Early studies of semantic aphasia in the work of A. R. Luria
The article describes the history of the study of semantic aphasia by the world-famous neuropsychologist a.R. luria. It uses rare materials from the archive of the scientist, stored at the faculty of Psychology of lomonosov Moscow State university. Mechanisms of semantic aphasia have been debated for a century. a.R. luria made a significant contribution to their study, so the development of his point of view on this issue is of natural interest. In the early period of the study of aphasia a.R. luria worked closely with l. S. Vygotsky, the founder of cultural-historical psychology. the pre-Kharkov and Kharkov periods of luria’s work are presented in the archive by protocols of the patients’ examination from 1929 to 1933. their analysis allows us to trace the development of diagnostic methods to investigate the understanding of logical-grammatical constructions, which later become classical neuropsychological tests. the next period of studying aphasia, when luria worked at the Institute of Neurosurgery (1937-1939), is reflected in the archive by the unfinished and unpublished monograph «the Parietal (Semantic) aphasia» (Moscow, 1940, 219 pages). the book contains three different reviews of literature, from neurology to linguistics, which allow us to trace, under the influence of what scientists formed the views of a.R. luria on semantic aphasia. It reveals luria’s opinion about the role of simultaneous spatial synthesis in understanding complex logical-grammatical constructions. the article discusses the similarity and differences in views of the scientist on the structure of the syndrome of semantic aphasia in his early and later works.