Language impairments in children and adults

 This course provides a brief overview of language disorders in adults and different kinds of (neuro-)-developmental language disorders in children. The first part of the course will concentrate on aphasia, an acquired disorder of language that occurs as a result of a brain lesion. We will then present overviews of studies on Specific Language Impairment, Williams Syndrome, and Down's Syndrome, three genetic disorders that occur in children and affect the normal acquisition of language. We will interpret empirical findings on developmental language disorders from a specifically linguistic perspective and with respect to theories of the acquisition of grammar.The course consists of 5 weekly 90 minutes lectures. The lectures will be kept reasonably informal, with opportunities for interaction and participation by students. Students are expected to attend regularly, to read relevant texts in advance of a class as required, and to participate actively to class discussions.

 Background reading:

Clahsen, H. Chomskyan syntactic theory and language disorders. To appear in M. J. Ball, M. Perkins, N. Mueller & S. Howard (eds.), The Handbook of Clinical Linguistics. Blackwell: Oxford.

à http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~harald/handbook06.pdf