Purpose: The current "specific language impairment" and "developmental language disorder" discussion might lead to important changes in how we refer to children with language disorders of unknown origin. The field has seen other changes in terminology. This article reviews many of these changes. Method: A literature review of…

Noun-related morphosyntax has not been emphasized in the literature on children with specific language impairment (SLI), yet, across languages, problems in this area are quite apparent. This review is designed to highlight noun-related difficulties that seem to be especially troublesome for these children. A review of the research literature on…

Attempts to demonstrate that specifically language-impaired (SLI) children can be viewed as normal learners faced with systematically altered input. By assuming SLI children are limited in their ability to perceive and hypothesize grammatical morphemes that are low in phonetic substance, many features of SLI children's language can be explained by…

Research is reviewed on the ability of language-disordered children to select and modify their speech based on the listener and the situation. Among conclusions drawn are that language-disordered children, in general, are sensitive to listener characteristics as well as situations appropriate to their level of linguistic development. (CL)

Deals with an examination of available evidence concerning the speech of language impaired children, and an inspection of the evidence regarding other, nonlinguistic behaviors of these children that require related abilities in mental representation. (Author/MP)