摘要：Several neuro-cognitive accounts hold an ‘explicit morphology’ position，sharing the view that the recognition and production of morphologically complex words involve processes specifically devoted to morphology. In word production, for example, it has been proposed that not only are there distinct neuro-œgnitive mechanisms for the retrieval of stems and inflections from long-term memory, but that there are also specialized neuro-œgnitive mechanisms for combining stems and inflections to yield grammatical forms. Explicit morphology accounts predict that there should be neuropsychological deficits selectively afecting morphology. However, this a prediction has not been clearly confirmed by neuropsychological data, as deficits have typically not been restricted to morphology but have afected semantics and/or phonology as well. The co-occurrence of morphological and phonological deficits can be explained under explicit morphological acœunts as an 'accident of neuroanatomy9 arising from the damage of nearby brain regions devoted to morphology and phonology, respectively. However, within these accounts, morphological and phonological deficits should, at least in principle, be able to be distinguished. For example, morphological deficits should manifest characteristics not explainable by the phonological deficits. Or morphology should have no efect on phonological deficits. This investigation provides support for the distinction of morphological and phonological processes based on the performance of two individuals (SMY and DLE) with acquired language impairments.
