“I can Speak Like You, I am Just Different”: A Psycholinguistics Study of Autistic Child

Language deficiency is one of the barriers that autistic children face in their language growth. Autistic children may face these difficulties in which they have trouble in understanding and communicating their language. Using Chaer's Language Disorders Theory (2003), this research attempts to investigate the receptive language disorders performed by an autistic child named Rahesa and the expressive language disorders performed by an autistic child named Rahesa based on Suherman’s (2016) theory. Using a qualitative with descriptive approach, the data were taken from the videos of the subject’s relationship with his mother, then transcribed into dialogs and analyzed. Then, researcher continued to describe all the findings. The findings of this research indicate that an autistic person has trouble interpreting the message of others and communicating his/her emotions by verbal words. An autistic boy has three difficulties with receptive language disorder, such as difficulty in interpreting verbal language, difficulty in following verbal guidance, and difficulty in focusing his mind.As far as expressive language disorder is concerned, an autistic person faces six difficulties, such as difficulty in inserting words into sentences, difficulty in choosing the correct expression, poor comprehension, taking words out of sentences, repeating some words or phrases, and inappropriately using language structure.The present thesis seeks to offer insights to prospective scholars who are interested in linguistic, in particular psycholinguistics concerned with language problems in the case of autism. General readers will enrich their understanding of and how to cope with the forms of language problems in autistic


I. INTRODUCTION
One crucial thing that determines the growth of a child's language is the capacity to talk. The age period of 0 and 8 years is considered to be the age at which children will perform listening and speech tasks (Sari et al., 2018). This age is the golden or golden age at which 80% of the child's brain grows well (Jessy & Diswantika, 2019). In this case, a typical child will produce a language and speak well at the age of 5 years. In addition, the capacity to generate sentence forms, declarative sentences, negative sentences and challenge sentences is the property of a child 5 years of age or a kindergarten age at which the child already has about 8,000 vocabulary terms (Sari et al., 2018).During their development, a child needs a lot of interaction with the family and the surrounding environment. The surrounding environment impacts language aspects of children through attitudes, speech styles, and vocabulary addition (Firmansyah, 2018).
Normal children have normal language development and language understanding. By performing more complex language capabilities, children are said to have normal language development (Manipuspika, 2019). Children are said to have already acquired a language comprehension if they show answers in their encounters with other people. Based on (Hasanah, 2018), The ability of children to perceive and express their feelings as they communicate with others reflects their language skills. However, children affected from autism have various processes of language acquisition and learning. They have a slow language development involving receptive and expressive language disorder (Hasanah, 2018). Rubenstein and Merzenich (2003) stated that boys are four times more likely to have autism than girls. As stated by Klin et al. (2002, cited in (Rubenstein & Merzenich, 2003,the core of abnormalities of autism are language and social skills. These abnormalities mark a pervasive developmental disorder. Autism is one of the types of pervasive developmental disorder (Priyatna, 2010), along with other types, such as Asperger syndrome, childhood disintegrative disorder, rett syndrome, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) (Daulay, 2017). Children with autism have problems in their social interaction and communication, and they play with their own imagination (Priyatna, 2010).
The autism study is conducted under psycholinguistics.
Psycholinguistics, a combination of linguistics and psychology, is a study of language knowledge, language use, and linguistics or language related to psychology. Psycholinguists conduct research on the development of speech and language and the way people of all ages understand and produce language (Ratner & Leason, 2004). One of the language phenomena is a language disorder.
Field (2003( , cited in (Suherman, 2016 claims that there are two types of problems in language disorder, consisting of receptive (impaired language comprehension) and expressive (impaired language production), and both. (Chaer, 2003), cited in (Murnianti, Sastra & Marnita, 2015) states that receptive is a process of recognizing, identifying, and understanding written and spoken words. On the other hand, expressive is a process of how a person can produce spoken and/or written language, including the forms and structures of language (Murnianti, Sastra & Marnita, 2015).
Language deficiency is one of the barriers that autistic children face in their language growth. Both male and female autistic children may feel this (Alwanchyad et al., 2020). In general, normal children can utter their words by the age of 10 or 12 months (Steinberg & Sciarini, 2006). However, autistic children do not produce structured sentences. Their lack of language production and understanding can be caused by by congenital autism. Furthermore, autism children suffer speech difficulties where their language learning is slower than that of average children and find it difficult to articulate their thoughts, which include issues of receptivity and speech. (Hasanah, 2018).
As language disorder is a serious phenomenon that can influence children's communication ability, and in line with (Priyatna, 2010) claimed that autism experience problems in their social interaction, communication, and imagination, the writer is interested in examining the existence of a language disorder, which includes expressive and receptive language disorder in a child with autism.
Research on language disorder in autistic children focuses on the measurement of verbal language disorders of autistic children based on their gender. (Alwanchyad et al., 2020), autistic children's skill in producing expressive language disorder (Hikmawati et al., 2019), and language disorder of a child with Attention Deficit Disorder/ADD (Murnianti, Sastra & Marnita, 2015). (Alwanchyad et al., 2020), identified the measurement of verbal language disorders experienced by autistic children in three autism care centers. The findings illustrated that both male and female autistic children suffered from expressive and receptive language disorders, and their progress in producing advanced and complex language could be explained by cognitive theory. (Hikmawati et al., 2019) conducted a study on autistic children's expressive abilities in producing speech in SLB Surakarta. The results showed that the expressive abilities were divided into four types, including the ability to imitate words, compose words, express words, and continue words. (Murnianti, Sastra & Marnita, 2015) examined a language disorder of a child with Attention Deficit Disorder/ADD in terms of phonological and the factors contributing to the language disorders. The results demonstrated that the subject experienced receptive disorder in sensory, visual, and auditors, along with expressive disorder in producing consonants in terms of replacement and omission. The language disorder experienced by the subject was caused by heredity, speech organ abnormalities, and external factors, such as environmental and economic factors.
There are number of studies that have been carried out to support this study. The first was about verbal language disorders in autistic children by (Alwanchyad et al., 2020). The study aimed to identify the measurement of verbal language disorders experienced by autistic children in three autism care centers. Using a descriptive approach and statistical analysis methodology to analyze the data, the researchers measured two aspects of verbal language disorders of 45 autistic children; expressive language disorder and receptive language disorder. The study took 105 data sample and used male and female students from the care centers two independent variables and verbal language disorders as the dependent variable. The findings illustrated that both male and female autistic children suffered from expressive and receptive language disorders, and their progress in producing advanced and complex language could be explained by cognitive theory.
The second previous study was about expressive skill of children with autism written by (Hikmawati et al., 2019). The study focused on explaining autistic children's expressive abilities in producing speech in SLB Surakarta. The results showed that the expressive abilities were divided into four types, including the ability to imitate words, compose words, express words, and continue words.
The last previous study was about language disorders in children with attention deficit disorder conducted by (Murnianti, Sastra & Marnita, 2015). The article was a case study about a language disorder of a child with Attention Deficit Disorder/ADD in terms of phonological and the factors contributing to the language disorders. The writers used descriptive qualitative method in conducting the study and collected the data through observation and interviews. The results demonstrated that the subject experienced receptive disorder in sensory, visual, and auditors, along with expressive disorder in producing consonants in terms of replacement and omission. The language disorder experienced by the subject was caused by heredity, speech organ abnormalities, and external factors, such as environmental and economic factors.
The first previous study looked at the measurement of verbal language disorders of autistic children based on their gender. The second previous study focused on autistic children's skill in producing expressive language disorder. The last previous study analyzed language disorder of a child with Attention Deficit Disorder/ADD. This present study is a case study of an autistic child named Rahesa. This descriptive study aims to find out the linguistic expressions indicating autism and identify two types of language disorder: receptive and expressive language disorder. The data is collected through observation. The writer utilizes the theories proposed by Suherman and Chaer to analyze the data.
Based on this background, this present study analyses the language disorders experienced by a 12-yearold child named Rahesa. He is currently a 6 th grade student of Elementary School. This present study seeks to answer the following questions: (1) What are the receptive language disorders performed by an autistic child named Rahesa? (2) What are the expressive language disorders performed by an autistic child named Rahesa? To obtain that, an analysis comprehension is needed.

II. METHODS
The research design employed by the researcher was a qualitative method since it tried to analyze the data that is in a form of words rather than numbers or statistics (Ary et al., 2010). Qualitative study ranges from research that uses and collects various empirical case studies, personal experience, introspective, interview, observational, historical, interactional, problematic, visual texts illustrating routine activities and meaning of life (Watson, 2010).
This present study is a case study of an autistic child. The writer described two types of language disorder, which were receptive language disorder and expressive language disorder of an autistic child named Rahesa. This qualitative research used content analysis or document analysis as an approach to examine and provide the explanations of the data. The content analysis was chosen because the technique creates valid inferences from text to the context (Krippendor, 2004). Moreover, this approach provided an elaborate textual description regarding the way the subject experienced the research issue.
The subject of this study is an autistic boy named Rahesa who suffers from language disorders. He has autism, which is one of the types of pervasive developmental disorder that is marked with problems in language and social skills. Therefore, the data source of this study was taken from videos of Rahesa's verbal language interactions with his mother. The writer selected Rahesa as the focus of the study because he fulfilled the criteria: (i) Rahesa suffers from autism; (ii) Rahesa is under 18 years old, so he is still considered as a child; (iii) Rahesa has difficulty in communicating with others Three methods in collecting qualitative collection consist of in-depth interview, observation methods, and document review (Kabir, 2016). The writer conducted videos observation to collect the data in the present study. The data were collected through the following steps: 1. Watching six videos of the subject's interaction to observe the language production. The duration of each video is generally one minute and 30 seconds. 4. Sorting out the linguistic expressions into receptive and expressive language disorder. In terms of the ability in producing syntactic clauses, the writer observed how the subject produced sentences to answer the questions asked.
Data analysis is a process in which researchers manage and organize the data into good categories Moleong (2010, cited in Tiin, 2014. Based on the research problems stated in the background, the writer did the data analysis through the following steps.

III. RESEARCH RESULT
The findings of the present study is the types of language disorder experienced by Rahesa who suffers from autism. In analyzing the language disorder, the writer used the theories proposed by (Suherman, 2016) and (Chaer, 2003), which involve receptive language disorder and expressive language disorder.
In terms of receptive disorder, the subject underwent problems, such as having a hard time understanding sentences, having difficulty following directions spoken to him, and face a problem in organizing his thoughts. The subject exhibited expressive language disorder in which he had difficulty putting words into sentences, faced difficulty finding the right words when talking, had a low vocabulary level, left words out of sentences, repeated certain words or phrases, and used improper language structure. The findings of the language disorders found in the subject are shown in the table below. As table 1. shown above, there were two types of language disorder experienced by Rahesa in his verbal language activities, which were receptive and expressive language disorder. The subject frequently experienced expressive language disorder (70%), followed by receptive language disorder (30%). The highest rate of expressive language disorder implies that the subject is mostly unable to produce spoken and/or written language properly, indicating that he has lower capability to form grammatically correct sentences to express his feelings and communicate to others. His low level of knowledge regarding language sructures and features holds him back from expressing his thoughts and ideas correctly and could prompt misinterpretation from others. The findings of types of language disorder are discussed in the next section below.

The Analysis of Expressive Language
Disorder (Murnianti, Sastra & Marnita, 2015) proposes that the inability to produce spoken and/or written language, including the forms and structures of language, can be defined as expressive language disorder. As suggested by (Suherman, 2016), people suffering from autism have difficulty putting words into sentences and their sentences might be shorter and unorderly, have difficulty finding the right words when talking, have a low vocabulary level, leaving words out of sentences, repeating certain words or phrases, and using improper language structure. Out of six problems regarding expressive language disorder, the subject displayed five problems, namely having a low vocabulary level (32%), repeating certain words or phrases (26%), using improper language structure (21%), leaving words out of sentences (10,5%), and having difficulty putting words into sentences (10,5%). The subject excluded only one problem, which was having difficulty finding the right words when talking.

Having a Low Vocabulary Level
According to Carrol (1985, stated in Suherman 2016, vocabulary is word that people use in their speech. People produce language, either oral or written, with the vocabulary they have. People with autism might have language limitations and misuse their language choice while communicating. The subject's mother was jokingly asking if the subject wanted to make a duplicate of himself to replace him and in doing his activities. The subject answered his mother by saying "bergerak" or "moving" repeatedly. This implies that the subject attempted to say that he wanted to have a duplicate of himself that could move and replace himself to carry out his daily activities. However, because of having a low vocabulary level, the subject repeated the word instead of agreeing or saying something else as a response.

Repeating Certain Words or Phrases
One of the language habits of autistic people is repeating certain words or phrases. According to Suherman (2016), they repeat part of the previous questions or sentences, such as words or phrases, or all of them. Datum 1: Mother: "Rahesa, kamu tau ga yang dimaksud dengan kopi?" (Rahesa, do you know what coffee is?) Rahesa: "Coffee." (Coffee) In datum 1, the subject's mother asked him a question about coffee in which she wanted him to explain what coffee is. However, instead of describing it, the subject answered the question by stating the word "kopi" in English. In this case, the subject repeated the word from the question. It shows that the subject undergoes the problem of repeating a certain word that has been mentioned.

Using Improper Language Structure
Syntactic verbal language disorder is an inability to combine words into grammatically correct sentences (Octavia, 2018). People produce verbal or written sentences to convey their ideas or opinion. The success of a sentence being conveyed by someone else is measured by how the meaning is comprehended by the receiver (Fish, 2011). In the present study, the subject used incorrect language structure to respond to his mother.
The example is described below. Datum 5: Mother: "Oh sudah sholat subuh, trus bobok lagi?" (Oh, you did pray at dawn, then went to sleep again? " Rahesa: "Jam 5 bangun sudah sholat subuh tidur lagi" (At 5 woke up had prayed slept again) In datum 5, the subject attempted to give his answer, but he had a problem in combining words into a grammatically correct sentence. Thereby, he responded by saying "Jam 5 bangun sudah sholat subuh tidur lagi" or "at 5 woke up had prayed slept again", which means that he has already woken up at 5 for praying but then went back to sleep again. His sentence might cause people not to understand what he intended to say because it was formed unorderly. His sentence was supposed to be "Aku sudah bangun jam 5 untuk sholat subuh, lalu tidur lagi" or "I have woken up at 5 for praying, but then I went back to sleep." It indicates that an autistic child might also have difficulty producing a proper language structure.

Leaving Words out of Sentences
Leaving words out of sentences refers to the activity of using a word or phrase that does not make sense. People who experience this problem might convey a word or phrase out of the topic of the conversation and do not explain the meaning of what they said previously.

Datum 9:
Mother: "Beneran berani sendiri? Nanti mewek?" (Are you sure that you are brave? You won't cry? Rahesa: "Hmm kekacauan. Jangan lagi" (Hmm a mess. Not again) Mother: "Jangan lagi apa?" (What is not again?) Rahesa: (Showing emotion by closing his eyes and mouth, and holding his head) In datum 9 above, the subject showed difficulty in answering the questions. He said that the conversation was a mess or "kekacauan". His response shows the subject's unwillingness in being involved to the conversation. The subject responded by saying a word and not explaining the meaning of it. Also, when the subject's mother asked him again "jangan lagi apa?" or "what is not again?" to question what message that he wanted to deliver. However, he showed emotion by closing his eyes and mouth, and holding his head. It indicates that the subject did not want his mother to ask the same question repeatedly and showed his desire to end the conversation.

Having Difficulty Putting Words into Sentences
Autistic people have difficulty saying or explaining their ideas in grammatically correct sentences. They tend to respond something by stating it word by word instead. It is also mentioned in American Speech and Hearing Association (1982( , cited in (Suherman, 2016 that autistic children produce single words and have difficulty forming grammatically correct sentences. The datum below displays how the subject of this study experienced this problem. Datum 18: Mother: "Patung kan ga bisa mikir. Bikin robot?" (The sculpture cannot think. Will you make a robot?) Rahesa: "Bikin gerak. Bikin orang" (Make a motion. Make a person) Mother: "Nah iya. Robot?" (Yeah, right. A robot?) Rahesa: "Bikin orang" (Make a person) Mother: "Dikloning?" (Cloned?) Rahesa: "Iya, kloning" (Yes, cloned) From the conversation above, when the subject's mother asked him, "Patung kan ga bisa mikir. Bikin robot?" she asked the subject whether the duplicate that he meant was a robot, where the robot depicted a moving object. The subject answered with "Bikin gerak. Bikin orang", which means that he wanted to make a human copy of himself that can move around to do activities. After that, the subject's mother confirmed again whether what he meant was a robot, and the subject answered "Bikin orang". From the subject's answers, it can be concluded that an autism sufferer has an inability to form complete sentences to express what they think. At the end of the conversation, the subject's mother asked him again, "dikloning?" and then he answered with "Iya, kloning". The subject's answer indicates that he has difficulty expressing his thought, so he repeated the term "kloning" or "cloning".

Having DifficultyFinding the Right Words
Difficulty finding the right words is a problem in expressing meaning. According to Carrol (1985, cited in (Suherman, 2016, the meaning of "finding words" here is the activity of using the words or remembering the name of a particular entity in producing speech. People with this kind of problem might have an inability to convey their thought using appropriate words. The subject of this study did not experience this problem. Thereby, this study does not provide any data regarding this issue.

The Analysis of Receptive Language Disorder
Receptive language disorder is an inability to accept language from others. People with receptive language disorder may have problems, such as having a hard time understanding sentences, having problem with following directions that are spoken to them, and having problem with organizing their own thoughts.  As table 3 shown above, the subject exhibited two problems of receptive language disorder, which involved having difficulty following directions that are spoken to him (62,5%) and having problem with organizing his own thought (37,5%). He did not appear to have a hard time understanding sentences.

Having Difficulty Following Verbal Directions
Misunderstanding the meaning of a sentence given from the giver leads the reciever to have difficulty following verbal directions. (Suherman, 2016) stated that people with this kind of problem can receive the information well, but their brain does not understand the message. Autistic children with receptive language disorder can receive information, but their brain has difficulty in processing it effectively (Hasanah, 2018). This phenomenon can be regarded as developmental language disorder (DDD). (Trauner et al., 2000) claims that, based on neurological and MRI findings, developmental language disorder is not a separate entitiy, but is linked to another evidence of brain dysfunction. Furthermore, they explain that, as found on MRI scans, abnormalities of cortical and/or subcortical white matter can cause language impaiment inefficiency in processing informations in children with utism. The subject of this study experienced this problem. The following analysis illustrates how an autistic child has difficulty in following verbal language direction.

Datum 14:
Mother: "Trus gimana cara bikin duplikatnya?" (And then how do you make the duplicate?) Rahesa: "Iya kan udah ada duplikat." (Well, there is already a duplicate) Mother: "Gimana caranya? Coba ajarin mama bikin duplikatnya gimana?" (How do you make it? Can you please teach me how to make it?) Rahesa: "Udah ada duplikat."(There has been a duplicate already) In datum 14 above, the subject appeared to have difficulty following the directions spoken to him. His mother asked him how to make the duplicate of himself and wanted him to explain it. However, he thought that there had been a duplicate already, thus he did not elaborate on the process of making the duplicate. This indicates that he had a problem following his mother's direction to explain the process of making a duplicate.

Having Difficulty Organizing Their Thought
Autistic people have a problem with organizing their own thoughts. When people ask them a question, they might not understand it completely and encounter difficulty organizing their thoughts to answer them. As a result, people suffering from autism might give incorrect responses.

Datum 6:
Mother: "Kenapa sih boboknya malemmalem?" (Why do you always sleep late at night?) Rahesa: "Jam 7 bangun lagi." (Wake up again at 7) The conversation above depicts that the subject had difficulty expressing his meaning in a grammatically correct sentence. By stating "Jam 7 bangun lagi", he intended to deny his mother's question and explain that he was asleep at 7 pm. But he woke up again at night. The subject seemed to have difficulty expressing his meaning through a sentence, thus his response was not utterly correct.

Having a Hard Time Understanding Sentences
Normal people are able to understand meaning delivered through a simple sentence or complex sentence. They can be said to have a verbal language understanding if they can respond to others' question correctly. However, this does not apply to people with autism since they mostly have a hard time understanding verbal language. Based on Carroll (1985, cited in (Suherman, 2016 people experiencing this problem have difficulty understanding complex sentences. The subject of this study did not undergo any difficulties in understanding sentences. Thereby, this study does not provide any data about this problem.

IV. DISCUSSION
This present study finds that the subject, an autistic boy, suffers from language disorders in both expressive and receptive. He frequently experiences expressive language disorder (70%), followed by receptive language disorder (30%). The highest rate of expressive language disorder implies that the subject is mostly unable to produce spoken and/or written language properly, indicating that he has lower capability to form grammatically correct sentences to express his feelings and communicate to others. His low level of knowledge regarding language stuctures and features holds him back from expressing his thoughts and ideas correctly and could prompt misinterpretation from others. Likewise, Alwanchyad, Al-Zubaidi, and Frman (2020) claim that both male and female autistic children have inabilities to understand complex language.
In terms of the most dominant language disorder, expressive language disorder is found in 19 linguistic expressions. The disorder is realized in several problems, such as having a low vocabulary level (32%), repeating certain words or phrases (26%), using improper language structure (21%), leaving words out of sentences (10,5%), and having difficulty putting words into sentences (10,5%). These problems demonstrate the subject's difficulty accepting new words, which leads him to have a low level of vocabulary and use existing terms while communicating. Since he cannot process new vocabularies, it appears that understanding sentence structure and language features can be more difficult to be understood. Due to a lack of vocabulary and difficulty forming sentence structures, children with autism tend to produce improper sentences.
In terms of expressive language disorder, the subject excluded only one problem, which is having difficulty finding the right words when talking. This might happen because he often imitates the previous words or phrases uttered before, hence he doesn't not give other responses.
As the subject also undergo receptive language disorder, he has difficulty following directions that are spoken to him (62,5%) and has problem with organizing his own thought (37,5%). These problems show the subject's difficulty processing verbal messages from others. However, he does not have a hard time understanding sentences. Hikmawati et al. (2019) reveal that there are four aspects of autistic children's ability to produce utterances, which are imitating, composing, expressing, and continuing the words. Also, it shows the development of autistic children's ability to express language, which is the ability to continue the words they heard as initiating responses to their teacher's utterances. In accordance with these findings, the results in this present study show that autistic children who do not attend a special school are still able to respond to questions directly with words or sentences which contain expressive language disorder. The language inability is realized in the forms of having a low vocabulary level and using improper sentences. Lack of vocabulary and difficulty forming sentence structure cause autistic children to produce sentences improperly.
However, the present study does not support the claim proposed by Murnianti et al. (2015), who argue that children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) have difficulties memorizing names of days and limited ability to recognize. These difficulties show that they suffer from receptive language disorder in sensory and visual. In terms of expressive language disorder, children with ADD exhibit problems in producing consonants, such as phone replacement and omission. These problems are caused by internal and external factors. Results from this present study do not show the same problems of language disorders between autistic children and children with ADD since both are different syndromes. In terms of receptive language disorder, the subject in this present study exhibits difficulty following verbal directions and organizing their thoughts. The autistic child of this present study shows difficulties expressing his meanings and feelings verbally because of his limited vocabularies and lack of ability to use proper structured sentences.

V. CONCLUSION
This study is conducted to find out the language disorders of an autistic child. Using Chaer theory of language disorder,this study focuses on two types of language disorder: receptive language disorder and expressive language disorder in terms of syntactic verbal language. The data were taken the utterances produced by Rahesa, a 12-year-old boy who suffers from autism, while communicating with