Elsevier

Brain and Language

Volume 10, Issue 2, July 1980, Pages 249-262
Brain and Language

The word order problem in agrammatism: I. Comprehension

https://doi.org/10.1016/0093-934X(80)90055-3Get rights and content

Abstract

The results of a picture-pointing comprehension test show that agrammatic aphasics have difficulty understanding sentences in which the underlying semantic roles are marked by the order of noun phrases around a verbal element. Agrammatic patients performed poorly on reversible constructions involving spatial prepositions (e.g., “The square is above the circle”) and verbs (e.g., “The dancer applauds the clown”). These results have significance for the interpretation of the underlying disturbance in agrammatism—whether the deficit is syntactic or purely phonological.

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The research reported here was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health: AG01152 (M. Schwartz) and NS13992 (E. Saffran).

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