CHAPTER2EXERCISES_Woods

Exercise #8

The following utterances were made either by Broca's aphasics or Wernicke's aphasics. Indicate which is which by writing a "B" or a "W" next to the utterance.

A. Goodnight and in the pansy I can't say but into a flipdoor you can see it.  (W)

B. Well...sunset...uh...horses, nine, no, uh, two, tails went swish. (B)

C. Oh...if I could I would, and a sick old man disflined a sinter minter. (W)

D. Words...words...word...two, four, six, eight...blaze am he. (B)

Aphasia is any language disorder that results from brain damage either by disease or trauma.  In 1864, the work of Paul Broca identified an area of the left frontal lobe of the brain (Broaca's area) from people who had language deficits or damage to that area.  Broca's aphasia (B) is characterized by errors in syntax (the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences).

The work of Carl Wernicke in 1874 identified aphasia resulting from damamge to the back left part of the brain (Wernicke's area) that was characterized by numerous lexical (relating to the words of a language) errors, jargon, and nonsense words despite intact speech fluency.


Fromkin, V.,  Rodman, R., and Hyams, N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.). Heinle Publishers.