Paragrammatisms

Grammatically incorrect sentences (paragrammatisms) are characteristic of the spontaneous speech of fluent aphasics. The paragrammatisms produced by five neologistic jargon aphasics are analysed and compared to the paragrammatisms of four normal control subjects. We show that the paragrammatisms of the aphasics are qualitatively identical to the grammatical errors of normal subjects, although they are much more frequent. The reason for this is discussed in terms of models of speech production; we argue that paragrammatisms are a consequence of a breakdown in the control processes.