The concept of a "mental syllabary," i.e., a store of syllable-sized motor planning units, has become a cornerstone in the modeling of spoken language production. This idea lead to the question of the significance of syllabic representations in speech impairments, especially in apraxia of speech, but also in other fields of neurolinguistic inquiry (e.g. phonemic paraphasia or dyslexia). The Special Issue The syllable and beyond - New evidence from disordered speech" presents a cross-section of the current discussion on the role of the syllable in speech and language processing in...

Progressive language impairments comprise a broad range of symptoms of impaired language processing that worsen over time as a result of neurodegenerative disease, and that range from impaired knowledge of the concepts underlying language through reading and writing difficulties to impaired ability to articulate speech.

This volume focuses on intervention for progressive language impairments, providing an overview of current research and including examples of interventions at different levels (e.g., impairment-directed interventions, activity/participation-directed interventions). The...

Communication disorders are a problem for people around the world. However, language disorders are rarely studied within the context of bilingualism. This is despite the fact that the majority of individuals who are affected by acquired language disorders are multilingual. Studies of bilingual aphasic speakers reveal important insights about the cognitive and neurological factors involved in multilingualism and have an impact on the assessment and the rehabilitation of aphasic speakers. The aim of this Special Issue is to present papers by leading researchers in the field of aphasia and to...

Research in language processing and language impairment has focused extensively on elements of linguistic representation that are accessed and retrieved in comprehension, repetition and production of words and sentences. These studies have provided important information about the effects of characteristics of words (e.g., frequency, imageability) and sentences (e.g., syntactic and semantic argument structure) on language processing. A smaller but nonetheless rapidly growing body of research has been directed to understanding those cognitive processes that mediate access, maintenance and...