The Segmentals of Bilingual Nigerian Adult Broca’s Aphasics

This paper examined the segmental phonology of 25 purposively sampled bilingual Nigerian adult Broca’s aphasics from a Nigerian teaching hospital. Data were collected by tape-recording the speech of each of the aphasic. The data were analysed perceptually, complemented with frequency count and simple percentage. The way the subjects ranked constraints were then examined, using Optimality Theory. Three main forms of deviation were noticed in their speech: deletion, substitution and epenthesis, with substitution having the highest frequency, followed by deletion. The deviation affected consonants more than vowels. Plosives and alveolars were more affected by the brain damage than any other sound. Some of the effects of Nigerian English on the speech of the subjects were still retained after the brain damage. The Broca’s aphasics sampled ranked constraints in such a way that markedness dominated faithfulness.