[Readability of words as a function of their parts of speech in aphasics. A contribution to the definition of anomia (author's transl)].

Definitions of anomia as a symptom of aphasia have been classified into three categories. Some frequently cited experimental studies designed to establish a rank order of difficulty for parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, verbs) have been briefly evaluated. An experiment has been conducted with 18 mild adult aphasics who were required to read lists of words which were controlled with respect to length, frequency of occurrence and part of speech. The results show that the linguistic category of part of speech has a highly significant influence on readability. Nouns are easier to read than adjectives and these easier than verbs. This finding does not necessarily contradict many definitions of anomia, though it calls into question the validity of many widely accepted interpretations. The results were explained in terms of phrase structure and dependence grammars.