Noun phrase production by agrammatic patients: A cross-linguistic approach

Abstract

Abstract This paper reports a cross-linguistic study of noun phrase production by agrammatic aphasic speakers of Swedish, French, German, Polish, and English. The subjects were given comparable tests of contrastive naming for the different languages. The study demonstrates problems in noun phrase production, especially in structurally complex noun phrases, indicating increasing problems caused by an increasing processing load. The study further demonstrates great difficulties in the production of double adjectives in noun phrases. Recurring patterns found among the eleven agrammatic patients were: word order deviation (especially noun first), singular for plural (or singular first), use of quantifiers, production of some complex NP structures, and substitutions of grammatical markers, leading to agreement errors in complex NP structures. The findings are discussed in relation to possible strategies such as fragmentation of the noun phrase and/or use of topic-comment structure, as well as attempts to produ...