Discourse markers produced by Chinese-speaking seniors with and without Alzheimer's disease

Abstract The present study aims to elucidate discourse markers produced by Chinese-speaking seniors with and without Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the descriptive discourse and narrative discourse. Issues concerning what discourse markers are frequently used by these two groups and which types of discourse markers significantly differentiate these two groups are discussed. Speech samples were collected from thirty persons with AD and thirty control seniors in Taiwan. Their ages ranged from 61 to 85 years old. Each participant individually completed two tasks: (a) describing a picture (i.e. the descriptive discourse) and (b) answering questions regarding his/her personal life and experience (i.e. the narrative discourse). Asymmetrical dimensions of Chinese discourse markers used by these two groups were found in the genre effects, the dementia effects and the function effects. The AD participants displayed less frequency and less variation in their use of discourse markers than the controls did. These AD participants, though uttering the same markers as the controls, did not fully manipulated the functions of markers adopted by the controls. Results contribute to the documentation on different discourse markers produced by the AD persons and by normal controls from the perspectives of the variety of markers and the overall use of markers realizing a function.