More vulnerable processing of shengmu than yunmu in a Chinese Broca’s aphasic

Previous neuropsychological studies on European languages have provided evidence for separable processing of consonants and vowels. In this study, we present the case of a Chinese speaker with classical Broca’s aphasia following a vascular lesion in the left inferior frontal gyrus. In the task of reading aloud Chinese characters and phrases, she made more errors on shengmu (initial consonant phoneme of a Chinese syllable), at a rate of approximately 2:1, than yunmu (final phoneme(s) of a Chinese syllable). There are two types of yunmu: only vowel(s) and vowel(s) and consonant(s) together. A further test revealed that the speaker showed no significant difference in her error rates for the two types of yunmu. We consider more vulnerable processing of shengmu than yunmu in the Chinese Broca’s aphasic. Likewise, this case as a model of focal brain damage provides evidence for the role of Broca’s area in the processing of speech production based on the patient’s poor articulation but relatively preserved comprehension, phonemic discrimination and auditory word recognition. We claim that Broca’s area is crucial for articulation of shengmu which need complex articulatory movements.

Research highlights
► In this study, we present the case of a Chinese speaker with classical Broca’s aphasia following a vascular lesion in the left inferior frontal gyrus
► In the task of reading aloud Chinese characters and phrases, she made more errors on shengmu (initial consonant phoneme of a Chinese syllable), at a rate of approximately 2:1, than yunmu (final phoneme(s) of a Chinese syllable)
► We claim that Broca’s area is crucial for articulation of shengmu which need complex articulatory movements.