Action naming versus verb retrieval in connected speech: evidence from late bilingual Greek–English fluent, anomic aphasic speakers

Recently, verb–noun processing differences were reported in a group of late bilingual speakers with fluent, anomic aphasia in Greek (L1) as well as in English (L2). The findings showed that verb production was significantly more impaired than noun production in both languages during picture naming despite preserved comprehension of action and object names (see Kambanaros & van Steenbrugge, 2006). The aim of this paper is to investigate the total number (quantity) and the diversity (quality or different types) of verbs (and nouns) produced in conversational speech by the same group of bilingual anomic aphasic individuals and compare the results to (a) those of the non-brain injured control group and (b) their action naming performances (Kambanaros & van Steenbrugge, 2006) to mainly determine, if a verb retrieval impairment is also evident in spontaneous speech