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3–4,
May–June/July–August 2003, pp. 75–95.
© 2003 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1061–0405/2003 $9.50 + 0.00.
T.V. AKHUTINA
Is Agrammatism an Anomaly?
The problem
Kolk, van Grunsven, and Keyser (1985) and Kolk and Hofstede
(1987) answer “No” to the question posed in the title of this ar-
ticle. Let us consider instances when normal subjects use “tele-
graphic style.” The authors mentioned above point to dialogue
markers, talking to foreigners and children as such cases. How-
ever, the offered list seems incomplete and may be enlarged; in
doing so, it is important to define the structure and function of
agrammatical utterances in normal language users. A Russian
author has an advantage in solving this because in the Russian
scientific tradition the problem has been approached from both
the linguistic (Potebnia, 1888; Iakubinsky, 1923; Zemskaia, 1973;
Zemskaia, Kitaigorodskaia, and Shir’aev, 1981) and psychologi-
cal (Vygotsky, 1934) perspectives.
The first to be included in the above list is inner speech. A
Western reader would most probably object here, arguing the im-
possibility of dealing with something inaccessible in carrying out
an objective analysis. However, Vygotsky suggested two ways of
performing such an analysis.
Research hypotheses
Results
The longitudinal study of speech in eight patients with anterior
agrammatism lasted from two to thirteen years. In addition, the
analysis included patients with the same syndrome examined by
A.R. Luria (one subject) and M.K. Shokor-Trotskaia (four subjects).
Because agrammatism is found in the dialogue of normal sub-
jects, the study included only freshly composed monologue
speech—stories based on a picture or several pictures (represent-
ing one story); reproduced and familiar or frequently repeated
texts (the story of the beginning of the disease, retelling) were
excluded.
The following classification of grammar structures was based
on the suggested hypotheses (* denotes substitution, 0.—omis-
sion, In.—inclusion; and specification of the error category is given
in parentheses):
1. Unitary nominations (N): “Boy . . . mother . . . well, brother . . .
well . . . bike”;
2. a row of names combined by intonation (NN): “Radio—
weather—rain,” “Vegetation—fir tree, silver fir”;
3. sentences of the type NNV: “Son, daughter . . . star (* case) . . .
MAY–JUNE/JULY–AUGUST 2003 81
Table 1
N 77 51 51 24 55 37 16 16 18 16 20 5 14 10 14 9 11 8
NN,
NNN — 23 18 33 3 8 14 7 7 3 3 2 2 2 — — 1 2
NNV
(SOV) — 1 3 7 — 1 1 11 4 2 4 5 1 1 3 1 3 6
NV, Nat 5 10 11 17 10 16 32 34 29 33 40 28 30 36 24 30 13 25
NVN
(SVO) — — 3 7 3 28 27 25 35 37 20 56 45 46 38 33 50 39
Other 18 15 14 12 29 9 10 7 7 9 13 4 8 5 21 27 21 20
Grammar
structures 38 224 240 120 31 85 71 73 150 96 70 88 106 129 106 70 70 88
Mean
length of
JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
syntagmas 1.0 1.7 1.4 2.0 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.8 2.2 2.8 2.6 2.9 3.1 3.0 3.0 3.1 3.0 3.4
MAY–JUNE/JULY–AUGUST 2003 83
ones. The fact that the verb is used only as the name of action is
supported by substitutions of finite forms by the infinitive and
verbal nouns, and the diversity of grammatical forms for coor-
dinate predicates (“Maid room tidying up (N),” Roz 72; “Wa-
tered (V) cucumbers, tidying up (N) room, bed, brushed, dust . . .
to wash up,” L 67; “Husband slept hammock, wife sat—no knits,”
Tsv 72).
Though the regularly used rule is that of word order, the gram-
mar is much closer to a normal form than to a random one. This
can probably be explained by two reasons, which will be ana-
lyzed below. Here it should be noted that the same rule of using
Ag in the preceding position is found in the comprehension of
sentences.2
Comprehension was examined in three patients who demon-
strated the second level of agrammatism in their expressive speech.
In all of these cases it was found that patients make the fewest
number of errors in constructions with preceding Ag, that is, in
active voice with a direct order of words (AD) and in passive
voice with an inverted order of words (PI), while maximum errors
occurred in constructions with Ag in postpositions, that is, in ac-
tive voice with an inverted order of words (AI) and in passive
voice with a direct order of words (PD)—see Table 2.
Now I will consider the speech of patients with the third level
of agrammatism, which is characterized first by the regular use of
central rules of surface syntax such as opposition of subject and
grammar object, nominal subject, and verbal predicate. In the
course of improvement, the range of rules and the number of
different grammatical structures increase. These phenomena al-
low us to trace the hierarchy of grammatical complexity, for ex-
ample, among cases: the first opposition is nominative and
accusative cases, then the genitive and/or prepositional cases are
included, and later on dative and instrumental (Akhutina, 1975).
The system of declining personal pronouns is reconstructed long
after that of nouns (this is not characteristic in paragrammatism).
Even in residual agrammatism one can note the greater diffi-
86
Table 2
AD 7 7 7 7 7 21 8 0 0 7 7 14 0 7 0 0 0 0 3
Al 57 50 50 57 21 64 50 21 14 7 14 7 21 14 7 14 0 0 11
PP 86 71 64 64 50 71 68 43 36 29 14 0 21 14 0 14 21 21 19
PI 36 21 0 21 14 36 21 57 29 64 43 50 21 14 50 21 43 14 37
Table 3
Acoustic-
Anterior Dynamic mnestic
agrammatism aphasia aphasia
Agrammatism
level first second third first second third first
Noun + + +>0 + 0 – –
Verb – 0>+ +>0 + + +>0 0/+
Adverb –/0 –/0 –/0 – 0 0 +
Pronoun – – – 0 0 + +
Preposition – – – 0 0 0 0/–
Particle 0/+ 0/+ 0/+ 0 0 + +
Parenthetic
words 0 0 0>+ + + + +
Notes: + and – stand for significant increase and decrease, 0 for absence of alterations;
> shows the regular alteration of the given part of speech ratio in the course of im-
provement; / shows possible variations of the given part of speech ratio.
Discussion
Experiment 1 — 13 — 16 — 31 18 — — 2
Experiment 2 20 23 13 25 20 — 26 16 9 3
Table 5
Constructing
Severity of disorder sentences
Comprehension Grammar
of AI and PD verification, Sentence
agrammatism motor independent constrained sentences experiment 1 repetition
JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY
Ab 72 second mild 25 28 41 87 43
Tsv 73 third moderate 39 39 78 69 27
MAY–JUNE/JULY–AUGUST 2003 91
Conclusion
Notes
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