Selective deficits in aphasics patients ’ grammatical production and comprehension are often cited as evidence that syntactic processing is modular and localizable in discrete areas of the brain (e.g., Y. Grodzinsky, 2000). The authors review a large body of experimental evidence suggesting that morphosyntactic deficits can be observed in a number of aphasic and neurologically intact populations. They present new data showing that receptive agrammatism is found not only over a range of aphasic groups, but is also observed in neurologically intact individuals processing under stressful conditions. The authors suggest that these data are most compatible with a domain-general account of language, one that emphasizes the interaction of linguistic distributions with the properties of an associative processor working under normal or suboptimal conditions. The primary purpose of this article is to provide empirical arguments in support of a new view of language deficits and their neural correlates, particularly in the realm of syntax. Selective syntactic deficits are often cited as evidence that the human brain contains a bounded and well-defined faculty or module dedicated exclusively to the representation and/or processing of syntax (Caplan & Waters, 1999; Grodzinsky, 1995a,

Selective deficits in aphasics' grammatical production and comprehension are often cited as evidence that syntactic processing is modular and localizable in discrete areas of the brain (e.g., Grodzinsky, 2000). In this paper, we review a large body of experimental evidence suggesting that morphosyntactic deficits can be observed in a number of aphasic and neurologically intact populations. We present new data showing that receptive agrammatism is found not only over a range of aphasic groups, but is also observed in neurologically intact normals processing under stressful conditions. We suggest that these data are most compatible with a domain-general account of language, one that emphasizes the interaction of linguistic distributions with the properties of an associative processor working under normal or suboptimal conditions.

From the perspective of a person trying to understand a sentence, language is a continuous flow of information distributed over time. Somehow, the listener translates this stream of information into discrete and rapidly sequenced units of sound, meaning, and structure, and does so in real time, that is, nearly instantaneously. The