Aphasia, Language and Communications

Phonology is the part of language that sets the rules for how we use and understand the sounds of speech.

Phonological errors are mainly sound substitutions:

• For example, you might say "Kine your name" instead of "Sign your name"

Morphology is about the ways we can adjust words to express such things as tense (past, present, future), or possession, or number (singular, plural).

Errors usually involve leaving these changes out. For example:

• "Joe house" instead of "Joe's house," or
  
• "Sally go Florida." instead of "Sally went to Florida."

Pragmatics is about the way people use language to communicate appropriately. When a person's pragmatic skills are poor, he may seem to be rude, or annoying. We may misunderstand what he means to say, and he will misunderstand others in the same way.

People with aphasia usually have good pragmatics, even if other parts of language are seriously affected.

Most people with aphasia have problems in more than one of these areas of language. Often, when we know the kinds of problems they are most likely to have, we can help them to "fill in the blanks" in communication.

Dr. Robert Volin
Associate Professor
Speech-Language Pathology Program
School of Public Health
New York Medical College
Valhalla, NY 10595