Idiosyncratic strategies in sentence production: a case report.

In their case study of a patient with selective apraxia of phonation, Marshall, Gandour, and Windsor (1988, Brain and Language, 35, 313-339) reported that many of his utterances were ill-formed syntactically. In this note, a detailed syntactic analysis of his speech is presented. Although the patient's syntax is deviant, it is seen to result from the application of certain consistent, identifiable, compensatory strategies. Moreover, it is shown that the particular, abnormal syntactic structures are internally consistent with his phonatory apraxia coupled with the normal rules of English prosody.