A comparison of the codeswitching patterns of aphasic and neurologically normal bilingual speakers of English and Spanish

Conversational discourse samples were obtained from four aphasic and four n eurologically normal Hispanic bilinguals in monolingual English, monolingua l Spanish, and bilingual contexts to identify codeswitching patterns. Analy sis of the samples based on the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) Model (Myers-Sc otton, 1993a) revealed consistent matching of the language context by the a phasic and normal subjects. The aphasic subjects demonstrated a greater fre quency of MLF constituents and codeswitching patterns not evident in the sp eech samples of the normal subjects. Results suggest an increased dependenc e on both languages for communication following neurological impairment. (C ) 1999 Academic Press.