ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic workers as well as developmentalists have linked the musical, rhythmical properties of language to the intact sense of a bodily self. Words are not just symbols: they are sensory constructs with rhythmical and musical properties. These two aspects of language are perhaps most fruitfully integrated in poetic diction, which relies on the sound of words to produce a bodily and emotional impact just as their meaning produces a mental impact. Clinical work, on the other hand, and particularly work with autistic children, allows us to study the disjunction between form and meaning, or sound and sense. Many factors will interact to allow sounds produced by the mouth to be used communicatively. For example, most parents react to their babies' vocalizations as though these were intended as words: without this expectation and response, language development can be impaired.
