%A Brigitte Stemmer %J Brain and Language %T Introduction %X The introduction to the special issue briefly discusses the origins and development of the word "pragmatics", pragmatic theory and its application to neurolinguistics. The special issue covers a total of 11 articles investigating pragmatic and neuropragmatic issues from different theoretical, experimental and clinical perspectives. %N 3 %K neuropragmatics, pragmatics, neurolinguistics, RHD, developmental pragmatics, aphasia, pragmatic impairments, pragmatic assessment, communicative competence, architecture of mind, right hemisphere, localizationof functions, inferences, speech acts, indirect requests, metaphors %P 389-391 %V 68 %D 1999 %L cogprints125