A substantial body of research shows the presence of verbal working memory deficits in almost all individuals with developmental language disorder (DLD). However, relatively little is known about the mechanisms responsible for these deficits and how they affect, or are affected by, difficulties with language comprehension and production. Over a number of years, my collaborators and I have investigated verbal working memory and its relation to other variables in children and adults with DLD. We have primarily focused on how working memory interacts with sentence processing and repetition. In this talk, I will review our work, share some of our thinking and questions, and describe proposed next steps in this line of research. We hope that by using working memory models from cognitive science to enhance experimental research in language disorders, we will contribute to both theory refinement and to improved assessment and intervention for people with DLD.