Towards an Agrammatic Grammatical Theory: Evidence from Research on Aphasic Patients

Abstract

Research on agrammatism (i.e. a phenomenon commonly known as language loss of aphasic patients whose particular area(s) of brain accidentally get damaged resulting in language impairment) has revealed that the nature of language impairment is systematic and interpretable. This paper summarizes some of the representative studies on agrammatism. All these investigations support that agrammatism has a distinctive linguistic pattern(s) i.e. special grammaticality of its own. I hypothesize that agrammatics have a special kind of grammar of their own that is different from normal speakers’ language patterns. In the following, I elucidate such special patterns of agrammatism. I also speculate that developing such distinctive pattern(s) of agrammatic speech will help administer both diagnoses of and therapies for aphasic patients in more effective ways.