This monograph, "Czech with Aphasia: Theory and Empiricism", deals with questions which fall somewhere in between the fields of linguistic aphasiology, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics. It is the first original monograph focused on empirical research of native Czech speakers with aphasia, which does not avoid discussing urgent theoretical issues.
The theoretical part introduces the problems of aphasiology on the background of contemporary approaches of cognitive science and deals with the history of the study of aphatic disorders and their typology. It also presents the psycholinguistic models of how speech is produced and understood, explains the concept of agrammatism and provides an overview of basic neuroimaging methods.
The empirical section of the book is devoted to the research on Czech speakers suffering from aphasia. The author presents a set of eight experimental studies that investigate the production and understanding of speech (tasks focused on naming words as nouns and verbs, linking words with images, the semantic categorization of nouns, categorization of verbs by valency, and currently used sentence structures). It also mentions the pitfalls encountered by the researcher while conducting research. Although the speaker's native language is the primary language studied, the book also outlines the problems of other languages. The final discussion correlates the results of all of the experiments performed.
With its comprehensive focus, the monograph may be useful for readers interested in linguistics and psychology, as well as those interested in speech therapy or neuroscience.