Determinativproduktion: Fra Brocas afasi til en lingvistisk teori om, hvad grammatik er

This paper summarizes recent experiments examining the production of grammatical and lexical determiners in healthy individuals and individuals with agrammatic aphasia. The experiments discussed employ a design in which the Danish grammatical indefinite article en/et is contrasted with the lexical numeral en/et. The results show that articles are harder to produce than numerals. In agrammatic speech the difference is reflected in a higher proportion of omissions of articles. In healthy speech the difference is reflected in increased response times and decreased accurary rates for articles. The results are interpreted in light of a usage-based and functional theory of grammar, in which grammatical items are defined as signs that are by convention discursively secondary and structurally dependent.