Well-documented Romance-Germanic differences in the use of accent in speech to convey information-structure and focus cause problems for the assessment of prosodic skills in populations with clinical disorders. The strategies for assessing the ability to use lexical and contrastive accent in English and Spanish are reviewed, and studies in the…

The case study of an older woman with Alzheimer's disease shows that while her command of words and syntax had deteriorated, her ability to use other forms of communication had not. Her alternative forms of communication included use of gesture, facial expression, posture, and tone of voice. (MSE)

Preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLIs) and two groups of linguistically normally developing children described motion and change-of-state scenes while viewing a video, and patterns of verb use were analyzed. Although SLIs relied heavily on general all-purpose verbs, normally developing children used them more. SLIs made more verb…

A case study analyzed the echolalia behavior of an autistic 11-year-old boy, based on recordings made in his home and school. Focus was on the subset of immediate echolalia referred to as pure echoing. Using an approach informed by conversation analysis and descriptive phonetics, distinctions are drawn between different forms of pure echo. It is…

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the major areas of research in the field of child language acquisition. It is divided into seven parts and 19 chapters. Part I is an introduction and overview. Part II covers central issues in the study of child language acquisition, focusing on syntax, including those of innateness, maturation, and…

These articles on scaffolding in language and speech pathology/therapy are included in this issue: "Strategies d'etayage avec des enfants disphasiques: sont-elles specifiques?" ("Scaffolding Strategies for Dysphasic Children: Are They Specific?") (Genevieve de Weck); "Comparaison des strategies discursives d'etayage dans un conte et un recit…

The collection of papers on language development and African-American children includes: "The Challenges of Conducting Language Research with African American Children" (Holly K. Craig); "Issues in Recruiting African American Participants for Research" (Joyce L. Harris); "Issues in Assessing the Language Abilities of…