[The speech of hebephrenic patients (maladjustment between assimilation and accommodation)]

Previous studies indicate that schizophrenic thought processes show a disturbance in the balance between assimilation and accommodation, as Piaget uses these terms. The authors postulated that this phenomenon could also account for the typical language disorders of hebephrenics, particularly semantic slippage. Every fourth word was deleted from linguistic material produced by eight controls and thirteen hebephrenics (Silverman). Three judges were then asked to fill in the blanks. The deleted words used by the subjects were compared with the replacement words chosen by the judges. The comparison revealed such disorders in hebephrenic speech as semantic alteration (metaphorical and metonymic) of the linguistic tropic type and syntax disorders including inhibition of the expansion of phrases introduced by functional monemes (morphemes), whether primary or secondary. These observations confirm those of other authors, more especially those of Roch Lecours et al. On the basis of Martinet's functional linguistics, Chomsky's generative grammar and Piaget's cognitive psychology, the authors conclude that the psychopathology underlying hebephrenic speech is a disturbance of language rather than of parole and that hebephrenic syntactical distortions are linked to the disturbance in the balance between assimilation and accommodation characteristic of schizophrenic thought processes.