obsrvr524 >> believe it or not it is possible to start answering a question before you have all of the information you need(but like I said: start answering). This is based on the idea that we get better at doing any given thing by applying what we already know - this is also applicable to things we have not learned yet.
Whether the answer is fitting of the question is a sign of the relationship between the question and the context. With limited context, it is useful to dig for clues in what else has been written in this case instead of focusing on the question itself.
. . . the question . . .
. . . and what else has been written . . .
With this being said there are a couple of things to note: given that I have witnessed you post different information on this forum and what that information contains tells me that you know how to read and write, I would also have to assume based on that observation that you also know how to think. This takes me back to this: believe it or not it is possible to start answering a question before you have all of the information you need.
I will be honest and say that upon my initial inspection of the OP I became fixated on the question because of a deeper philosophical motivation(I hope that makes sense) and started wondering about it for a little while. Many things popped into my head such as:
- Is this thought fitting? in other words, does the question fit my thoughts?
- Should I keep thinking about this given that my thoughts about it may be artificial?
. . . this is to only name but two thoughts . . . at some point, after the many things that popped into my head I had reached the conclusion that I needed more information, so I proceeded to perform a couple of searches in google to see what would happen. To the best of my knowledge, I think what the OP is referring to is this: Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area(these are two areas in the brain ) and the following definition: Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. I got this information by inputting the OP’s question “What came first, the word or the ability to produce and/or comprehend it?”
I then proceeded to do another search based on the following term: double dissociation(as mentioned in the OP) - this yielded a nice little explanation at the top of google as follows: Double Dissociation is when two related mental processes are shown to function independently of each other. A classic example of Double Dissociation is speech and language comprehension. Although both processes pertain to the use of language, the brain structures that control them work independently.
. . . then I read something about a person suffering from a condition(perhaps aphasia) whereby they could speak fluently but could not understand what was being said to them and if I recall correctly they also could not understand what they read . . . so essentially, I too am not sure at this point what is going on because I ran out of time to build more context for myself . . . but it seems like an interesting topic, so I will keep checking back here.