Intonation in Broca's aphasia.

The intonation contours of the sentence "Construisons notre maison" produced by a group of Broca's aphasic patients were compared to those of this same sentence produced by a group of normal speakers. It was found that the Broca's aphasic patients demonstrated significantly restricted ranges of intonation when compared to the productions of the normal subjects. Different possible underlying mechanisms for this intonation compression are then discussed.