Morphological Hierarchy Research Articles

The relationship between phonology and inflectional morphology in an agrammatic aphasic

The interaction between phonological and morphological breakdown in an agrammatic aphasic was investigated. Three linguistic tasks were constructed which were presented via two modes, reading and repetition. Results revealed that purely phonological consonant clusters were easier than clusters which contain a morphological component, and that these categories could be differentiated in terms of phonological error type. Inflectional omission was conditioned by phonological characteristics of the preceding segment. There was an interaction between the phonological and morphological hierarchies of difficulty in inflections which are homonyms phonologically. Findings suggest an interdependence between phonological and morphological breakdown in the agrammatic aphasic examined. Results were discussed with reference to clinical implications.