Background Functional neuroimaging has been used in neurolinguistic research on normal subjects and on patients with brain damage. This study was designed to investigate the differences of the neural basis underlying language processing between normal subjects and aphasics.Methods Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to map the language network in 6 normal subjects and 3 patients with aphasia who were in the stage of recovery from acute stroke. The participants performed a word generation task during multi-slice functional scanning for the measurement of signal change associated with regional neural activity induced by the task. Results In normal subjects, a distributed language network was activated. Activations were present in the frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital regions. In the patient group, however, no activation was detected in the left inferior frontal gyrus whether the patient had a lesion in the left frontal lobe or not. Two patients showed activations in some right hemisphere regions where no activation appeared in normal subjects. Conclusions fMRI with word generation task is feasible for evaluating language function in aphasic patients. Remote effect of focal lesion and functional redistribution or reorganisation can be found in aphasic patients.