Syntactic comprehension in Japanese aphasics: effects of category and thematic role order

Syntactic comprehension disturbances in Japanese aphasics were investigated focusing on the role of category order and thematic role order. The data from Japanese aphasics show that the canonicity of thematic role order determines the ease of interpretation of different sentence types. This finding implies that language-specific factors, rather than language-universal factors, influence the sentence comprehension mechanisms that are retained by aphasic patients.