Seminar paper from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Seminar für Englische Philologie), course: Bilingualism - Multilingualism, language: English, abstract: Brain diseases and disorders are fields of neurology that have still not been fully examined. Neurologists are constantly facing new mysteries concerning the processes that take place on in the brain. Especially the aspect of language offers a wide spectrum for research, from the medical point of view as well as from the linguistic one. As I will concentrate on the aspect of language, or more precisely the affection of the faculty of language, which means its production and comprehension, the affection aphasia offers a good example. Aphasia is a very complex problem, and it is still not totally examined by scientific researchers and brain specialists. The field of aphasia includes many different kinds of aphasia, different clinical pictures, symptoms, and recovery patterns. At any rate, the patients have difficulties in producing or understanding language, although to different degrees. Aphasia in bilingual and multilingual persons is a field of neurology that deserves further research. It offers new aspects to the research on brain activity, and it offers the opportunity of approaching the problem of aphasia in a new way. Nevertheless, there are different, one word even contradicting theories from specialists all over the world concerning the impact of aphasia on speakers of more than one language and the reasons for it, some of which will be presented in this research paper. As this research paper is written in order to take a closer look at the problems with language in aphasia, it is inevitable to present some medical facts and theories in order to explain the impact of aphasia on the production, understanding and recovery of language. I will start with an introduction to the physical structure of the brain, especially on the areas that are associated with language. Further on, a definition of aphasia, its causes, and a description of the different types of aphasia and their specific symptoms will be given. As the process of recovery is extremely interesting and the observation of it important because it allows us to draw conclusions on how the brain works, a section of the research paper will be devoted to this point. Moreover, the case studies of bilingual and multilingual aphasic patients offer interesting aspects for linguistic and medical research because of the possibility of understanding how language is stored in the brain, and whether different languages are stored in different parts of the brain, perhaps even in the other hemisphere.

This volume presents a broad overview of current research and thought on aphasia in individuals who speak more than one language. The range of topics covered, and their in-depth treatment, should be of interest to researchers, clinicians, and students.

This book introduces the reader to both neurolinguistics per se and the neuropsychological aspects of bilingualism. Neurolinguistics may roughly be defined as a subset of neuropsychology, namely the study of the representation and processing of language in the brain. To this effect, the first chapters of the book focus on the basic neuropsychology of language processing and acquisition. The second half of the book addresses the issues of cerebral representation and processing of language in bi-or multilingual subjects. All aspects are systematically dealt with, namely the definition of bilingualism; an analysis of all the issues related to bilingual aphasia, i.e. patterns of recovery of the patients' carious languages in diverse population; an investigation of the methodologies used in the study of the neuropsychological aspects of the various linguistic functions, such as comprehension, production and translation; and lastly, the issues of cerebral lateralization and neuroanatomical localization of the numerous cortical and subcortical structures subserving the various language system components in multilingual subjects. It is an excellent introduction to both the neuropsychology of language and the phenomena related to bilingualism. This book will be of particular interest to students of language therapy, aphasiology, applied psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and, in general, to students of medicine who wish to become more knowledgeable about the specific needs of patients in a multilingual society.

"Non-fluent Aphasia in a Multilingual World" is an up-to-date introduction to the language of patients with non-fluent aphasia. Recent research in languages other than English has challenged our old descriptions of aphasia syndromes: while their patterns can be recognized across languages, the structure of each language has a profound effect on the symptoms of aphasic speech. However, the basic linguistic concepts needed to understand these effects in languages other than English have rarely been part of the training of the clinician."Non-fluent Aphasia in a Multilingual World" introduces these concepts plainly and concretely, in the context of dozens of examples from the narratives and conversations of patients speaking most of the major languages of Europe, North America and Asia. Linguistic and clinical terms are carefully defined and kept as theory neutral as possible."Non-Fluent Aphasia in a Multilingual World" is especially useful for speech-language pathologists whose patients are immigrants and guestworkers, and for the clinician who must deal creatively with the challenges of providing aphasia diagnosis and therapy in a multicultural, multidialectical setting.