In standard models of language production or comprehension, the elements which are retrieved from memory and combined into a syntactic structure are "lemmas" or "lexical items". Such models implicitly take a "lexicalist" approach, which assumes that lexical items store meaning, syntax, and form together, that…

We report on the case of an elderly bilingual woman presenting with a diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia. The participant's native language was Friulian (L1), a predominantly oral Romance language, and her second language was Italian (L2), formally learned at primary school in oral and written forms. We investigated her linguistic abilities…

Minimally verbal children with autism commonly demonstrate language dysfunction, including immature syntax acquisition. We hypothesised that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) should facilitate language acquisition in a cohort (n = 10) of children with immature syntax. We modified the English version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT)…

Repetition is a central phenomenon of behavior, and researchers have made extensive use of it to illuminate psychological functioning. In the language sciences, a ubiquitous form of such repetition is "structural priming," a tendency to repeat or better process a current sentence because of its structural similarity to a previously experienced…

Background: Spontaneous speech of aphasic persons is often scored on rating scales assessing aphasic symptoms. Rating scales have the advantage of an easy and fast scoring system, but might lack sensitivity. Quantitative analysis of either aphasic symptoms or basic parameters provides a useful alternative. Basic parameters are essential units of…

Analysis of the questions asked by normal children suggests that there are cognitive stages of question development. Samples of spontaneous questions asked by normal children and linguistically deviant children were compared in this study in order to determine if linguistically deviant (aphasic) children suffer primarily from a syntactic…

Language samples of 15 young normal children actively engaged in learning base syntax were compared with samples of 15 linguistically deviant children of a comparable linguistic level. Mean number of morphemes per utterance was used to determine linguistic level. The two groups were matched according to five linguistic levels previously…

Research is being conducted to determine the factors behind linguistic retardation in children. A first question raised was whether the linguistic system of the deviant child is qualitatively different from that of a normal child. A matching-up of deviant and normal children according to linguistic level suggests that the onset of base syntax may…

This paper examines the perceptual processes that underlie normal language acquisition with relation to perceptual dysfunctions in the aphasic child. Experiments are cited which seem to indicate that auditory dyfunctions may underlie language impairment. Experimental studies of the linguistic systems of the aphasic child seem to support the theory…

The eight articles in this volume reflect the increased tendency in recent years to consider problems of language acquisition and language pathology in the context of basic research and theory. They also reflect the two major approaches to language development: the transformational-linguistic approach which puts its emphasis on an innate…

This paper discusses Lee and Canter's procedure for assessing child language development as an example of how psycholinguistics is beginning to enter the language clinic. The procedure includes recording and transcribing examples of children's sentences, then scoring them to yield a Developmental Sentence Score (DDS). This procedure was compared…