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What is the difference between neurolinguistics and cognitive linguistics or psycholinguistics?
I am already having trouble understanding the difference between cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics but adding neurolinguistics exponentially increases my confusion.
Alex has explained well each concept, but to be easier to understand, when we talk about neurolinguistics in contrast to pyscholinguistics, we are talking about studying language processing in the brain due to brain lesions or degenerative problems.
So, it's common to see aphasia studies in neurolinguistics but acquisition studies in psycholinguistics. Both of them are related, but neuro is more related to losses and psycho, more related to acquisition.
And cognitive linguistics can be also a different theoretical approach, not just a different field of linguistics.
Elisabeth Ahlsén has a good and introductory book about neurolinguistics if you want to know more:
Ahlsén, Elisabeth. "Neurolinguistics." In The Routledge handbook of applied linguistics, pp. 480-491. Routledge, 2011.
The difference between neurolinguistics and cognitive linguistics is akin to the difference between the brain and the mind. Neurolinguistics is specifically concerned with how the physical brain is involved with language. While cognitive linguistics is concerned with the cognition of linguistics, how we think about language, how we conceptualise the world.
