ABSTRACT
Patients with Broca’s aphasia have particular difficulties in handling the so-called function words, like articles, auxiliaries, prepositions, etc., and some of the patients neglect them totally. In other words, it is a hitherto unresolved question whether this particular type of aphasic impairment affects linguistic processing in general or whether it is restricted to the articulatory output modality. Most of the information about aphasic behavior is based on error analysis, which leads to rather indirect conclusions about the levels of processing that are specifically impaired in aphasia. The number of patients available was rather limited, as patients with corrected vision or with hemianopic deficits could of course not be considered. These additional selection criteria made it impossible to report at the present time on the behavior of patients with Wernicke’s aphasia whose lesions typically involve the posterior part of the language area.
