ABSTRACT
This book looks at aphasia from the perspective of examining its individual characteristics, or, in traditional medical terminology, its symptoms – the signs by which we know it. We recognize phenomena by their signs or features, by the individual characteristics which separate them from other phenomena. In medicine, illness is recognized by symptoms and symptoms are classified into syndromes. A combination of symptoms allows a physician successfully to identify a disease process and prescribe a treatment. The major feature of a syndrome approach is that it endeavours to relate symptoms one to another. It seeks explanations for the co-occurrence of symptoms, and, in some cases, causal links between symptoms. In aphasia too we find signs, features or symptoms: particular characteristics which enable us to state that an individual has aphasia with some degree of accuracy, and collections of features which theorists have used to attempt classification of aphasia into syndromes or types.
