ABSTRACT
Roger Brown considered how children come to attach a word to things and categories of things in the world. Attaching words or names to things and categories is basic to human language—the label Specific Language Impairment(SLI) is one example. Children with SLI have deficits in working memory that may underlie their language deficits. Children with phonological disorders are routinely excluded from studies of SLI in order to avoid including children whose speech production limitations might be the result of apparent nonlinguistic limitations in language production. Pragmatics is a heterogeneous category of language abilities including presuppositions about the knowledge and social status of the listener, the communicative intent or function of utterances, the structure of narratives and discourse and conversation, as well as the more global use of language and nonlinguistic means of communication. Children with SLI also have deficits in conversation that may reflect either social deficits or structural language deficits.
