Grammar in 'agrammatical' aphasia: What's intact?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Aphasia following cerebro-vascular accidents has been a primary source of insight for models of language in the brain. However, deviant language patterns in aphasia may reflect processing limitations and cognitive impairment more than language impairment per se.

Aims

We sought to obtain new evidence from spontaneous speech in Broca's aphasia (BA) for the intactness of grammatical knowledge, operationalized as the preservation of the basic hierarchical structure of syntactic projections.

Methods & procedures

Speech obtained with the AphasiaBank protocol from 20 people with BA, which were independently rated as also being agrammatic, was analyzed and compared to 20 matched non-brain-damaged controls. We quantified (i) marking of Aspect, Tense, and Modality (A

SUBMITTER: Zhang H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9725141 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature