On the relationship between prosody and pragmatic ability in Swedish children with language impairment

Abstract

A previous study has shown that Swedish children with language impairment have prosodic problems at different levels of language. The aim of this study is to investigate prosodic problems at the discourse level in two of the children to see whether they are related to pragmatic problems. Prosodic and pragmatic abilities were assessed by perceptual and acoustic evaluations. The children s communication checklist (CCC) was used to evaluate the children 's pragmatic abilities and analysis of spontaneous speech samples was made. The results of the perceptual evaluations showed that the children have prosodic problems at the discourse level. The acoustic analysis also provided some support of this result. According to the CCC and the analysis of spontaneous speech samples the children had pragmatic problems. The results support the assumption that the prosodic problems at the discourse level are related to the pragmatic problems and indicate that the prosodic problems might be secondary to the pragmatic problems. However, far-reaching generalizations can not be made from this case study of two children.