Exploiting functional structure at the grammatical level

Abstract

It is common practice for clinicians to make use of information relating to the normal development of syntactic structure in children when planning programmes of remediation for grammatical disability. However, functional as well as structural considerations are relevant to this aspect of treatment planning, and the two together can provide more detailed guidelines than can be derived from developmental-structural information alone. The functional factors in question are: grammatical dependency, functional range, functional load and distance from target, and their application to clinical linguistics can be seen to yield potential benefits.