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The use of descriptive data from bilingual children to inform theories of specific language impairment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2010

Susan Ellis Weismer
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Margarita Kaushanskaya
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin–Madison

Extract

In her Keynote Article, Paradis reviews evidence from bilingual language development to assess the claims of two opposing theoretical views of language disorders. Specifically, she examines the evidence for similarities in language profiles of typically developing (TD) sequential bilingual (second language [L2]) children and monolingual children with specific language impairment (SLI) with respect to Rice's extended optional infinitive (EOI) account. A limited processing capacity (LPC) account of SLI, Leonard's surface hypothesis, is evaluated within the context of comparisons among bilingual children with SLI, monolingual children with SLI, and TD bilingual children. Paradis concludes that the evidence from bilingual children poses challenges for both accounts of SLI.

Type
Commentaries
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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