Word formation: new evidence from aphasia.
Three aphasic patients are described whose speech contains invented word-forms which are legal combinations of meaningful parts of real words, like "fratellismo" (brother + ness) instead of "fratellanza" (brother + hood), and from combinations of meaningless and meaningful parts, like "terness + ico" (where "ico" is a real adjectival ending). These phenomena are previously unreported. On the assumption that brain-damaged patients use residual rather than novel abilities, these forms, along with the patients' predominant use of real compound words, indicate that speakers have a procedure for composing polymorphemic words online, but this is employed just when trying to find a whole word fails.
Semenza
C
C
Università degli Studi di Padova, Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Italy.
Butterworth
B
B
Panzeri
M
M
Ferreri
T
T
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001037:Aphasia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D001925:Brain Damage, Chronic / Q000175:diagnosis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012660:Semantics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014825:Vocabulary