Professor Elisabeth Ahlsén, Göteborgs Universitet: Research on agrammatism as source of evidence for grammar theories and vice versa

Any linguist interested in creating or debating theories of agrammatism, if not only theoretically interested in the topic, tends to sooner or later turn to data like children's acquisition of grammar, learning of

L2 grammar and agrammatism in persons with aphasia, to find support and possible application of the theory.

Likewise, aphasiologists, interested in agrammatism, can turn to theories that that can support findings and procedures of testing/investigation and training grammar in agrammatism.

This potential mutual benefit of cooperation between theoretical linguistics and aphasiology leads to many initiatives from one side or the other, the more frequent direction being from theoretical linguistics to aphasiology or, rather, to data from aphasiology.

There are possibilities as will as pitfalls with this approach and the talk will be about some of these possibilities and pitfalls, in connection with different examples of suggested descriptions and explanations for agrammatism from the history of linking grammatical theory and agrammatism.

Some of themes for discussion will be:

Interdisciplinary research cooperation - mixing different perspectives and backgrounds Theory and data - what can be evidence and counterevidence for what?

Understanding and comparing theories of agrammatism from a clinical perspective Understanding and using data from persons with agrammatism as evidence for theories