Palilalia is the repetition or echoing of one's own spoken words. It can be a complex tic

Tic

A tic is a sudden, repetitive, nonrhythmic, stereotyped motor movement or vocalization involving discrete muscle groups. Tics can be invisible to the observer, such as abdominal tensing or toe crunching. Common motor and phonic tics are, respectively, eye blinking and throat clearing...

, like echolalia

Echolalia

Echolalia is the automatic repetition of vocalizations made by another person. It is closely related to echopraxia, the automatic repetition of movements made by another person....

 and coprolalia

Coprolalia

Coprolalia is involuntary swearing or the involuntary utterance of obscene words or socially inappropriate and derogatory remarks. Coprolalia comes from the Greek κόπρος meaning "feces" and λαλιά from lalein, "to talk"...

 and may sound like stuttering; all can be symptoms of Tourette syndrome

Tourette syndrome

Tourette syndrome is an inherited neuropsychiatric disorder with onset in childhood, characterized by multiple physical tics and at least one vocal tic; these tics characteristically wax and wane...

, obsessive–compulsive disorder, or autism

Autism

Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...

. Palilalia can also occur in neurological sydromes, such as stroke or epilepsy.

Palilalia comes from the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 πάλιν (pálin) meaning "again" and λαλιά (laliá) meaning "speech" (from the verb λαλείν (laleín) meaning "to talk").

Palilalia must be differentiated from logoclonia, in which the patient often repeats the last syllable of a word. Logoclonia is a symptom of dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and other organic brain disease.