Hierarchical Disability in the Syntax of Aphasic Children

Abstract

The writings by a group of aphasic children in a standardised situation were compared with those of a group of deaf children. In spite of writing sentences of comparable length, the aphasic children produced a more restricted range of sentence types than did the deaf children. This was particularly noticeable in their relative failure to use structures requiring embedding. It is hypothesised that these aphasic children have difficulties with hierarchically ordered material. This lack of hierarchical planning ability has been noted in other tasks.