Profiling Autism Through Language

Existing accounts of language in autism have tended to focus on English and have rarely progressed beyond broad characterizations of pragmatic difficulty. This volume changes both. Drawing on a clinically defined corpus of Japanese-speaking adults with ASD and combining Systemic Functional Linguistics with machine learning, it identifies 46 lexicogrammatical features that reliably distinguish ASD from non-ASD discourse, with 80% classification accuracy. Each discriminator is interpreted across twelve cognitive-functional domains, including weak central coherence, joint attention, predictive processing, executive function, and working memory, showing precisely how grammatical choices encode neurocognitive profiles. Analyses span a broad range of lexicogrammatical categories, including clause complexes, process types, appraisal, modality, evidentiality, negotiating particles, and sound-symbolic expression. The result is the first book-length, empirically grounded account of lexicogrammatical variability in ASD, with direct implications for diagnostic assessment and language intervention. Essential reading for researchers and clinicians in autism studies, human neuroscience, clinical linguistics, and neurodevelopmental disorders.