1. Corpora as norms in language pathology Elisabeth Ahlsén Department of Linguistics Göteborg University

2. Corpora as norms in language pathology What is ”pathological”, ”normal”? Lack of data and information on everyday language use Corpora as reference material Development of pragmatics, language in context and interaction WHO norms Diagnosis, remediation, evaluation Demands on corpora Examples of use of corpora

3. What is ”pathological” - ”normal”? Speech and language pathology (research, clinical work): describe, understand, diagnose, explain, remediate, evaluate remediation ”Normality” Intuition Test results Additional data (lesion, disease, other symptoms)

4. Or… Is there any problem? If there is, what can be done? How can we see if we succeeded?

5. Lack of data and information about everyday language use Almost no such information in speech pathology Necessary for treating most kinds of language and communication disorders

6. Pragmatics, context, interaction Development of research in pragmatics, spoken language interaction, body communication Has to become integrated in language and communication pathology

7. Trends in language pathology Pragmatic tests and scales Conversation analysis Narration -quantitative measurements Social approach, supported communication AAC (augmentative and alternative communication)

8. WHO norms - shift in focus Impairment - Disability - Handicap Structure - Activity - Participation

9. Corpora for… Diagnosis Remediation Evaluation

10. Corpora as reference material Multimodal corpora needed Sampling problem - representativity Reference material and description Individual variation Activity variation Samples of communication disorders …

11. Examples of use of spoken language corpus data Discourse patterns in aphasia – Aphasic interaction corpus + matched controls Word finding problems - strategies Body Communication SSPI children – SSPI children + matched controls + GSLC

12. Use of corpora GSLC subcorpus - Word frequencies - TraSA measurements, e.g. Overlaps, pauses, feedback, word classes - Different activity types …

13. Matched controls Quantitative and qualitative comparisons: - body communication - word finding problems - story structure & cohesion - coherence - reference - word classes - word frequencies - TraSA measurements

14. Some findings People with (fairly specific) language disorders use more BC (aphasia, SLI) Some individuals are extremely dependent on BC BC can be compensatory: when spoken language better, less BC Types of iconic gestures related to type of language disorder (sem-lex, comprehension affects)

15. More findings Child-parent interaction (at meal times) differs considerably in - pausing - overlap - topics - vocabulary depending on whether the child has SSPI or not (case comparison only)