Children who cannot rely on speech due to disability can develop language through augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), which includes aided systems such as speech-generating devices and communication boards with graphic representations, as well as unaided modalities such as vocalizations, facial expressions, and gestures. Aided language development offers a natural context for examining how linguistic representations form and how language is processed when children depend on alternative means of expression rather than speech.

This talk will present findings from our research analyzing the vocabulary, grammar, and discourse of monolingual English, monolingual Spanish, and bilingual Spanish-English users of AAC. Our work has relied heavily on the analysis of language samples from these groups to examine vocabulary composition, verb use, morphological and syntactic errors, and the combination of aided and unaided modalities during production. These samples have provided detailed evidence about how children use AAC across languages, including natural strategies they use to compensate for the restrictions placed on them by extremely limited vocabulary or by the high operational demands of their AAC systems.

The talk will also describe the development and application of the Protocol for the Analysis of Aided Language Samples in Spanish (PAALSS), a tool that supports systematic characterization of Spanish aided language, and how the study of aided language development contributes to a broader account of language learning under conditions of limited speech and alternative forms of representation.