The treatment of anomia in Sesotho: a case for parametric aphasiology

South Africa, as a multilingual country, offers the opportunity for examining the interaction between aphasic symptomatology and the parameters of language. Effective intervention techniques depend on an understanding of clinical linguistics. This article describes an intervention study with two Sesotho-speaking individuals with anomia. Sesotho as a noun class and syllable-timed language offers the opportunity to study the influence of cueing techniques, which are based on such linguistic parameters. Word lists were designed using non-aphasic participants and three cueing techniques for anomia were evaluated over a period of 4 months. Findings suggested a positive response to the techniques of true phonemic cueing and prosodic cueing, whereas initial phonemic cueing (a technique commonly used for English-speaking anomic patients) had no impact. This supports the need for a parametrically informed approach to aphasia therapy and strengthens the recommendation that a linguistic basis is paramount in the training of effective clinicians.