Language and the Brain: Representation and Processing (review)

Dedicated to Edgar Zurif, this book offers state-of-the-art language and brain studies. The nineteen chapters are distributed in five parts, all related to the question of representation and processing of language in the brain.

The first part of the book deals with the architecture of the language system. Although preserving the basic concept of modularity proposed by Jerry Fodor, Ray Jackendoff (Ch. 1) and Merrill Garrett (Ch. 2) present a model of language processing that claims the existence of a forceful interactive process between language and other cognitive systems. In the second part, the focus is the comprehension-production interface. Rejecting the activity-based account, Yosef Grodzinsky (Ch. 3), Gregory Hickok (Ch. 4), and Janet Nicol and Tracy Love (Ch. 5) develop the concept of overarching aphasia, intuited first by Edgar Zurif. In this view, it is posited that for each deficit in production there is a corresponding comprehension deficit.

In the third part, the core question is the role of memory in language processing. Emphasizing that there are specific kinds of memory, Edward Smith and Anat Geva (Ch. 6) and Laird Cermak (Ch. 7) discuss the role of memory in sentence understanding in light of cases of patients with memory problems.

In the fourth part, different approaches to brain-language relationship are examined. Sheila Blumstein and William Milberg (Ch. 9), Alfonso Caramazza (Ch. 11), and David Swinney, Pency Prather, and Tracy Love (Ch. 14) discuss the nature of the lexical system and the question of lexical access during language processing, based on data from aphasic individuals. Martin Albert (Ch. 8) describes the chemical correlates of naming and anomia aphasia. Hiram Brownell (Ch. 10) describes the role of the right hemisphere in the comprehension of metaphor. Enriqueta Canseco-Gonzales (Ch. 12) discusses using the recording of event-related brain potential in the understanding of language processing systems. Finally, Harold Goodglass (Ch. 13) discusses the association between grammatical gender of a noun and the access to the syntactic feature.

The syntax-discourse interface is discussed in the last part. Sergey Avrutin (Ch. 15) and David Caplan (Ch. 16) defend the idea that the processing of complex syntactic structures requires the participation of various regions of the brain other than Broca’s area. Maria Mercedes Piñango (Ch. 17) shows that the problem of Broca’s aphasics with the comprehension of noncanonical constructions is the conflict between the product of semantic linking and the product of syntactic linking. Joan Maling (Ch. 18) and Levis Shapiro (Ch. 19) discuss gap filling structures and the repercussion of their existence in the processing of sentences in normal and aphasic individuals.

Several chapters challenge some of the views established in the study of brain-language relationship and open new avenues of investigation in this area, constituting therefore a proper homage to Edgar Zurif’s creative mind.