Agrammatism

Agrammatism provides an overview of the state of knowledge on agrammatism, typically defined as a disorder of sentence production involving the selective omission of function words and some grammatical endings on words. The book opens with discussions of the diversity of the disorder. This is followed by separate chapters that address primarily questions of syntactic structure in agrammatism, from both linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives. Within these two gross sections there is no consensus among the conclusions reached by the various authors. However, the position is taken that agrammatism is a disorder distinct from other aphasie disorders of sentence structure. This position is reconsidered in the final two chapters. Because of the intrinsically interdisciplinary character of research on agrammatism, it is hoped that the work presented in this volume will be of interest to linguists and psycholinguists working in areas outside the domain of aphasia, as well as to neurolinguists and neuropsychologists who are already involved in the study of language deficits.

ContributorsPreface1 Is Agrammatism a Unitary Phenomenon? History of the Term 'Agrammatism' Individual Variations within Agrammatism Older Clinical Accounts and Explanations of Cross-Modal Associations and Dissociations Accounts of Agrammatism Dissociations among Agrammatic Phenomena Other Dissociations of Open- versus Closed-Class Words Psycholinguistic and Linguistic Aspects of the Content Word-Function Word Division A Preliminary Formulation: the Role of Meaning Critique of Data Presented in Support of Central Representation or Competency for Grammar Critique of Studies Comparing Agrammatic and Fluent Subjects Discussion: on Neuroanatomical and Psycholinguistic Models of Agrammatism Reconsideration of Syntactic Processing Lexical versus Syntactic Comprehension Fluency and Grammatical Output Summary2 A Multicomponent Deficit View of Agrammatic Broca's Aphasia A Framework and Methodology for the Explanation of Aphasic Disorders Features of Agrammatism Symptoms Often Co-Occurring with Agrammatic Speech Production A General Model of Sentence Processing An Interpretation of Agrammatism Conclusion3 Agrammatism: Structural Deficits and Antecedent Processing Disruptions The Neurological Organization of Comprehension and Production Systems Grammatical Characterizations of Agrammatic Aphasia Lexical Processing and Agrammatic Aphasia4 The Status of the Syntactic Deficit Theory of Agrammatism Introduction The Syntactic Description of Agrammatic Behavior Nonsyntactic Explanations: an Example Assumptions Underlying the Syntactic Deficit Theory Alternative Versions of the Syntactic Deficit Theory An Evaluation of the Syntactic Deficit Theory The Mapping Hypothesis Conclusions Appendix: Published Reports on Patients5 Syntactic and Semantic Structures in Agrammatism Agrammatism as a Sign and as a Syndrome Descriptions of Syntactic and Semantic Structures in Agrammatism Competence and Performance in Agrammatism Sentence Production in Agrammatism Sentence Comprehension in Agrammatism Mechanisms Aspects of the Agrammatic Syndrome6 Two Notes on the Linguistic Interpretation of Broca's Aphasia Modular Approach Configurational and Nonfigurational Strategies Conclusion7 On Parallelism between Production and Comprehension in Agrammatism Introduction Case Report Discussion Appendix: a Sample of Agrammatic Speech8 Agrammatism versus Paragrammatism: a Fictitious Opposition Introductory Remarks Comprehension and Intuitions in Agrammatics and Paragrammatics Language ProductionReferencesAuthor IndexSubject Index