From conceptual intention to utterance: A study of impaired language output in a child with developmental dysphasia

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This is a psycholinguistic case study of a child whose linguistic output is often unintelligible or ungrammatical, and who has been diagnosed as developmental dysphasic. It explores the conceptual intentions expressed in the child's spontaneous utterances, and her linguistic mapping of these intentions. Analysis of the scope and limits of her output reveal: a variety and complexity of conceptual intentions which exceed her ability to map these intentions linguistically; constituent structures which are intact from a gross syntactic, semantic, and phonological (prosodic) point of view; omissions and substitutions which affect syllables within words and words within sentences according to their place within the prosodic structure of the word or sentence, those items which occur pre‐stress being most vulnerable; lexical substitutions affecting words which are semantically and syntactically contingent on the head they modify. It is suggested that phonological constraints, which limit the processing of phonological detail within a rhythmic structure, and which may be affected by certain semantic factors, are responsible for the child's impaired output. These conclusions are discussed in relation to current research in the field, raising specific questions for further psycholinguistic investigation into developmental dysphasia.

This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit: