DISORDERS OF PHONOLOGICAL ENCODING

Studies of phonological disturbances in aphasic speech are reviewed. It is argued that failure to test for error consistency in individual patients makes it generally improper to draw inferences about specific disorders of phonological encoding. A minimalist interpretation of available data on phonological errors is therefore proposed that involves variable loss of information in transmission between processing subsystems. Proposals for systematic loss or corruption of phonological information in lexical representations or in translation subsystems is shown to be inadequately grounded. The review concludes with some simple methodological prescriptions for future research.