A Cross-linguistic Study of Broca's Aphasia

A comparison is made of the language of Broca's aphasics in English, Russian, Japanese, Turkish, and Zulu. The purpose of the £ltudy is to determine whether a particular aphasic syndrome should be analyzed in terms of the grammar of a particular language or as a unitary phenomenon that cuts across these particular _ grammars. Since the language output of Broca's aphasics is remarkably uniform among different languag2s, it is suggested that the grammar of this particular aphasic syndrome (and perhaps others) is the same across languages and different from the natural language grammars of any of these languages. This theory conflicts wi th current theories of Broca 's aphasia in which the grammar of a Broca's aphasic is analyzed as a flormal grammar with a deficit in one or more components. The author argues that the language of Broca's aphasic can not be analyzed as a linguistic deficit. Instead, a grammar of Broca's aphasic language should be constructed that will be adequate to describe ana explain the similarities in the output of Broca's aphasics across languages. 2