The single-word lexicon of a severely mentally handicapped child

Three criteria - phonetic form, semantic relevance and communicative saliency - are used to identify the single-word vocabulary of a young mentally handicapped child. The data are taken from video recordings made of the child playing at home and at school over a 12-month period. Inspection of the words reveals that the child exhibits phonological processes typical of younger, normally developing children and, when the complete vocabulary collected for this period is categorized following Nelson (1973), the proportion of word types used is comparable to those reported for normally developing children at the single-word stage. However. this childs use of single words is not restricted to the here-and-now but is used to transcend time and space.