Language is a uniquely human capacity; hence the investigation of language function, as well as language‐brain relationships, requires the use of human subjects. In recent years, the development of methods for monitoring brain activity as people engage in cognitive tasks has provided a means of studying language‐brain relationships in normal individuals. These techniques complement the study of disruptions to language function caused by brain damage—the aphasias—which for some time served as the primary means of investigating the neural substrates of language. The breakdown patterns observed in aphasia are the focus of much of this chapter, which also reviews evidence from studies that examine language activity in the normal brain. The section on semantics describes how the understanding of objects and their names erodes in the condition known as semantic dementia. The section on language comprehension moves through the processing of spoken input from sounds to sentences. Finally, the section on production describes models of word retrieval and sentence production that aim to account for aphasic as well as nonaphasic performance. Within each section, evidence from functional imaging studies is considered alongside the lesion evidence.