CONGENITAL LANGUAGE DISABILITY AS A STUDY MODEL OF EVOLUTION IN COMMUNICATION.

The complex problems of familial or developmental language disability have lately attracted much interest. Many authors feel that the developmental language disorders are related to congenital aphasia, a term rejected by others for semantic reasons. To avoid this criticism, researcher N.E. Wood selected a conservative definition, language disorder is the inability of a child to use symbols for communicative purposes, resulting from injury to, or lack of development of the cortex. If one follows this definition, one may say that congenital language disability retards the development of the capacity to use symbols and their syntactic combinations for communication. There is substantial evidence for the assumption that congenital language disability represents a familial, constitutional, and hereditary disability. In several papers researcher R.S. Eustis described the hereditary syndrome of congenital dyspraxia, familial sinistraliry, and congenital language disability with specific dyslexia and tachyphemia. Thus, congenital or specific language disability is a special form within the general group of language disorders. Though being related to the other aphasiform types of delayed language development, it differs from the pree, intra-, or post-natally acquired aphasias in many respects.