agrammatism

n. Oral expressive impairment characterized by short, structurally simple utterances lacking morphosyntactic elements (e.g., articles, prepositions, auxiliaries, verb endings). Agrammatic patients speak in halting, nonfluent, effortful speech, relying on the most meaning-carrying words (i.e., verbs, nouns, and adjectives) as in "Girl eat apple" or "Eat apple" for "The girl is eating/ate/has eaten the apple." They prefer simple rather than complex verbs (e.g., go and going instead of goes, would go, or have gone). This fragmented expression has been described as telegraphic. Symptomatology varies, and not all patients exhibit the same symptoms to the same degree. Though similar morphosyntactic impairments may be present in other language modalities (i.e., comprehension, reading, and writing), agrammatic patients can understand everyday conversation but have difficulty understanding grammatically complex sentences (e.g., passive sentences: The apple was eaten by the girl). Agrammatism is found in Broca’s aphasia and transcortical motor aphasia. - JGC