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Vocabulary Changes in Agatha Christie’s Mysteries as an Indication of Dementia:

A Case Study


Ian Lancashire* and Graeme Hirst†


University of Toronto, *Department of English and †Department of Computer Science

Ian.Lancashire, Graeme.Hirst @utoronto.ca


Introduction

Alzheimer’s disease leads to changes in language production at all levels — lexical, syntactic, and discourse — that are different to or markedly greater than those observed in normal aging (Maxim & Bryan 1994). For example, whereas “the lexicon continues to expand indefinitely until death or illness intervenes”, the “semantic and then phonological output lexicon” becomes progressively “inaccessible” in Alzheimer’s disease (Maxim & Bryan 1994: 3, 24). And while in healthy aging, semantic retrieval speed deteriorates and hence “the number of ‘indefinite’ words may increase” (Maxim & Bryan 1994: 46), as may the number of repeated phrases, Nicholas et al. (1985) demonstrated that both indefinite words and repetitions occur significantly more often in the language of Alzheimer’s patients than in that of healthy people of similar age and level of education.


Interessant onderzoek dat een geheel ander beeld werpt op het ontwikkelen van Alzheimer, niet vanuit de neurologische maar vanuit de linguïstieke kant.

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