This comprehensive monograph is dedicated to the late Dr. Elizabeth Bates of San Diego

and Rome who built so many bridges between brain development and function in a

variety of languages. It updates progress in understanding children's language learning

and its pathologies. It stresses the neurologic basis of normal language acquisition and the

consequences of a variety of disorders using such tools as detailed analysis of language

comprehension, production, and use, as well as functional brain imaging, and electrophysiology.

It also underlines the importance of subcortical circuitry and inner speech, and reviews the

unfolding or regression of language in focal brain lesions, autism, Williams syndrome, and

developmental disorders of oral and written language.