Some of the linguistic deficits of autism are limited vocabulary, limited prosody, and impaired pragmatic/communicative skills, echolalia, and pronoun reversal.

Language and communication concerns for the child with autism are given in the chart below and are characterized as a mild, moderate, or severe impairment (Characteristics of Autism at Different Levels of Severity).

Mild Impairment

	Can speak in complete sentences
	Language may be rigid or inflexible
	Conversational skills may be limited by perseverance
	Poor understanding of nonverbal cues
	Difficulty with abstract concepts

Moderate Impairment

	Verbalize with combination of functional speech, jargon, echolalia
	Pronoun reversal
	Purpose of communication is to satisfy some need rather than social interaction

Severe Impairment

	No functional speech at all
	Nonverbal communication may be limited to using others' hands as tools

Echolalia, mimicking words without any understanding of meaning, either immediately or after a delay of some length, is characteristic of up to 80% of those with autism who have verbal language. (Bruner, Cole, & Kasrmiloff-Smith, 1997) Mitigated echolalia, where the individual grammatically changes to the repeated word to make it more appropriate in certain contexts, is also attributed to those with autism .

Pronoun reversal is when the person with autism confuses first and second person pronouns in speech. (Autism and Language: Description and Diagnosis) He will use "you" to refer to him or herself, and use "I" to refer to his or her listener. This might be a sign that children with autism fail to identify themselves as separate from the person with whom they are speaking or might just be experiencing linguistic confusion.