The Frankfurter Beschwerde-Fragebogen (FBF), assessing basic symptoms (B-S), and the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) were administered to 30 patients satisfying DSM-III-R criteria for the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Considering the relationship between BS and negative symptoms (N-S), we identified the key role of the impairment of receptive and expressive language for the correlation of these two orders of phenomena.