The distinguishing characteristic of neologistic jargon aphasia is a large number of undecipherable word forms, produced fluently and apparently without the realization that they sound like nonsense words to anyone listening. This feature identifies it as a type of Wernicke’s aphasia, which is confirmed by the fact that the syntax is not disrupted. There are complex sentence structures involving complements (e.g.. I would say that X) and complex word order (e.g. Do you know what that is?). The morphology also seems largely unimpaired: plural –s is used on the nonsense words appropriately, past tense –ed is found in missed, present tense –s is in makes and perfect marker –en is in have been. The nonsense words may represent failed attempts to articulate specific target words which are not rejected as inappropriate forms by the speaker’s own self-monitoring ability because of severe comprehension difficulties, as is typical in
Wernicke’s aphasia.