E. Lalor et K. Kirsner, The role of cognates in bilingual aphasia: Implications for assessment andtreatment, APHASIOLOGY, 15(10-11), 2001, pp. 1047-1056
A morphological description of the bilingual lexical system suggests that b
ilingual lexical organisation is similar to that in monolinguals and is gov
erned by the morphological relationships between words. According to this t
heory, lexical items are stored in clusters according to their morphology a
nd regardless of language. Cognates (words that are similar across language
s) are stored together in the same lexical cluster, whereas non-cognates (w
ords that are dissimilar across languages) are stored separately. This pape
r presents the results of a study that examined performance on word recogni
tion tasks for cognates and non-cognates in an Italian/English aphasic subj
ect. The subject completed naming and lexical decision tasks involving cogn
ates and non-cognates. Performance was better on cognates in both languages
, and low-frequency cognates in the more impaired language benefited from t
heir high-frequency translations. These results have implications for curre
nt theories of bilingual lexical organisation and the assessment and treatm
ent of bilingual aphasia.