Language peculiarities

More has been written on the language of autistic children than on any other of their psychological disabilities. Abnormalities of language are frequently reported by parents as being the first problem to give concern. The babbling sounds made by autistic infants are rarely as extensive in range as those made by normal babies. The speech cadences that usually develop by the age of 9 to 12 months do not appear. The National Autistic Society comment that it is virtually impossible to over-emphasise the importance of language to the developing child. A pictorial mind is completely inadequate and until one has a label for an object, one sees but does not remember it, so that in effect it does not really exist. Similarly Luria, in his study of language-retarded twins (1971 [1956]), said that the word has a basic function not only because it indicates a corresponding object in the external world, but also because it abstracts, isolates, the necessary signal, generalises perceived signals and relates them to certain categories."the acquisition of speech allowed man to rise above direct visual perception to analysis of its data, to the relation of perceived objects to certain categories, so enabling him to organise his behaviour, not according to the visually perceived situation, but according to a deeper 'categorised' reflection of the world".(Luria, 1971: 23)
In autistic children there may be a complete absence of speech or, in those children who do speak, immediate echolalia [a parrot-like repetition of words the child has just heard spoken - 'Say hello Bob' - 'Say hello Bob'] or delayed echolalia, repetition of words or phrases heard in the past (often in the accent of the original speaker). There may be repetitive stereotyped, inflexible and often idiosyncratic use of words and phrases, immaturity of grammatical structure of spontaneous (not echoed) speech, problems in sequencing and in understanding meaning, a muddling of the sequence of letters and words -'What that say word' -, confusion of words of similar sound or related meaning; use of 'you' or 'he' instead of 'I'; problems with prepositions and other words that change their meaning with the context. When the child does start to talk he sounds as though he is deaf, the voice is often monotonous and flat and as if speech is unnatural. Repetitive and stereotyped utterances take the place of novel and creative ones; abnormal and eccentric use of language almost as if the autistic person was speaking a foreign language. They seem to have to acquire language intellectually as one would have to learn Russian or Chinese. Conversation with an autistic child may be a matter of ritualistic questions and answers, with the child insisting on the mother asking a specific set of questions; if the mother varies, even in the minutest detail, the way in which she asks the question, the child may respond with a severe and prolonged tantrum. Autistic children display apparent difficulties in producing certain sounds. They are excessively literal; for example: "Steven was very upset by the use of metaphors and similes. 'It is raining cats and dogs' resulted in his sitting by the window all day screaming 'Where's the cats, where's the dogs? it's raining water'".(Howlin and Rutter, 1987: 64)
Autistic children find differing degrees of difficulty in learning words belonging to different grammatical categories. Nouns are easiest to teach, easily demonstrated. Concrete verbs can be taught fairly easily too, most of them can be acted.The same can be done with words such as 'under', 'over', 'behind', 'in front', 'top', 'bottom', 'long', 'short', etc... The difficulty is with abstract words, and function words such as 'to', 'for', 'or', 'unless', 'until', 'while', 'as', etc. Even a child who has learnt to speak fairly well may ask what 'and' or 'the' means. 'Who', 'what', 'why', 'where', 'when', 'how', 'which', are difficult to teach. Most autistic children learn the word 'No' long before 'Yes'. An autistic child who is not echolalic will still have trouble with pronouns. This often leads to reversals: 'you' instead of 'I'. In spite, or perhaps because of, their language handicap these children are very interested in words... They may be quite ingenious in inventing an appropriate name for a thing if they cannot remember the real one, such as 'doggie-bunny' for kangaroo.
All these peculiarities of language in autistic children were illustrated in "The Siege".The following paragraphs brings together points relating to language:
At under two-years old, at any given time Elly has a one-word vocabulary. Aged two she spoke her name clearly but it was two years at least until she spoke her name again. She did not use words to communicate. She had no idea of language as a tool that could cause things to happen. Elly learned 'milk' and 'pin' at two and lost them by two and a half. She asked the first question [with a rising intonation] at four and a half. She never pronounced a final consonant and often the initial consonants were ambiguous or wrong. Anything she could see she could remember and identify - from aardvark to zebra. 'Friend' and 'stranger' are beyond her today (at years old). What she could not understand were relational terms. She acquired the word 'man' a year before she learned the name of any specific man. She had difficulties with personal pronouns; she was six before she used any pronouns at all. In any statement, 'you' is the equivalent of 'I' or 'me'. Elly thinks her name is 'you ... 'I like that' means ... that her interlocutor does, "I have come to wonder how it is that ordinary two-year-olds can grasp anything so subtle [as] the correct use of the first- and second-person pronouns. Such nearly undefinable words as 'have' 'put' 'take' and 'get' are only now coming into use and their boundaries overlap in distorted ways:'Daddy give temperature hundred'. She had never spoken the word 'is' until she was seven. She forms no plurals and inflects no verbs because she will not pronounce a final 's' or 'd'. As late as six and a half Elly comprehended no prepositions and of course used none. Adverbs, articles and conjunctions: but, if, whether, maybe, because, soon, when. yet, like, except. The words seem unimportant until you try to imagine doing without them, and simple until you try to find ways to teach them. Teach them? No one teaches such words - the small child seems to draw them out of the air. But Elly did not even pick up 'and'... Who can draw 'if' or 'when'? Who can draw 'but' itself ?" The almost total absence of articles, conjunctions, prepositions, verb-inflections for tense or person, and the verb 'to be'. "She may say 'table on a hat'. It was not until she was seven that we taught her to answer 'yes'. The powerful word 'Why? Elly cannot comprehend; we cannot ask her 'What do you want?' or 'What's the matter?(Park, 1972: 205 ff.)