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 examine the patterns of speech and language disorders among speakers who have varying proficiency in their native and non-native languages.

This volume provides a broad overview of current work in aphasia in individuals who speak more than one language. With contributions from many of the leading researchers in the field, the material included, both experimental work and theoretical overviews, should prove useful to both researchers and clinicians. The book should also appeal to a broader audience, including all who have an interest in the study of language disorders in an increasingly multicultural/multilingual world (e.g. students of speech-language pathology and linguistics). The areas of multilingual aphasia addressed in this collection include assessment and treatment, language phenomena (e.g. code-switching), particular language pairs (including a bidialectal study), and the role of cultural context.

The Bilingual Aphasia Test is a comprehensive language test designed to assess the differential loss or sparing of various language functions in previously bilingual individuals. The individual is tested, separately, in each language he or she previously used, and then in the two languages simultaneously. The testing is multimodal -- sampling hearing, speaking, reading, and writing; and multidimensional -- testing various linguistic levels (phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, and semantic), tasks (comprehension, repetition, judgment, lexical access and propositionizing), and units (words, sentences, and paragraphs). The BAT is structured as follows: * To test a bilingual aphasic, you will need the following testing elements: the stimulus books for each of the languages in which the individual was formerly fluent, the single-language tests for each of these languages, as well as the bilingual test that links them. For example, if you are testing an English-French bilingual aphasic, you will need an English stimulus book, a French stimulus book, an English single-language test, a French single-language test, and an English-French bilingual test. * The BAT can also be used to test monolingual aphasics. To test for monolingual aphasia, you will need the stimulus book and the single-language test in the language in which the individual was formerly fluent. * Professor Paradis' book, The Assessment of Bilingual Aphasia, provides the background material and serves as the manual for the test. The BAT is available in dozens of languages and language pairs. There are now 106 bilingual pairs available. Additional single-language and bilingual tests are being prepared continuously. If the language (or language pair) you need is not listed, please call LEA to find out if and when it will be available. Single-language materials are now available in: Amharic Arabic (Jordanian) Arabic (Maghrebian) Armenian (Eastern) Armenian (Western) Azari Basque Berber Bulgarian Catalán Chinese (Cantonese) Chinese (Mandarin) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Farsi Finnish French Friulian Galician German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Inuktitut Italian Japanese Kannada Korean Kurdish Latvian Lithuanian Luganda Malagasy Norwegian Oryia Polish Portuguese (Brazilian) Portuguese (European) Rumanian Russian Somali Spanish (American) Spanish (European) Swahili Swedish Tagalog Tamil Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Yiddish Bilingual pairs are now available in: Amharic/English Amharic/French Arabic/Armenian Arabic/English Arabic/French Arabic/Somali Arabic/Swahili Armenian/English Armenian/Farsi Armenian/French Armenian/Russian Basque/English Basque/French Basque/Spanish Berber/English Berber/French Bulgarian/English Bulgarian/French Bulgarian/German Bulgarian/Russian Catalán/Spanish Chinese (Cantonese)/English Chinese (Mandarin)/English Chinese/French Croatian/English Croatian/French Croatian/Italian Czech/English Czech/German Czech/Russian Czech/Swedish Danish/English Danish/German Dutch/English Dutch/French Dutch/German Dutch/Hebrew English/Farsi English/Finnish English/French English/Friulian English/German English/Greek English/Hebrew English/Hindi English/Hungarian English/Icelandic English/Italian English/Japanese English/Korean English/Latvian English/Lithuanian English/Luganda English/Norwegian English/Polish English/Portuguese English/Rumanian English/Russian English/Serbian English/Somali English/Spanish English/Swahili English/Swedish English/Tagalog English/Turkish English/Urdu English/Vietnamese Farsi/French Farsi/Hebrew Finnish/French Finnish/Swedish French/Friulian French/German French/Greek French/Hebrew French/Hungarian French/Italian French/Japanese French/Malagasy French/Polish French/Rumanian French/Russian French/Serbian French/Somali French/Spanish French/Swahili French/Urdu French/Vietnamese Friulian/German Friulian/Italian Galician/Spanish German/Greek German/Hebrew German/Hungarian German/Italian German/Polish German/Russian German/Spanish German/Swedish Greek/Spanish Greek/Turkish Italian/Rumanian Italian/Spanish Portuguese/Spanish Russian/Swedish Somali/Swahili

During the last years a significant number of papers, books, and monographs devoted to speech and language impairments in bilingual children have been published. Different aspects and questions have been approached and today we have a relatively good understanding of the specific characteristics of the speech and language difficulties potentially observed in bilingual and multilingual children. This interest has been significantly resulted from the potential developmental and educational consequences of bilingualism. Our understanding of the communication disorders in adult populations is notoriously more limited, even though over 50% of the adult population can speak at least another language in addition to his/her native language. That simply means that over 50% of the communication disorders observed in adults are bilingual speech and language disorders: bilingual aphasias, bilingual dementias, bilingual stuttering, etc. This book was written with the specific purpose of filling this gap. The major purpose of this book has been to integrate the state of the art on the different aspects of the communication disorders observed in adult bilinguals. The book is organised in such a way that an integrated perspective of bilingualism is presented: from the normal conditions to the pathology; from the clinical descriptions to the rehabilitation issues; from the biological factors to the cultural variables.

"Language Disorders in Bilingual Children and Adults, Third Edition, provides speech-language pathologists, advanced students in communication disorders programs, and clinical language researchers with information needed to formulate and respond to questions related to effective service delivery to bilingual children and adults with suspected or confirmed language disorders. The bilinguals of interest represent varying levels of first and second language proficiency across the lifespan. That is, bilingualism is not determined here by proficiency in each language, but rather by the individual's experience or need for two languages"--

"The present study was conducted in order to investigate the effects of bilingual therapy on the naming skills of a bilingual aphasic patient. The nature of the word-finding difficulties of a French-English bilingual aphasic subject was assessed. Theory-based anomia therapy was administered to the patient first in English and then in French to explore within- and across-language treatment effects. General language skills were also assessed before and after therapy. Results revealed significant improvement in naming of treated words, but very limited generalization to untreated items in only one of the languages. Transfer of therapy effects from treated to untreated language was not observed. Findings are discussed in relation to the efficacy of bilingual therapy; implications for models of bilingual lexical organization are considered." --

The study of speech errors, or "slips of the tongue," is a time-honored methodology which serves as a window to the representation and processing of language and has proven to be the most reliable source of data for building theories of speech production planning. However, until Kids' Slips, there has never been a corpus of such errors from children with which to work. This is the first developmental linguistics research volume to document how online processing is revealed in young children, ages 18 months through 5 years, through their slips of the tongue. Thus, this text provides a new methodology and data source, which will greatly expand our ability to uncover the details of early language development. Professor Jaeger's groundbreaking book incorporates both details of her methodology and findings with implications for different aspects of language development, including phonetics and phonology, the lexicon, semantics, morphology, and syntax. While all the child data is included in the book, a Web site hosted by the author provides readers with the adult data as well. Kids' Slips targets those who study language development in linguistics, developmental psychology, and speech and hearing, as well as those who study language representation and processing more generally in the same disciplines.