ABSTRACT
Published cases of aphasia in speakers of two or more languages date back to the 19th century. One aspect of this literature that has attracted interest is the phenomenon of differential language impairment and/or language restitution of the bilingual or polyglot aphasic's languages. This chapter explores some preliminary observations on aphasia in this multilingual setting. It presents some preliminary observations on aphasia in this multilingual setting. Instead of using a case study approach, patterns of language impairment and recovery were investigated in a random sample of patients with acquired speech disorders seen by the author at a neurology clinic in Madras. Finally, non-aphasic bilingual or multilingual controls were rarely included in the language testing. Language used among the multilinguals was categorized into five functional domains: daily conversation, language used at work, language used for routine thinking, language used for prayer, and language used for mental arithmetic.
