SOME LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF SPEECH FROM APHASIC PATIENTS.

This paper describes some characteristics of the speech of 12 adult aphasic patients, as compared with the speech of 12 control subjects. From transcripts of subjects' speech a number of measures are determined which may be useful as general descriptions of speech and which may be sensitive to various sorts of language disorder. This information permits some evaluation of the divergence of a particular aphasic record from the control data, as well as its divergence from each of the other aphasic records. To obtain running samples of free speech, 20 cards from the Thematic Apperception Test were administered to each subject; all responses were tape recorded and subsequently transcribed. The transcripts were processed so as to provide for each subject a list of minimal free forms, their sequence, and frequency of occurrence. For some purposes the transcript items were classified in terms of the following form classes adverb, adjective, verb, noun, pronoun, other neologism, unusual use, period, pause, and vocal gesture.