engleski

Why Some Children Cannot Come to Language

The language development depends on differents factors (cognitive, socio-communicative and linguistic input). Analogously, there are numerous reasons as to why language development can be delayed. Early language development is a dynamic process and the emergence of first words in the period from 12 to 18 months is considered to be the most important indicator of that process. When the first words do not appear until the age of two, the cause of delay is in the most cases considered to be of a linguistic origin, with treatment mostly focused on language or speech reinforcement. However, there is a subset of children who, despite the language stimulation, will not show any progress in language development. These are the children who lack socio-communicative prerequisites necessary for the language acquisition and in the most cases these children are not detected during their first two years of life. The aim of this paper is to point out the unbreakable tie between socio-communicative and language development. On the basis of case analysis of children with the communicative impairment, we will present various features of impairment originating from prelinguistic development and emphasize different important prerequisites from the domain of social cognition and communicative development. If these prerequisites are not meet the occurrence of language is not possible. Shaping treatment procedures and progress in language acquisition are essentially dependent on early detection of the impairments and on distinguishing symptoms (language delay) from causes (delayed or impaired communicative development), with cause being prime target in treatment procedures.

prerequisites for language acqusition; language delay

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