Submitted by jonniboi87 on 11/10/2008 07:06 AM Flag This Paper
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To discuss this it is fist important to understand the term language production whereby it is commonly understood that it is the production of a spoken or written language and involves all the stages between having a concept, and thus decode that original comprehension into an understood linguistically spoken form for an individual.
Aphasia is a general term used to describe one or more disorders that have caused the loss or impairment of the ability to speak or communicate. (Akmajian Demers, and Harnish 1979:306).
Aphasias are the conditions in which there is the loss or weakened capacity to produce and/or comprehend language, often caused my various factors for example an injury sustained in the localised part of the brain responsible for these functions.
Depending on the area and extent of the damage, someone suffering from aphasia may be able to speak but not write, or vice versa, or display any of a wide variety of other deficiencies in language comprehension and production, such as being able to sing but not speak. Aphasia may co-occur with speech disorders such as dysarthria or apraxia of speech, which also result from brain damage.
The understanding of language production has revealed that there are several necessities that can be separated into various structures in the brain which operate our linguistic actions such as the sensory and motor organs used for the comprehension and in response the production of dialogue.
Since the 19th Century studies have shown that though the brain is split in two hemispheres that look symmetrical, the operations they cause are not the same.
Two early studies on aphasia that are considered amongst the most important were by Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke.
The first made by Broca, who identified an area in the frontal lobe of the brain which is strongly related to our phonetic abilities.
Known now as Broca’s area it is close to the region of the motor gyrus that controls movements of the organs involved in...