Agrammatism: An Analysis and Critique, with New Evidence from Four Hebrew-speaking Aphasic Patients

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Abstract
We describe and discuss some recent controversies in the analysis of “agrammatic aphasia.” Special attention is paid to the hypothesis that comprehension disorder parallels expressive disorder and to claims that the deficit is best understood in syntactic terms. The thesis of Grodzinsky (1984a; 1986)—that agrammatic patients do not have access to nonlexical nodes in s-structure-is evaluated and applied to four Hebrew-speaking aphasic patients. Two of the patients manifest expressive agrammatism without significant comprehension impairment; two show expressive agrammatism with comprehension impairment that is equally severe for passives with and without the nonlexical element t(race). We argue that both sets of data constitute evidence against Grodzinsky's account of agrammatism.
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