Abstract:
The study focuses on the observed linguistic impairments of two children, Mimo Usama (female) and Sele Yengi (male), aged 4:11 and 5:2 respectively. Whereas, Mimo’s overall cognitive disposition is generally characterized by inattentiveness, impulsiveness, and hyperactivity, which are symptoms of a psychosomatic condition known as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Sele manifests symptoms of neurological disorders and mental retardation. An account of the linguistic manifestations of these symptoms in the two children tends to show that the speech of Mimo is characterized by sound substitutions, inappropriate grammatical patterns (agrammatism) deriving, perhaps from her impulsiveness and inattentiveness. Her hyperactive inclination predisposes her to excessive talking, blurting out answers even before questions are completed. Certain standardized language tasks requiring high levels of sustained attention, inhibition, working memory, or planning/organization such as the Test of Word Finding, Rosner & Simon’s Auditory Analysis Test, and Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Revised, present very difficult challenges to Mimo. The linguistic behaviour of Sele’s pathological condition is generally characterized by developmental language delay, manifesting a number of speech disorders such as stuttering (dysfluency), orofacial myofunctional disorders (OMD), unilateral vocal cord paralysis (UVCP), apraxia of speech, and velopharyngeal dysfunction (VD). These language impairments, which these children present put them at clear risk for later general academic difficulties and therefore require immediate intervention programmes as well as the therapeutic expertise of speech therapists/specialists.
