan and Spanish using a sentence completion task with pictures and a sentence-to-picture-matching task (adapted from the TART; Bastiaanse et al., 2008). The results confirm the predicted deficit: forms referring to the past are more impaired than forms referring to non-past, that is, tenses referring to the present and future were better preserved. However, in comprehension, asymmetries arise between present and future forms. Implications for the PADILIH are discussed.