Abstract

This chapter approaches three different questions. Initially, it presents a clinical description of the language disorders associated with brain pathology and introduces a distinction between the fundamental or major aphasic syndromes (Wernicke’s and Broca’s aphasia) that impair phonology, lexicon, semantics and grammar, on the one hand; and other aphasic syndromes that affect the ability to produce language, or the executive control of the language, on the other. In the following section, the chapter examines brain organization of language in bilinguals, emphasizing crucial variables (such as the age of acquisition of the second language) that significantly affect the pattern of organization of language in the brain. The final section approaches the question of aphasia in bilinguals and distinguishes between different patterns of clinical manifestation and recovery. It considers disturbances in the translation ability observed in bilinguals.