Afázie jako zdroj poznatků o fungování jazyka

The evidence concerning the neurophysiological organization of language can be obtained only indirectly, with one of the most important sources being aphasia. In this paper, I present some results from my long-term neurolinguistic research. First, I survey the manifestation of aphasia in different languages and offer a linguistic interpretation of these data. I argue that it is the typological character of the language which influences the symptoms. My cross-linguistic study showed that the decisive factors for evaluating aphasia in a language are: (a) the number of grammatical words; (b) the way in which grammatical morphemes are connected to the stem; (c) the extent of paradigms. I then focus on the grammatical errors in the spontaneous speech of Czech aphasics and discuss: (1) the distribution of errors among grammatical categories; (2) the hierarchy of forms within each category. Finally, I present a synthesis of the morpho-syntactic aphasic symptoms in Czech. The aim of my work is not only to describe aphasia, but also to shed some light on the functioning of language under aggravated conditions.