ABSTRACT
For the past hundred years, in aphasiology and the neuropsychology of language in general, the term “language” has referred to the language system or what linguists today call the grammar—namely, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. This has come to be known as implicit linguistic competence,and it has been traditionally associated with activity in the perisylvian cortex of the left hemisphere. Throughout this chapter, competencerefers to each individual';s actual neurofunctional competence, not that of an idealized speaker-hearer. The grammarthus refers to the description of the inferred competence of a given individual, at a given time.
