Phonological Errors of Broca’s Aphasia: A Single Case Study of Neurolingusitics

Abstract

Broca’s aphasic patients display language problems in initiating utterances with
groping movements, multiple false attempts and self-correction resulting from a lesion to the
third frontal convolution of the left hemisphere of the brain. This study describes the forms of
sound impairment, types of errors and phonetic processing by a Balinese patient who suffered
from non-fluent speech disorder. The results showed that KW’s speech performance was
categorized severe. There were 0.80% phonological errors in word naming, 0.92% in picture
naming, 0.87% in answering questions and 0.89% in oral reading. Of the three other types of
errors, sound substitution errors mostly appeared in every phonological task. He made 65%
sound substitutions, 20% sound distortions, 10% sound insertions and 5% omissions. Different
speech stimulation could trigger sound inconsistency. The phonological errors occurred because
there was not any appropriate coordination between phonological representation and phonetic
realization due to the loss of linguistic message in Broca’s area.