Language disorder is one of the most significant symptom domains which characterize Schizophrenia Disorder. The aim of the present study which has been carried out by taking into consideration these language problems is to investigate and compare the schizophrenic patients’ and control group’s speech in terms of simple sentence structure. Fifty patients with schizophrenia according to DSM-IV criteria have been included in the study and compared to fifty healthy subjects matched for age, sex and education level with the patients. The subjects’ speech has been evaluated in four stages. These are narrative picture task, story picture sequencing task, semi-structured speech and free speech. The data consists of 8-10 minute recorded interviews. The recordings have been transcribed based on DuBois’ Discourse Transcription Symbols. As a result of the statistical and linguistic analyses, significant differences have been observed between simple sentence types’ of patients with schizophrenia and healthy subjects’. It has been concluded that due to the possible cognitive problems, patients with schizophrenia use shorter and simple sentences instead of complex sentences compared to healthy subjects.

Keywords: Schizophrenia, Sentence structure, Simple sentence, Language disorder, Thought disorder.