Understanding Development and Disorder in Cantonese Using Language Sample Analysis

Understanding Development and Disorder in Cantonese using Language Sample Analysis brings together 20 years of research on typical development and Development Language Disorder (DLD) in Cantonese.

This book begins with a succinct overview of Cantonese, which is a popular variety of Chinese, a Sino-Tibetan language. The second chapter describes a new framework of the Grammatical Analysis of Cantonese Samples (GACS), which is developed on the basis of functionalist and usage-based theories of language and language development. The third chapter reports on a quantitative analysis, as well as a qualitative description of the development of Cantonese in preschool children using the GACS framework. The book ends with a chapter that presents the linguistic profile of a Cantonese-speaking child with DLD. It also illustrates how to make decisions on intervention targets on the basis of the grammatical and error analysis. The book provides a timely and important addition to the typological diversity of studies in both child language development and disorder.

This book is informative for students and practitioners of speech and language therapy, students in early childhood education and Chinese linguistics and researchers in child language development and disorders.

Anita Mei-Yin Wong is Associate Professor in the Discipline of Speech Pathology, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, Australia