Linguistics for Clinicians

A Practical Introduction

Linguistics for Clinicians provides an introduction to linguistic analysis in the clinical context. The book draws on a range of linguistic theories and descriptions, equipping readers with a conceptual toolkit that will enable them to: analyse data systematically, taking into account different types of linguistic properties; pick out significant patterns that can give them clinically relevant cues; build explicit arguments to back up their observations and hypotheses; select relevant linguistic items for assessment and therapy tasks.

The syntactic sections cover standard concepts and their application to a range of data is worked through step by step. This solid grounding in syntax provides a springboard for detailed analyses of sentence semantics and sentence phonology which are particularly relevant in clinical assessment and therapy, but are not usually available outside specialist linguistic texts. These sections cover: event structure and its representation by verbs and their complements; the timing and modality of events and their representation by the auxiliary system; rhythmic patterns of sentences and how the type and position of individual words influences them.

Clinical relevance is a central theme throughout the book. All linguistic concepts are introduced with examples of their clinical use. Analytical tips are included to anticipate and deal with common problems of clinical application. Extensive exercises further illustrate the use of linguistic concepts in data analysis and task construction.

Linguistics for Clinicians is primarily a linguistics textbook for students and teachers on clinical courses. It is also a useful resource for practising clinicians, psycholinguitics students and researchers in language impairments.