Abstract:

We report a patient with non-fluent Primary Progressive Aphasia who was premorbidly literate in two alphabetic scripts, Hungarian (L1) and English (L2). Testing was performed over a two-year period to assess the impact of progressive illness on oral reading and repetition of single words. Results showed significant decline in oral reading in both languages, and an effect of language status in favour of oral reading in L1. Phonological complexity was a significant predictor of oral reading decline in both languages. Of interest, we observed an effect of language status on task performance whereby repetition was better in L2 than L1 but oral reading was better in L1 than L2. We conclude that language status has an effect on repetition and oral reading abilities for bilingual speakers with non-fluent Primary Progressive Aphasia.