In October 1991, an international symposium "Language Acquisition Problems and Dyslexia: Aspects of Diagnosis and Intervention" was held in Bielefeld, Germany. As the discussion of research questions and problems began, it was soon recognized that knowledge and experience in the one research field was combined with relative ignorance in the other field. This gave rise to two ideas. First, that other researchers very probably shared the same fate of knowing a lot about reading disorders but only little about specific language impairment or vice versa. The second idea consequently was to bring together the most outstanding researchers in both fields so that they might inform each other and discuss mutual interests and problems. The result is documented in 11 articles, each with a comprehensive commentary.