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Using clausal embedding to identify language impairment in sequential bilinguals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2018

MAUREEN SCHEIDNES  and
LAURICE TULLER
MAUREEN SCHEIDNES*
Affiliation:
Imagerie et cerveau Inserm 930, Université François Rabelais de Tours
LAURICE TULLER
Affiliation:
Imagerie et cerveau Inserm 930, Université François Rabelais de Tours
*
Address for correspondence: Maureen Scheidnes, Department of Linguistics, Memorial University, St. John's, NL, A1B 3X9, Canada. [email protected]
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Abstract

Assessing language in sequential bilinguals (L2 children) for the identification of language impairment suffers from lack of appropriate standardized tools and from limited understanding of the developmental trajectories of these learners. This longitudinal study compares L2 children to children with SLI in order to better understand where these groups have overlapping performance and where they differ. An analysis of standardized test scores as well as frequency of clausal embedding and morphosyntactic errors in spontaneous speech was conducted with 22 English-speaking children (aged 6;9-12;7) acquiring French as an L2 in France and 19 monolingual French-speaking children with SLI (aged 6;5–12;11). The results revealed that L2 children used clausal embedding more often than the children with SLI, but both groups had similar rates of morphosyntactic accuracy. Facility with clausal embedding from early stages of development and continuing difficulty with morphosyntactic accuracy are argued to be characteristic of typical development in L2 children.

Keywords

sequential bilingual childrenlanguage impairmentspontaneous languageclausal embeddingmorphosyntactic accuracy
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 22 , Issue 5 , November 2019 , pp. 949 - 967
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

We would like to sincerely thank the children, families, and schools for their participation in this research. We also thank Philippe Prévost, Sandrine Ferré, Christophe dos Santos, Cécile Monjauze, Rasha Zebib, Hélène Delage, Eléonore Morin, Chloé Berruer, Claire Damourette, Mélanie Aillet, Aline Vanhaverbeke, Lucile Dupuy, Servane Galès, Sabrina Delord, Sarah Black, Nohad Abou Melhelm, and Nolwen Brunie for their help in the data collection and analysis. This research was supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (Project ANR-08-BLAN-0328-01 for Complexity and compensation in atypical language acquisition: A comparative approach). Maureen Scheidnes is now at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Supplementary material can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918000949

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