Brain and Language 79, 297–308 (2001) doi:10.1006/brln.2001.2492, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on Semantic Operations in Aphasic Comprehension: Implications for the Cortical Organization of Language Maria Mercedes Pin ˜ango Yale University and Edgar B. Zurif Brandeis University and Aphasia Research Center, Boston University School of Medicine Published online August 14, 2001 We provide data on the neurological basis of two semantic operations at the sentence level: aspectual coercion and complement coercion. These operations are characterized by being purely semantic in nature; that is, they lack morphosyntactic reflections. Yet, the operations are mandatory (i.e., they are indispensable for the semantic well formedness of a sentence). Results indicate that, whereas Broca’s patients have little or no trouble understanding sentences requiring these operations (performance was above chance for all conditions), Wernicke’s patients performed at normal-like levels only for sentences that did not require these opera- tions. These findings suggest that sentence-level semantic operations rely very specifically on the integrity of the cortical area associated with Wernicke’s aphasia, but not on the region corresponding to Broca’s aphasia. In the context of other findings from lesion and imaging studies, this evidence allows a view of the cortical distribution of language capacity that is drawn along a linguistic line, one which distinguishes syntactic from semantic operations.  2001 Academic Press Key Words: Broca’s aphasia; Wernicke’s aphasia; semantic operations; sentence compre- hension. INTRODUCTION We are concerned here with the neuroanatomical basis of the capacity to carry out semantic composition. Two components are involved in this process: the semantic and the syntactic components. The semantic component involves information about such entities as conceptualized objects, events, properties, times, and quantities. The syntactic component is the system where word order, subject–verb agreement mark- ing, and case marking are determined and whose units are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and the like. In many instances semantic composition is dictated solely by the syntactic arrange- ment of the words in a sentence—but not always. There are instances where the The preparation of this manuscript and the research reported in it were supported by NIH Grants DC 03660 to Brandeis University and DC 00081 to Boston University School of Medicine. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Maria M. Pin ˜ango, Yale University, Department of Linguistics, P.O. Box 208236 New Haven, CT 06520. E-mail: maria.pinango@yale.edu. 297 0093-934X/01 $35.00 Copyright  2001 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.