阿尔茨海默病患者语言障碍研究:回顾与展望

The research on language disorders in patients with Alzheimer's disease:Retrospect and prospect

通过对国内外临床医学、语言学和计算机科学等领域阿尔茨海默病患者语言障碍研究的梳理和反思,本文发现,目前该类研究逐步呈现出跨学科的发展趋势,且前期相关研究已取得了较为丰硕的成果。尽管如此,此类研究仍存在语言形式单一、研究层面浅、数据规模小以及语种类别少等研究上的缺陷。据此,本文认为,未来的阿尔茨海默病患者语言障碍研究应该从以下两个方面发展:一方面,增加患者组和对照组的书面语、手语等不同形式的语料,收集更多以汉语等非印欧语系语言为母语的被试数据,扩充语料量,制定统一的研究标准;另一方面,从其他更复杂的语言层面,如语义、语篇、语用等层面入手,更加深入地探究阿尔茨海默病患者的语言问题及其机理,从而为该病的诊断和干预提供语言学方面的知识和证据,以期助力提升患者的生活质量,减轻阿尔茨海默病对社会公共卫生体系造成的压力和挑战。

This paper reviews the research on language disorders in patients with Alzheimer's disease(AD)across disciplines at home and abroad.It reveals that the research has developed gradually in interdisciplinary manner,involving clinical medi-cine,neurology,linguistics and computer science as well.More importantly,it has made fruitful achievements at a dramatic tempo.Nevertheless,albeit such progress,the research stll has some limitations or gaps of its own,primarily felt in its mo-notonous linguistic forms,shallow levels of language,small-sized corpora,and just a few languages under study.Thus,we suggest that future research on AD language disorders should be conducted in the fllowing two directions.First,it should in-clude writen language and sign language of AD patients and health controls as its object of study,recruit subjects speaking va-rious languages like Chinese rather than only Indo-European languages to expand the size of its corpora,and establish a set of uniform criteria for further and wider application.Second,the research should involve more complicated aspects of language like semantic,discursive and pragmatic ones for deeper understanding of AD language disorders and the mechanism underlying them.To sum up,in this way as we recommend,the research on language disorders of AD patients may hopefully provide more solid linguistic evidence and knowledge for the prediction,diagnosis and intervention of AD and eventually help improve AD patients'quality of life and relieve the burden on the society and the public healthcare system.