LANGUAGE

Language

A systematic means of communication that uses symbols and has a hierarchical structure.

Semantic information

Meaning associated with words.

Syntax

Rules for how words are combined to form sentences that people understand.

Phonology

The structure of the sounds of the words in a language.

Orthography

The written system of a language.

Mental lexicon

The mental store of information about words, including semantic information, syntactic information, and word forms.

Broca’s aphasia

Impairment mainly in producing and understanding syntactic relationships, resulting in expressive aphasia.

Telegraphic speech

Speech that uses mainly content words and lacks function words, often resulting in short, simple phrases.

Agrammatism

Deficits in processing grammatical aspects of language.

Wernicke’s aphasia

Disturbance in comprehension with fluent but meaningless speech, also known as receptive aphasia.

Conduction aphasia

Problems spontaneously repeating speech due to damage to the arcuate fasciculus.

Global aphasia

Inability to comprehend or produce speech, produced by extensive lesions in the left perisylvian area.

Dyslexia

Difficulty in reading not due to a sensory or intellectual impairment.

Surface dyslexia

Difficulty with the appearance of language.

Deep dyslexia

Difficulty with the sound structure of language.

Language production

The ability to use words, phrases, and sentences to convey information.

Language comprehension

The ability to understand the messages conveyed by words, phrases, and sentences.

Word salad

A form of speech characterized by a jumble of words that makes no sense.

Semantic paraphasias

Generating words related to the meaning of the intended word.

Aphasia tests & batteries

Tools used to diagnose the type and severity of aphasia and related disorders.