ABSTRACT
Typical production problems are illustrated by the samples of aphasic speech (in table 19.1).The first four speakers all have difficulties conveying events, although the reasons for their difficulties vary. SW has limited verb access, a problem shared by many aphasic people (for example, McCarthy & Warrington, 1985; Miceli, Silveri, Villa, & Caramazz, 1984; Kohn, Lorch, & Pearson, 1989; Caramazza & Hillis, 1991; Zingeser & Berndt, 1990; Mitchum & Berndt, 1994; Bates, Chen, Tzeng, Li, & Opie, 1991; Daniele, Giustolisi, Silveri, Colosimo, & Gainotti, 1994; Berndt, Haendiges, Mitchum, & Sandson, 1997a; Breedin, Saffran, & Schwartz, 1998; Bastiaanse & Jonkers, 1998). BG accesses a useful verb, but fails to combine it with sentence structure. PB also has structural difficulties, although of a different kind. His speech is not agrammatic and contains syntactic structures that are generally compatible with the subcategorization of the verb. Yet he cannot map the nouns appropriately onto those structures. Again, such word order problems have been observed elsewhere (Martin & BlossomStach, 1986). The last speaker, VB, has more success communicating events and states, mainly because she can compose verb argument structure. Her problem seems specific to function words and inflections. Yet, this is not without semantic consequences. For example, it is difficult for her to convey subtleties of time, aspect, and focus.
