Abstract: Objective To explore the conversational characteristics of healthy elderly people based on picture tasks from an aphasia corpus, and to provide references for the assessment and treatment of speech function in the elderly. Methods The multimedia discourse materials were collected from 24 healthy elderly individuals in different types of corpora tasks, then the transcription, encoding and verification were carried out using the computerized language analysis (CLAN) software. Combined with core word analysis and data saturation method, the data such as the Chinese core vocabulary list, vocabulary diversity, part-of-speech distribution of healthy elderly people in different speech types were obtained. Results This study developed a set of core nouns and core verbs in the picture description and story narrative for healthy elderly people in Chinese, and found that the elderly used a greater variety of vocabulary in picture description than in story narrative, and the use of verbs and nouns is predominant in both tasks. Conclusions The conversational characteristics of healthy elderly people based on aphasia corpus tasks provide a solid baseline for the assessment and treatment of speech function in the elderly, and have reference significance for the assessment of cognitive function in the elderly to a certain extent.

Key words: healthy elderly people, Chinese, data saturation, core lexicon, lexical diversity