Effects of selected linguistic variables on apraxia of speech

Ten adults with apraxia of speech responded to sentences of an article (pronoun) + noun + verb + article (pronoun) + noun design. Each sentence was presented and then re-presented with the noun in Noun Phrase 1 (NP1) or Noun Phrase 2 (NP2) omitted. The subjects' task was to orally produce the omitted word. Sentences were either active or passive and the omitted noun was a concrete, abstract, or nonsense word. Results revealed significantly more errors in NP1 than NP2, more errors on nonsense and abstract nouns than on concrete nouns, and more errors on passive than on active voice sentences. Linguistic bases for these findings are discussed.