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Comparison of Spanish morphology in monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual children with and without language impairment*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2012

GARETH P. MORGAN ,
M. ADELAIDA RESTREPO  and
ALEJANDRA AUZA
GARETH P. MORGAN*
Affiliation:
The Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk, The University of Texas at Austin
M. ADELAIDA RESTREPO
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
ALEJANDRA AUZA
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro
*
Addressed for correspondence: Gareth P. Morgan, 151 Essex Street, Haverhill, MA 01832, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

This study compares Spanish morphosyntax error types and magnitude in monolingual Spanish and Spanish–English bilingual children with typical language development (TD) and language impairment (LI). Performance across groups was compared using cloze tasks that targeted articles, clitics, subjunctives, and derivational morphemes in 57 children. Significant differences were observed between bilingual TD and LI groups on all tasks; however, no differences were observed between bilinguals with TD and monolinguals with LI except on a sum-score across all tasks. There were no observed differences between bilinguals and monolinguals with TD; however, 60% of bilinguals with TD were misclassified as LI when using a cut score derived from monolingual-only data. Results support evidence that Spanish morphosyntax is vulnerable to error in monolingual and bilingual Spanish–English children with LI. However, the grammatical deficit seems clinically relevant only when children are compared to the same language peer group (i.e., bilinguals compared to bilinguals).

Keywords

bilinguallanguage impairmentSpanish morphology
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 578 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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Footnotes

*

The research in this article was supported by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences: Spanish Screener for Language Impairments in Children (PI: Restrepo, IES# R324A080024) and Post-doctoral Training Grant in Special Education (PI: Vaughn, IES# R324B080008).

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