Abstract
The sentence production deficits and their recovery characteristics were studied in Broca's, Wernicke's and global aphasia. Eleven Broca's aphasics, nine Wernicke's aphasics and seven global aphasics recieved syntactic therapy and a syntactic test. The syntactic therapy method and the syntactic test presented in this paper were designed based on the hierarchy of syntactic processing that we had already detected.
The results showed that (1) sentence production abilities of each aphasic group had been disrupted and improved according to the hierarchy of syntactic processing. (2) Most Broca's aphasics and most Wernicke's aphasics improved the levels of sentence production, but most global aphasics did not improve the levels of sentence production. (3) The levels of sentence production were different among aphasic groups. Broca's aphasics had difficulty in producing the reversible sentences of which subject is not an actor. Wernicke's aphasics had difficulty in producing the reversible sentences with complement sentences. Wernicke's aphasics produced more simple sentences when they could not produce the reversible sentences with complete sentences. (4) The abilities of constructing canonical word order improved earlier than the abilities of producing particles in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. Broca's aphasics had particular difficulty in constructing canonical word order according to syntactic categories. Wernicke's aphasics had particular difficulty in selecting particles according to the already correctly assigned syntactic categories.
The sentence production deficits and their prognosis were different among aphasic groups.
