Understanding Children with Language Problems

Introduction to the study of children's language difficulties, drawing widely on real-life examples.

Shula Chiat (Author)

9780521574747, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 4 May 2000

300 pages, 30 b/w illus.
20.3 x 12.7 x 1.6 cm, 0.441 kg

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

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Psycholinguistics [CFD]