Linguistic information gained through the analysis of video recordings of
11 children with Down's Syndrome is described. It was found that even at
this age, when children are becoming more socially capable and indepen
dent, verbal language was limited mainly to single-word utterances. Those
children with more words in a sequence were often at a disadvantage, due to
poor intelligibility which increased with increased complexity of syntax. On
the whole, children were sensitive to the rules of conversation, but had
major difficulties in initiating or performing repair strategies. Signing
seemed to be the most useful form of repair. Remedial implications are
briefly discussed.
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