Introduction

The past fifteen years have seen an increasing interest by linguists in the field of neurolinguistics. Broadly construed, neurolinguistics is the study of language and brain relations. Its primary goal is understanding and explicating the neurological bases for language and speech, and the nature of the mechanisms and processes implicated in language use. Roman Jakobson was probably the first linguist to realize the potential importance of such a field of study – not only for the contributions that linguistics might make towards understanding the nature of language deficits subsequent to brain damage, but also for the unique insights provided by such ‘experiments in nature,’ insights which might inform linguistic theory as well as offer a testing ground for theoretical linguistic assumptions (Jakobson 1971). Jakobson focussed his attention on the adult aphasias, particularly addressing the primitives and structural properties of language, their hierarchy and organization (Jakobson 1968,1971). He provided one of the first indications that language dissolution indeed reflects structural principles inherent in the language system. In other words, the organizational framework of the language system breaks down in lawful ways, lawful only if certain assumptions are made about the nature of the primitives and structural principles of the linguistic system.

In this chapter, I will review the major issues in the field of neurolinguistics, particularly with respect to the study of language impairments in adult aphasia. Adult aphasia is of particular interest because the language impairments of these patients reflect the impairment of premorbidly normal language and cognitive systems. Thus, the organization of language, cognition, and the interaction of these two systems can be assumed to be similar to normal adults prior to brain insult.