Abstract Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have a significant and longstanding deficit in spoken language ability that adversely affects their social and academic well-being. Studies of children with SLI in a wide variety of languages reveal diverse symptoms, most of which seem to reflect weaknesses in grammatical computation and phonological short-term memory. The symptoms of the disorder are sensitive to the type of language being acquired, with extraordinary weaknesses seen in those areas of language that are relatively challenging for younger typically developing children. Although these children's deficits warrant clinical and educational attention, their weaknesses might reflect the extreme end of a language aptitude continuum rather than a distinct, separable condition.