Manifestations of aphasia in Friulian

Grammatical errors made by twelve aphasic patients (6 males and 6 females) with Friulian as native language (L1) have been studied. All patients were bilinguals, with Italian as second language (L2). L2 was generally learnt at kindergarten or in primary school. Seven (58%) patients showed a parallel recovery of the two languages, three patients (25%) showed a greater recovery of L1, while two patients (16%) showed a greater recovery of L2. The most frequently made grammatical error in Friulian was the omission of the second obligatory pronoun, a typical feature of that language. In Italian, the percentage of omitted pronouns was very low as in this language pronouns are only rarely obligatory. It is thus evident that when the Friulian language system is placed under stress by an aphasic insult, it is especially its production system of obligatory pronouns which tends to break down.