Autistic spectrum disorder: linguistic delimitation

The aim of the present paper is to offer, from a linguistic point of view, a characterization and systematization of the language of patients with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, and the relations among these characteristics. Specifically, I will distinguish between the linguistic features of those individuals with autistic spectrum with cognitive deficit and the linguistic features of individuals with autistic spectrum but without cognitive deficit. In addition to this, I will describe the relationship that many of the linguistic features have with the pragmatic "component", that is, I want to show that many phonetic-phonological or morphosyntactical alterations are related to a pragmatic disorder. In my opinion, the fact that a pragmatic deficit has repercussions in phonetic-phonological or morphosyntactical aspects proves that Pragmatics are present in language as a whole and, therefore, Pragmatics should be conceived not as just one more component/module of language, but as a perspective (Lopez Garcia-Molins, 1989 or Pons Borderia, 2005).