Agrammatism

1st Edition - January 28, 1985
Editor: Mary-Louise Kean
Language: English
eBook ISBN:
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 7 7 6 6 - 0

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… Read more

Purchase options

LIMITED OFFER

Save 50% on book bundles

Immediately download your ebook while waiting for your print delivery. No promo code is needed.

Institutional subscription on ScienceDirect

Request a sales quote

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.

Contributors

Preface

1 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

Summary

2 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

Conclusion

3 Agrammatism: Structural Deficits and Antecedent Processing Disruptions

The Neurological Organization of Comprehension and Production Systems

Grammatical Characterizations of Agrammatic Aphasia

Lexical Processing and Agrammatic Aphasia

4 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 Patients

5 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 Syndrome

6 Two Notes on the Linguistic Interpretation of Broca's Aphasia

Modular Approach

Configurational and Nonfigurational Strategies

Conclusion

7 On Parallelism between Production and Comprehension in Agrammatism

Introduction

Case Report

Discussion

Appendix: a Sample of Agrammatic Speech

8 Agrammatism versus Paragrammatism: a Fictitious Opposition

Introductory Remarks

Comprehension and Intuitions in Agrammatics and Paragrammatics

Language Production

References

Author Index

Subject Index