An accessible introduction to the study of language in the brain covering language processing
language acquisition literacy and language disorders. Neurolinguistics the study of language
in the brain describes the anatomical structures (networks of neurons in the brain) and
physiological processes (ways for these networks to be active) that allow humans to learn and
use one or more languages. It draws on neuroscience linguistics-particularly theoretical
linguistics-and other disciplines. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series
Giosuè Baggio offers an accessible introduction to the fundamentals of neurolinguistics
covering language processing language acquisition literacy and speech and language
disorders. Baggio first surveys the evolution of the field describing discoveries by Paul
Broca Carl Wernicke Noam Chomsky and others. He discusses mapping language in brain time and
brain space and the constraints of neurolinguistic models. Considering language acquisition he
explains that a child is never a blank slate: infants and young children are only able to
acquire specific aspects of language in specific stages of cognitive development. He addresses
the neural consequences of bilingualism literacy discussing how forms of visual language in
the brain differ from forms of auditory language aphasia and the need to understand language
disorders in behavioral functional and neuroanatomical terms neurogenetics of language and
the neuroethology of language tracing the origins of the neural and behavioral building blocks
of human linguistic communication to the evolution of avian mammalian and primate brains.
