Language Performance and Impairment of Iraqi Patients with Alzheimers. A Case Study

Case Study from the year 2019 in the subject Speech Science / Linguistics, grade: 100, Thi-Qar University, language: English, abstract: This study intends to investigate language performance and impairment elicited in the speech sample of some Iraqi patients diagnosed with Alzheimers. The aim of this study is to see whether Alzheimers disease affects patients language, and if so, what areas of language it affects. In addition, it inspects and explains both language performance and impairment of Alzheimers patients during the disease. It is hypothesized that Alzheimers patients suffer from sound substitution and omission on the phonological level, that the patients language is affected on both the denotative and connotative sides, that the patients break the rules of turn taking when they engage in conversations, and that Alzheimers patients then suffer from language impairment in these areas. The prominent outcome of this study is that Alzheimers patients suffer from language impairment in the phonological, semantic, and pragmatic areas of language.