Differences Between Language Disorders

Language Characteristics of Speech Language Impairment (SLI):

• Difficulty learning language rules – extracting regularities from language
  • Formation of morphological and phonological rules in language (word endings and sound combinations)
• Decreased vocabulary development
• Difficulty understanding different contexts for language and constructing word associations for vocabulary growth.

Language Characteristics of Children with Language Learning Disability (LLD)

• Understanding and utilizing language rules is particularly difficult – interferes with the development of complexity of sentences and language.
• Problems with morphological markers such as omission of necessary word endings – in both spoken and written modality
• Word-finding and retrieval problems in both conversations and narratives – leads to frequent communicative breakdowns.
• Overall oral language development may be deficient compared to peers.