Wh-questions in agrammatism: a movement deficit?

Samenvatting

Agrammatic Broca patients suffer from a language deficit related to syntactic movement. These patients have difficulties producing and comprehending sentences derived through syntactic movement. However, patients’ performance on wh-questions shows an intriguing pattern. These constructions involve movement of the wh-word. Still, patients’ comprehension of wh-questions seems to be intact, whereas their production is severely impaired. This raises the question whether the operation of wh-movement is only impaired in patients’ production and does not affect patients’ comprehension. This question is examined in several experiments on French-speaking Broca patients. French allows the wh-word either to remain in its base position or to move. Therefore, French forms a unique environment to examine the effect of wh-movement. The results show that wh-movement affects both the production and comprehension abilities of Broca patients. These results are discussed in light of therapy studies on wh-questions in Broca’s aphasia.