Abstract The immediate repetition performance of a jargon aphasia case was studied over a period of 2 years. The patient, MEG, performed poorly when repeating single words, and made semantic errors in the attempt. This pattern has been called ‘deep dysphasia‘. The effects of her speech production problems on the reproduction of both single words and phrases were studied. Her ability to repeat phrases was far better than could be expected from her single word repetition. This, together with her semantic errors, suggests that she uses for repetition tasks, a process that engages syntactic and semantic processes that is independent of a non-semantic route from auditory input to articulatory output.