The brain does not serve linguistic theory so easily

Journal/Book: Behav Brain Sci. 2000; 23: 40 West 20Th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA. Cambridge Univ Press. 40+.

Abstract: It is a major move from the claim that the core linguistic problem in Broca's aphasia is the inability to deal with traces, to the claim that this is the syntactic operation only and that it is exclusively supported by Broca's region. Three arguments plead against this move. First. Many Broca patients have no damage to Broca's area. Second, it is not only passive, but also active jabberwocky sentences that activate the frontal operculum in a judgment task. Third, the same area is involved in a phrase-building production task that does not require tense processing.

Note: Editorial Levelt WJM, Max Planck Inst Psycholinguist, Wundtlaan 1, NL-6500 AH Nijmegen, NETHERLANDS

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