The majority of language assessment procedures available to speech therapists are concerned with the child’s ability to use grammar, vocabulary and phonology. In recent years there has been increasing recognition that many children who are reasonably competent in these areas may nevertheless have problems with semantics and pragmatics. Thus although their speech may be fluent and grammatically well formed, the content of what they say has an odd quality, and the way in which they use language in social interactions may be unusual. Several authors have suggested that this constitutes a specific subtype of language disorder, variously termed ’semantic-pragmatic syndrome’ (Rapin & Allen, 1983), ’semantic-pragmatic disorder’ Bishop & Rosenbloom, 1987) or ‘conversational disability’ (Conti-Ramsden & Gunn, 1986). Rapin (1987) includes the following in her characterisation of semantic-pragmatic syndrome speech fluent with adequate articulation; verbose; comprehension deficits for the meaning of verbal messages, notably questions; tendency to interpret messages quite literally; tendency to respond to one or two words in a sentence rather than to the entire message; incessant chatter, perseveration, use of or circumlocutions, semantic paraphasias and lack of semantic specificity; impairment in the ability to take turns and to maintain a topic in discourse.

Continue reading C. Adams (Centre of Audiology, Education of the Deaf and Speech Pathology, University of Manchester)
and D. V. M. Bishop’s (Department of Psychology, University of Manchester) paper