Aphasics' sensitivity to contextual appropriateness conditions for pragmatic indicators

Twenty normal and twenty aphasic subjects were tested for their understanding of implicit meanings of the French adverbs même (even), aussi (also), and surtout (mainly). Their sensitivity to the contextual appropriateness conditions of such items was analyzed in a multiple-choice paradigm requiring them to select from three figures the one which was best described by a sentence like "Show me the figure that is même (aussi, surtout) red." A global quantitative comparison indicates that aphasics' performance was inferior to that of the normal controls. Yet, the analysis of individual responses allowed the identification of three different subgroups of aphasics: the first produced responses identical to the normals' responses; the second seemed to ignore the adverb and systematically selected the figure with the highest amount of the asserted color; and the third produced responses identical to the normals' responses for surtout but had difficulties with même or aussi. As concerns the relationship between aphasics' performance and their scores on literal language comprehension tests, the data favor the dissociation between literal and pragmatic factors in comprehension. Finally, no clear relationship was observed between aphasia type and aphasics' performance, although three points are noted in the discussion: (1) all the conduction aphasics performed like normals, (2) among the Broca's aphasics, the one with the clearest agrammatic verbal output produced responses similar to those of the normals, and (3) there was no anomic patient in the second subgroup.