A study was conducted to determine: (1) whether language-impaired children have deficient paraphrase capabilities; (2) whether these deficiencies are both qualitative and quantitative; and (3) whether these abnormal skills are deterimental to normal linguistic growth. Forty-eight children from grades 1,3,5, and 7, with language impairments for which there was no identifiable cause, were given a paraphrase production and a paraphrase recognition task. Their performance was compared to that of a matched group of children with normally developing language. The language-impaired children produced and recognized fewer correct paraphrases, and they relied on a strategy of lexical substitution for paraphrase production for a longer time. In addition, they produced more repetitions and antonymic responses than the normally developing children, and some used a "preservation of quantity" strategy. An error analysis indicated that the paraphrase strategies of language-impaired children were qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from those of normally developing children. These strategies tend to hinder normal linguistic development. Further studies should involve a natural communication setting, as well as pragmatics and body language. (Author/AM)