Bilingual SLI
Recommended reading:
* Bedore, L.M. & Pena, E.D. 2008. Assessment of Bilingual Children for Identification
of Language Impairment: Current Findings and Implications for Practice.
International Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 11,1, 1-29.
The scope of the problem
 The large waves of migration in recent years led to a growth in the number of children
being raised in multilingual societies, and elucidated the importance of studying
language disorders in bilingual children .
 In Israel, for example, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry
of Education, 20% of school children who attended Hebrew speaking secular schools
in 2004 came from families in which at least one parent does not speak Hebrew (CBS,
2006‫)(ץ‬
 Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) are estimated as 5-10% of the
population (Bercow review, 2008‫)ץ‬
 de Jong (2009): Non-native speakers in Dutch schools
–Mainstream schools: 14%
–Special schools: 19%
–Schools for language-impaired children: 24%
Central Issues
 Can we disentangle bilingualism from SLI in impaired children?
 How do we diagnose SLI in bilingual population?
 Are bilingualism and SLI are "two of a kind" (Crago & Paradis, 2003)
 Do bilingual children with SLI show a "double delay“ ((Paradis 2007; Paradis et al.
2003; Paradis et al. 2005/6).
 Can bilingualism can be instructive for children with SLI (Roeper 2009).
Hakansson, Salameh, & Nettelbladt. 2003
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Swedish-Arabic children with and without SLI
Migrant children with simultaneous to successive acquisition of Swedish
(matched for exposure to Swedish and Arabic).
Children with LI tended to produce earlystage structures in both of their languages
while children with typical development tended to produce more complex or later
developing structures in each of their languages.
Unimpaired 2L1/cL2 children are L1-like in at least one language
Children with SLI are impaired in both languages
The differences is held over time while development followes the predicted
patterns in each of their languages (Salameh et al., 2004)
Language Acquisition Under Special Circumstances
Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem
Bilingual SLI
Lexicon
Ambert (1986), Restrepo and Kruth (2000), Pena et al (1992, 2001) - Spanish-English
Poor representation of word meaning and possible word finding difficulties in both
languages. Smaller vocabulary size in both languages 9compared to bilinguals with TLD
1. word substitutions (e.g. mu´ sica ‘music’ for pelı´cula ‘movie’)
2. circumlocution (e.g. no hace frı´o y hace calor ‘it’s not cold and it’s hot’ for verano
‘summer’).
Bilingual children with SLI show similar difficulties with learning new words as do
monolingual children with SLI.
Simonsen (2002)

6 years old Swedish- Finish BL
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Naming task (Renfrew Word Finding Vocabulary test)
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Scores
SLI
BL
Controls
25.9 28.6
ML 28.5 36.3

Total naming time
SLI
BL
Controls
06:26 06:02
ML 04:11 04:53
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MSLI- phonological naming problems more often than the other groups (can
explain their fast naming speed)
Substitution of phonemes: MSLI > BSLI
The bilingual children have difficulty in finding words
BLC is slow in naming, does not find the target word as accurately as the MLC,
but uses strategies that are pragmatically efficient: describes, chooses a Finnish
word, or uses gestures.
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Language Acquisition Under Special Circumstances
Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem
Bilingual SLI
Morphosyntax
Paradis (1999) and Crago & Paradis (2000)
First studies of Bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment (BISLI) - FrenchEnglish simultaneous bilingualism in Canada. L1 and L2 French-speaking children with
SLI
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A range of measures related to the ‘optional infinitive’ phenomenon
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“Significant similarities” between SLI and L2 learners,:
o Tense marking
o Avoidance of object clitics
o Verb diversity
o Use of general purpose verbs (e.g. do, make).
 A parallel is found between the language of sequential bilingual children and the
language of children with SLI – both use bare verbs (Optional Infinitives).
 tense-marking may not be an effective clinical indicator of SLI for second language
learners.
Paradis, Crago, Genesee, and Rice. 2003
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French-English bilingual children with SLI - monolingual age mates with SLI, in
each language.
Morphosyntax in language production - the extended optional infinitive (EOI)
framework (children's use of tense-bearing and non-tense-bearing morphemes in
obligatory context in spontaneous speech)
All SLI children showed greater accuracy with non-tense than with tense
morphemes.
All SLI children had similar mean accuracy scores for tense morphemes. The
bilingual children did not exhibit more profound deficits in the use of these
grammatical morphemes than their monolingual peers.
 SLI may not be an impediment to learning two languages, at least in the domain of
grammatical morphology.
Paradis & Crago 2000
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While children with SLI tend to omit the auxiliary in past or future periphrastic
verb constructions, L2 children substitute the auxiliary with the base or present
tense form.
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Language Acquisition Under Special Circumstances
Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem
Bilingual SLI
Paradis. 2008

only L2 children generalize the use of BE, in order to fill a gap between their
communicative demands and their knowledge of the L2 with a morphosyntactic
expression.
Both the high proportions of commission errors and the overgeneralization of BE single
out L2 children from children with SLI.
Armon-Lotem et al (2007, 2008)
 Perpositions in English-Hebrew and Rusian-Hebrew Bilinguals with and without
SLI
 Bilingual children exhibited commission errors in their use of prepositions, both due
to code interference (CI), but also in the absence of code interference.
 Bilinguals with SLI like bilinguals with TLD showed evidence of code interference
(CI) in contrasting environments, as manifested by erroneous choice of prepositions
(commission errors).
 Children with SLI, omit prepositions in a sentence repetition task not due to CI.
This finding replicates previous findings from Roeper et al.(2001) and Watkins &
Rice (1991).
Frequency of errors by error type
per preposition type
20
15
10
5
0
O-prep
F-prep
O-prep
Hebrew
F-prep
English
F-prep
Hebrew
Bi LI
ci-sub
O-prep
Mono LI
sub
ci-om
om
 The lack of non-CI omission errors by bilingual children with TLD distinguishes L2
children from monolingual children with SLI who exhibit omission errors.
 The commission errors are indicative of grammatical knowledge, because the L2
children realize that they need to fill the slot of the obligatory preposition.
 These errors also reveal knowledge of the L1 as indicated by code interference (CI)
errors.
 The commission errors are claimed here to place BISLI children in a better position
regarding language acquisition potential than omission errors, since they are
indicative of both grammatical knowledge and knowledge of their other language.
 Bilingual children with SLI rely on their knowledge of the L1 in acquiring the L2,
giving them an advantage over monolingual children with SLI.
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Language Acquisition Under Special Circumstances
Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem
Bilingual SLI
Syntax
Rothwiler (2009) - German-Turkish
 7 monolingual boys with SLI, 4;8 – 7;8, MLU 2.4 - 4.1
 7 successive bilingual boys with SLI (L1 Turkish, AO German ~ age 3), 4;4 – 8;2,
MLU 2.0 – 3.9
 Spontaneous samples
 All children produced wh-clauses and subordinate clauses.
 All children produced at least wh-clauses or subordinate clauses in each recording.
 No significant differences between groups
Wh
questions
Subordinate
clauses
others
SLI-L1
298
8%
216
5%
4.082
89%
SLI-L2
243
8%
95
3%
2.536
88%
 Both groups correctly place finite verbs in the expected positions, V2 in main
clauses and wh-questions, Vfinal in subordinate clauses.
 Wh-words and complementizers are rarely omitted.
 The CP domain is unimpaired in German SLI.
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