1. Introduction Neurolinguistics is the study of how the human brain enables us to produce and comprehend language, to speak creatively and to understand different words and phrases. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the interconnection between language and the brain and to examine the question asked by Obler and Gjerlow (1999:1) about what linguistic problems of brain damaged people can tell us concerning the ability of the human brain to express and comprehend words and phrases. Firstly, I will very briefly discuss the neuroanatomical structures in the brain and give an overall view of the two hemispheres and the areas of language functions. Secondly, I will illustrate “aphasia”, the defect of language function caused by brain damage by focusing on the three main types: Broca’s-, Wernicke’s- and Conduction aphasia. Third I will focus on a specific case of someone suffering from Broca’s aphasia. 2. The human Brain According to Fromkin and Rodman (1998: 34) one of the most complex organs in the human body is the brain. It is located under the skull and consists of about 10 billion nerve cells or neurons. The cerebral cortex is formed by those neurons or gray matter, as they are also called, and is the surface of the brain. It covers the cerebrum, as shown in Figure 1, which is the largest part of the brain and is divided into two lobes, the left and right cerebral hemispheres. Those two hemispheres are connected by nerve fibers which are called corpus callosum. As it is shown in Dr. Campbell’s handout for the Introduction to Linguistics (2005: 21) the left hemisphere especially is responsible for language, analytical and serial processing, calculation, associative thought and temporal judgement and not to forget for the right visual field which means, when you pick up a glass of water with your right hand, the left hemisphere controls your action. The same is true for the right hemisphere which controls movements of your left hand. It is responsible for non-verbal sounds and ideas, holistic and parallel processing, for reception, the memory of melodies, for instance, and for visual-spatial skills. New medical imaging techniques such as PET and fMRI have allowed researchers to generate pictures showing which areas of a living brain are active at a given time. In the past, research was primarily based on observations of loss of ability resulting from damage to the cerebral cortex. Indeed, medical imaging has represented a radical step forward for research on speech processing. Since then, a whole series of relatively large areas of the brain have been found to be involved in speech processing. In more recent research, subcortical regions (those lying below the cerebral cortex such as the putamen and the caudate nucleus) as well as the pre-motor areas (BA 6) have received increased attention. It is now generally assumed that the following structures of the cerebral cortex near the primary and secondary auditory cortexes play a fundamental role in speech processing: * Superior temporal gyrus (STG): morphosyntactic processing (anterior section), integration of syntactic and semantic information (posterior section) * Inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, Brodmann area (BA) 45/47): syntactic processing, working memory * Inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, BA 44): syntactic processing, working memory * Middle temporal gyrus (MTG): lexical semantic processing The left hemisphere is usually dominant in right-handed people, although bilateral activations are not uncommon in the area of syntactic processing. It is now accepted that the right hemisphere plays an important role in the processing of suprasegmental acoustic features like prosody. Most areas of speech processing develop in the second year of life in the dominant half (hemisphere) of the brain, which often (though not necessarily) corresponds to the opposite of the dominant hand. 98 percent of right-handed people are left-hemisphere dominant, and the majority of left-handed people as well. What can language disorders tell us about the brain's language areas?      According to Yule (1996: 163-64) there are four areas which the general locations of language function: Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area, the motor cortex and the arcuate fasciculus. Broca’s area, which is described as the anterior speech cortex is located in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere. Paul Broca, a French surgeon, described in the 1860