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Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology pp 78–80Cite as

Agrammatism

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Synonyms

Agrammatic aphasia

Definition

Agrammatism refers to language production that is lacking in grammatical structures. The basic signs of agrammatism are short phrase length, simplified syntax, errors and omissions of main verbs, and omission or substitution of grammatical morphemes such as plural markers or functors (Saffran et al. 1989). There may also be errors in tense, number, and gender, and difficulty in producing sentences with movement of grammatical elements, such as passive sentences, Wh- questions, and complex sentences (Benedet et al. 1998; Caplan and Hanna 1998; Goodglass 1997; Faroqi-Shah and Thompson 2004). Spoken and written production typically shows similar error patterns. Typically, individuals with agrammatic aphasia also show impaired comprehension of grammatical structures, particularly noncanonical semantically reversible sentences (e.g., “the boy was kicked by the horse”; Berndt et al. 1996; Caramazza and Zurif 1976).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Rehabilitation Science, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Lyn S. Turkstra

  2. Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Cynthia K. Thompson

Authors
  1. Lyn S. Turkstra
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  2. Cynthia K. Thompson
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Correspondence to Lyn S. Turkstra .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Jeffrey S. Kreutzer

  2. Kessler Foundation, Pleasant Valley Way, West Orange, NJ, USA

    John DeLuca

  3. Independent Practice, Wynnewood, PA, USA

    Bruce Caplan

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Turkstra, L.S., Thompson, C.K. (2018). Agrammatism. In: Kreutzer, J.S., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57111-9_849

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