Neurolinguistic Studies on the Linguistic Expression of Time Reference in Thai

While it is easy for healthy speakers to talk about and to understand sentences about events happening in different time frames: past, present or future, it is often hard for people with aphasia (language impairment after brain damage). My thesis investigates this communicative problem in Thai, a language that, unlike English, does not use verb tense to refer to different time frames, but instead refers to different time frames by the use of free-standing words (i.e., aspectual markers). Offline and online methodologies were used to tackle the issues of agrammatism and time reference. The study will help us understand aphasic speakers’ problems when talking about time and thereby provide more effective treatment to facilitate recovery of this important ability.