查看文章

This article addresses the degree to which the field of narrative analysis has provided an account of the relation between sentence-level and discourse-level phenomena in narratives, specifically, the impact of surface linguistic structures on linear and hierarchical aspects of narratives. The reference database for this discussion is narratives produced by aphasics, that is, persons with loss or disruption of language following central nervous system damage. Because apha sics are typically impaired in their morphological, lexical, and syntactic skills; because they endure these losses at various levels of severity; and because many of them maintain the ability to attempt narrative production and comprehension tasks due to largely intact cognitive skills, they allow us to investigate the relative roles of morphological, lexical, and syntactic skills in successful production and comprehension of narratives.

Major conclusions …