4

This paper presents the (cross-)disciplinary domain of “neuropsycholinguistics.” This term seems to have first appeared as a subheading in Tissot et al.’s (1973) book on agrammatic aphasia. Using a schema in three circles, Jean-Luc Nespoulous, linguist and aphasiologist, senior member of the Chair of Cognitive Neuropsycholinguistics at the Institut Universitaire de France, argues that studying brain and language relationships involves recognizing an intermediary, theoretical and abstract step that models the functional architecture of language, and that linguistics plays a central role in the neuropsycholinguistics endeavor. The name itself, “neuropsycholinguistics,” embodies the three fundamental aspects of linguistic processing (neural, cognitive, and grammatical), and the interdisciplinary perspective required in the study of the human faculty of language, from its neural substrate to its various manifestations observed throughout languages. This paper outlines the evolution of this school of thought over the past forty years of development, as well as current challenges.