ABSTRACT
Syllabification appears to play a significant organizational role in speech production, and it has been suggested that it is hard-wired in the brain. In this chapter, psycholinguistic and bio-evolutionary models of syllable production form the basis for an examination of evidence from a range of studies of retained and impaired syllabification in brain-damaged individuals. Some aspects of syllabification survive significant brain damage very well, which raises the question of the status of the mental representation of syllabification. The review concludes that while some more automatic and overused aspects of syllabification involve diffuse and bilateral processing, less automatic, more online, syllable production involves a network of structures in the left inferior frontal and temporal lobes.
