ABSTRACT
The co-ordination of development and disorders across language components has long been known. However, the specifics of these relationships can be varied and puzzling. From a common-sense standpoint, one might expect relationships among language components simply because children do not learn aspects of language in isolation. Understanding the co-occurrence of disorders across language components may prove very valuable in making an accurate assessment and in providing some differential approaches to intervention. A subsequent examination of speech-disordered children revealed a great deal more detail about the co-occurrence of phonological, morphological and syntactic deficits. Phonologically disordered children exhibit the same phenomenon: often, children who can produce sounds quite accurately in isolated words become unintelligible in connected speech. The interaction between stress and the topic/comment distinction in influencing phonetic accuracy has been demonstrated in the speech of phonologically disordered children.
