The use of stress by language-impaired children

This investigation was conducted to identify the stressing patterns of language-impaired children in the early stages of language acquisition. Based on Wieman's (1976) work with children who were acquiring language normally, it had been expected that the subjects of this study would tend to stress the new information in two-word utterances. Only one of the five preschool language-impaired children used such a pattern. Three subjects tended to stress words in the final position and one of the subjects' preference was unclear. The results, although preliminary, provide support for the contention that language-impaired children may differ from normal children in their use of stress.