ABSTRACT
Semantics refers to the meaning of words or phrases. Semantic disorders may be considered as disorders of receptive language and of higher-level language. Difficulties for children with such problems tend to relate to working out what a sentence is about, for although they may understand the possible meanings of a word, their difficulty lies with working out how the word is being used on a specific occasion. One particular difficulty is with metaphorically used words or phrases such as ‘give me a hand’.
