Preterm infants significantly lag behind full-term infants in various behavioral and cognitive aspects of language development. The maturity of the nervous system in preterm infants may be a key factor limiting their language development. In terms of brain structure, preterm infants typically have smaller brain volumes, slower developmental speeds, and are more susceptible to injury, which may hinder the development of information processing and language abilities. Functionally, the brain activity patterns of preterm infants differ from those of full-term infants, involving different brain activation regions and network connectivity when processing language-related tasks. This suggests that preterm infants may require more effort or adopt different neural pathways for language comprehension and output. This article reviews the research progress on the neural mechanisms of language development in preterm infants to provide insights for further research in this area.