Agrammatic aphasic patients have problems with sentence production and verb inflection (Bastiaanse, Hugen, Kos, & Zonneveld, 2002; Friedmann, 2000). As reported by Bastiaanse et al.(2002) agrammatic patients have difficulty with the production of finite verbs in Dutch main clauses. In Dutch, the base position of verbs is argued to be sentence final (Koster, 1975). However, in Dutch main clauses, finite verbs move from their base position to the second position in the sentence (Verb Second). It has been argued that difficulties with the main clauses stem from a problem with derived structure (Derived Order Problem Hypothesis: Bastiaanse & van Zonneveld, 2005).

Others have suggested that production deficits can be predicted on the basis of the position that certain structures take in the syntactic tree (Tree Pruning Hypothesis: Friedmann, 2000). Agrammatism is argued to be a tense representation deficit, where functional projections to tense (TP), and movement of arguments to this (TP) and higher nodes (CP) are deficient. This suggests that difficulties with Verb Second in Dutch might stem from problems with the landing site (V0 to C0) in the syntactic tree, where tense checking (TP) causes problems with verb inflection and subsequently movement to CP causes problems with word order. Thus, the relation between disruptions of syntactic movement related constructions and consequences of a tense representation deficit as such remains controversial. To test these two hypotheses, we focus on Turkish where movement of any constituent in a clause interferes in neither tense inflection (TP) nor high sentential nodes (CP) in the phrase marker.