From the early days of transformational-generative grammar the hope has been that some link could be established between linguistic theory and brain research. The time may be approaching when this can be done. Research into the localisation and timing of brain activity related to language has been advancing rapidly with the aid of a remarkable array of investigative techniques as well as through the continuation of work using direct stimulation of the cortex. Progress in empirical neurology and fundamental changes in linguistic theory now have to be considered together. On the side of the neurology and physiology of language there is the work of Pulvermuller, Rizzolatti and Gallese, with important approaches in articulatory phonology associated with Browman and Goldstein. On the side of theoretical linguistics there has been the move away from the Byzantine complexities of transformational-generative grammar and similar hyper-formalisms towards Minimalism, the central feature of which is that attention is shifted from syntax to the lexicon; belatedly it is accepted that language is to be treated as a natural activity with an evolutionary history and the methodological formalisms of TGG theory have to be abandoned. Research into the localisation in the brain of different aspects of the lexicon fits well with this, not only the differences in response to content and function words but also differences for content words in terms of their perceived meaning - between words with visual, auditory or action reference. The shared problem of language for brain research and for linguistics becomes how content words carrying specific meanings are to be fitted together through the use of syntactically operating function words (together with functional sub-morphemes of tense, agreement, pluralisation) to produce the meaningful sentence.

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