Wernicke's aphasia
- noun
- /ˈwɜrnɪkəz əˈfeɪziə/
- Specialized
:
afasia de Wernicke
- People with Wernicke's aphasia often have trouble comprehending what others say, even though they can speak fluently.
Examples
-
A person diagnosed with Wernicke's aphasia may produce long sentences that lack meaning, making communication difficult.
-
Persons with damage to their Wernicke's area (who have Wernicke's aphasia) can speak, but their words pouring out make no sense.
Academic text (2010) -
Individuals experiencing Wernicke's aphasia typically struggle to follow conversations, resulting in speech that is confusing to listeners.
Synonyms
1
9.2
Able to speak easily but say words that do not make sense and cannot understand speech or writing
A condition where a person speaks in long sentences that do not make sense and cannot understand speech or writing
Fluent speech that has little meaning and very poor understanding of what others say or write
Talking that sounds normal but uses wrong words and makes understanding language hard
Surface Forms
Morphology
Wernicke's + aphasia
Knowing 'aphasia' (loss of the ability to use or comprehend language) allows a learner to infer that 'Wernicke's aphasia' is a type or subtype of language impairment, but 'Wernicke's' is an eponym that supplies no semantic information about the specific symptoms. The precise clinical profile (fluent but unintelligible speech with severe comprehension problems) cannot be derived from the constituents alone, so learners would get a general category but not the full meaning.
Etymology
Wernicke's aphasia is named after the German doctor Wernicke, who found a part of the brain that helps with language. When that part is damaged, people often speak fluently but with little meaning and have 'trouble understanding' others, so aphasia refers to this kind of language problem.