Linguistic Theories about Agrammatism. The Trace Deletion Hypothesis and the Tree Pruning Hypothesis

Essay from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University College Dublin, course: Seminar: Language Impairment, language: English, abstract: In this Essay the Trace Deletion Hypothesis by Grodzinsky as well as the Tree Pruning Hypothesis by Friedmann and Grodzinsky will be explained, the first of which focuses on the impaired comprehension while the latter concerns itself with the impaired production in agrammatism. A result of Broca's aphasia, agrammatism is a disorder which involves a lack of grammaticality in language production and a reduced understanding of grammatical markers. Agrammatic patients speak in telegraphic style, often omitting grammatical morphemes and function words while content words can still be used accurately. Language comprehension is also limited to content words whereas grammatical markers are not processed. This disorder hence affects both production and comprehension, which is why linguistic theories concerning agramatism differ in focus.