Understanding Children with Language Problems

Some children can hear and can speak, yet have trouble understanding or producing utterances. In this accessible introduction to children’s language difficulties, Shula Chiat explores the stumbling blocks which lie behind their struggle. The uniqueness of this book lies in its focus on individual children, the extensive and intriguing examples which illustrate their problems, and the step-by-step search for the source of those problems. Difficulties with words, verb structures, function morphomenes, and meaning are examined and illustrated by detailed case studies. This book provides a clear overview of what children with language difficulties say and do, and introduces a logical approach to identifying children’s language problems. It will be welcomed by students and researchers of linguistics, language development and language disorders; teachers of language-impaired children; and speech and language therapists.

• Accessible introduction to the study of children’s language problems • Draws on extensive and intriguing data from individual children and evokes, through their own words, these children’s experiences of language • Relevance to both linguistics and psychology students studying language development and disorders, teachers working with language-impaired children, and speech and language therapists

Acknowledgements; Glossary of text conventions and symbols; Introduction; Part I. Problems with Words: 1. What’s in a word?; 2. The child\'s road to words; 3. Blocks on the road to words; 4. Exploring the blockage; 5. ‘Dant always day dings’: problems with phonology; 6. ‘Stip’ or ‘step’ or ‘slip’ or what?: problems with lexical processing; Part II. Grappling with Verb Structure: 7. Translating events; 8. Growing verb structures; 9. Shortfalls with verbs; 10. ‘Thing out. Tip in there’: problems with verb processing; Part III. Missing Function Morphemes: 11. Filling out sentences; 12. ‘That one not working, see’: problems with auxiliary verb processing; Part VI. Hidden Meanings, Baffling Meanings: 13. The roots of meaning; 14. ‘[æ] you don’t tell nobody this?’: strengths in pragmatic processing; 15. ‘I can speak Chinese. But I can’t speak Chinese’: problems in pragmatic processing; Endpoint and springboard; Further reading; References; Index.

‘This is a delightful and an important book. The mixture of real life examples and linguistically sophisticated analyses is just right. Chiat focuses especially intently on phonological problems and word learning problems and the cascading effects these can have on other aspects of language development. Throughout, we never lose sight of individual children with their own individual problems.’ Professor Michael Tomasello, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig

‘A clear and accessible description of children’s language problems and the complications they pose. Its many examples of the communicative struggles faced by these children will serve as a helpful reminder of why our task of solving the mysteries of language disorders is so important.’ Laurence B. Leonard, Professor of Audiology and Speech Sciences, Purdue University

‘This is simply a great book. Buy it, read it and keep it on your shelf for dipping into.’ AFASIC News