摘要:Roman Jakobson (1948/1968), made two seminal statements about aphasie language: 1) it is a mirror image of child language and 2) it represents a loss of phonological distinctions. Recent re-interpretations of Jakobson9 s implicational universals in terms of Optimality Theory (OT), also suggest that aphasie speech may be explained as a re-arrangement of constraints so that markedness constraints take precedence over feithfiilness constraints. Jakobson^ statements have been criticised since aphasie speech includes contrasts and structures which emerge late in development (e.g., Caramazza, 1994) and difficulties with lexical retrieval seem to be better interpreted as reductions in levels of activation rather than as a loss of contrasting information. However, these issues may be con&sed by considering difièrent types of patients together. Here, we want to re-examine the efect of implicational universals in aphasia by distinguishing diferent groups of patients where articulatory difficulties are established with a clear criterion.