After incurring brain damage,some patients develop language problems.Such patients often cannot tell that the sentence "Tom hit Sally" expresses the same idea as the sentence "Sally was hit by Tom." Apparently,these patients lack an understanding of some of the rules about how words combine with each other in sentences.This shows that these patients have ____.
A) no grammar
B) impaired syntax
C) impaired phoneme comprehension
D) an impaired language acquisition device

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The patients' inability to understand the relationship between the words in different sentence structures indicates impaired syntax, which refers to the grammatical rules for combining words in sentences. The other options are not directly related to the patients' language problem (A), focused on individual sounds instead of grammar (C), or not relevant to the patients' brain damage (D).

After Incurring Brain Damage,some Patients Develop Language Problems