FWIW, I think my DD, who is actually very gifted verbally, has some pragmatic language difficulties. This helps to explain her word problem issues, IMO. She sometimes is completely stymied by phrasing in a problem that seems like it should be obvious. It may have nothing to do with math. She just needs me to say, "What they mean is..." a few different ways. I suspect this is related to some of her ASD traits--rigidity about interpreting words and phrases or something.