Comparison of morphology and syntax in free narrative and structured tests: fluent vs. nonfluent aphasics

Seven agrammatic Broca's and seven paragrammatic conduction aphasics were evaluated on a free narrative story elicitation test and on a structured, cross-modal morphology and syntax battery (MSB). The latter permitted comparison of the same set of morphosyntactic forms in both production and comprehension. Results suggests distinctive oral production profiles, with agrammatics inferior to paragrammatics in use of auxiliaries, verb inflection and passive word order. Only agrammatics commonly omitted articles or main verbs. The use of noun plurals and possessives did not discriminate between the groups. The two groups did not differ in level of performance on MSB comprehension subtests, and the order of difficulty among the comprehension subtests was unrelated to their difficulty for production. This suggests that the source of agrammatic production errors is independent of comprehension errors. The production of targeted constructions on the MSB, an easily scored instrument, closely paralleled production in free narrative.