Agrammatism in aphasia: Production and comprehension of aspect by english-speaking Broca's aphasics

This study was an investigation of aspectual competence in English-speaking Broca's Aphasics, normal adults and children. Microcomputer-assisted production and comprehension tasks presented actions which varied in (1) whether or not an objective was accomplished, (2) whether or not it was repeated, or (3) whether the duration was long or short Two additional tasks explored aphasic subjects' use of linguistic forms during an informal interview and a repetition task. The study was designed to address three questions on the nature of aphasia: ( 1) Is "agrammatism" present in production and comprehension? (2) Do individuals with Broca's aphasia perform as though a "syntactic module" has been impaired? (3) Does language impairment represent a regression to some early stage of language acquisition? The data revealed that ( 1) Linguistic regression and the modularity hypothesis may be plausible explanations for subjects' production and comprehension performance, and (2) Aphasic subjects' performances are sufficiently variable that questions on agrammatism (as a unified syndrome) remain.