Fluent aphasia in three languages: Aspects of spontaneous speech

Abstract

The grammatical abilities of fluent aphasics have received scant attention to date. There is some debate as to the nature of paragrammatism and whether this phenomenon results from an underlying lexical or grammatical deficit. In this paper we define grammatical domains in three different languages (Dutch, English and Hungarian), which enables comparisons to be made between aphasic speakers and normal controls both within and between languages. We describe the methodology and examine some of the results focusing on the possible relation between lexical and syntactic aspects. Specifically we define and discuss the frequency and diversity of lexical verbs and their arguments, the deployment of subordinate clauses and the distribution of two types of adjuncts in the three different languages.