ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with all problems of a lexical-semantic nature concerning the production and the comprehension processes in aphasia. Semantic disturbances in aphasia, generally coexisting in both production and comprehension, are seldom so pervasive as to make the patient’s communication absolutely impossible: residual capacities often somehow compensate for even the most severe deficits. Aphasia, as a rule, impairs naming capacities irrespectively of the modality of presentation of the stimulus to be named. The central level of representation is, in general, only mildly disturbed in aphasia due to focal lesions. Aphasiologists have also been interested in the representation, recognition, and retrieval of words that are morphologically complex. The interest of neuropsychologists towards morphology has been stimulated by the observation that aphasies, in various conditions, make errors with inflections, derivations and compounds. Aphasies have problems of a semantic nature in both production and comprehension.
