Verb inflections as indicators of bilingual sli: Qualitative vs. quantitative measurements

Abstract

This study focuses on verb inflectional morphology, which is known to pose a problem for language impaired children, in order to assess the relative contribution of each language to the child’s linguistic representations and underlying processes. This paper compares the linguistic production of bilingual English-Hebrew preschool children, who attend “language preschools” following a prior assessment for language impairment, with that of bilingual children in regular preschools from the same neighborhood. While linguistic representation is manifested differently in the two languages, the bilingual situation does not seem to influence the performance of language impaired children in this domain. The same indicators of language impairment which have been documented for monolinguals are also manifested among bilingual children in special preschool programs. Notably, no qualitative difference was found in the use of inflections and type of errors between typically developing bilinguals and bilinguals with language impairment, except for the use of non-existent forms by some of the latter children. Qualitative differences were found, though, for the children in the language preschools, distinguishing children with Specific Language Impairment from children whose L1 is intact but find it difficult to acquire their L2. These findings suggest that as far as the acquisition of verbal morphology is concerned, bilingualism is neither an advantage, nor a disadvantage for SLI children.