Características linguísticas de pacientes com Esclerose Lateral Amiotrófica

Abstract

Introduction: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects upper and lower motor neurons. It can be classified as sporadic, when the cause is not known, and familial when it is hereditary. The speech therapist works mainly in the control of dysarthria and dysphagia. However, more studies have emerged relating other types of impairments associated with ALS, such as declines in language, cognition and behavior. Objective: This research aims to describe the lexicon used by patients with ALS and analyze the most frequent grammatical categories present in their speech. Method: This is an observational study, carried out with 10 patients, chosen for convenience. Data were collected from an interview in which they were encouraged to talk about their daily lives. For analysis, the free software Iramuteq was used, which works anchored in the R interface. Results: A total of 4345 occurrences (number of words) were observed, of which 329 appeared only once. 667 forms (grammatical classes and their variations) were also identified. The occurrence of a total of 86 verbs, 10 prepositions, 43 adverbs, 5 conjunctions, 39 adjectives, 3 articles, 22 pronouns and 119 nouns was analyzed. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that the most frequent grammatical classes in the speech of patients with ALS are verbs, prepositions, pronouns and adverbs. Furthermore, it is noticeable that there is not much variety in patients' vocabulary. Although some grammatical classes were used less, they were all present and being used as expected.