Abstract

We present and discuss data from 20 children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) at two points of development, preschool and first grade. At both points, a detailed linguistic evaluation was conducted regarding the following aspects of development: phonetic repertoire, lexical abilities, repetition, grammatical comprehension disorder and spontaneous production. Although there was a great deal of individual variability, it was possible to identify three possible subgroups on two dimension that caracterize the initial language disturbance: the number of linguistic features involved in the disorde and the degree of deficit observed in each linguistic domain.