Uncommon understanding: Development and disorders of language comprehension in children.

Bishop's textbook focuses on disorders of language processing that can be v iewed as generated by specific language impairments (SLI). In her view, lan guage processing involves components such as audition, articulation, lexica l processing, morphosyntactic processing, and pragmatic processing. For eac h of these components, Bishop examines possible root causes that can lead t o developmental language disorders. She also explains how disorders in one component can interact with disorders in other components. The overall fram ework provides an interactive, componential account of the root causes of S LI. This is an excellent book that stands as a definitive contribution to t he literature on a difficult topic. It functions well not only as a referen ce work, but also as an introductory textbook. (C) 1999 Academic Press.