Cross language studies from a perspective of aphasia research

Abstract

This is an overview of cross language research on agrammatism in aphasics 1982–1992. The traditional description of agrammatism, based on English, was questioned by researchers from other countries. This initiated the project Cross Language Aphasia Study (CLAS), which aimed to describe and explain agrammatism from a database collected from 14 different languages. The project showed that agrammatism as characterized by short phrase length, slow speech, and reduced variation in phrase structure could be distinguished, while omission of grammatical morphemes was not consistently found, since bound grammatical morphemes were more often substituted. Agrammatism was described, explanations in terms of grammatical overload and other alternatives were discussed, and a number of follow-up projects started.

Key Words:

• agrammatism
• aphasia
• cross language studies