Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T07:36:06.797Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Introduction: Bilingual children with SLI – the nature of the problem*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2011

SHARON ARMON-LOTEM
SHARON ARMON-LOTEM*
Affiliation:
Bar Ilan University
*
Address for Correspondence: Sharon Armon-Lotem, The Department of English, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel52900
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The demographic changes in the Western world in the last two decades have led to rapid growth in the number of children being raised bilingually, and in many locations they represent a majority of the school population. With this increase in the number of bilingual children, researchers as well as educators and practitioners, face a diagnostic dilemma which arises from similarities in the linguistic manifestations of child second language (L2) acquisition and of Specific Language Impairment (SLI). This dilemma has motivated a new field of research, the study of bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment (BISLI), which aims at disentangling the effects of bilingualism from those of SLI, making use of both models of bilingualism and models of language impairment. The majority of the studies are currently focused on morphosyntax as a key direction of research. The present issue, which originated in papers presented at a scientific workshop funded by the Israel Science Foundation and The Hebrew University's Center for Advanced Study, held in February 2009, aims at broadening this area of research to other linguistic domains.

Type
Introduction
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Special Issue 1: Bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment , January 2012 , pp. 1 - 4
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Theo Marinis and Joel Walters for their endless support. The present issue originated in papers presented at a scientific workshop funded by the Israel Science Foundation and The Hebrew University's Center for Advanced Study, held in February 2009. Networking through COST Action IS0804, “Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment” gave the framework for ongoing interaction which helped the papers materialize.

References

Bishop, D. V. M. (2000). Pragmatic language impairment: A correlate of SLI, a distinct subgroup, or part of the autistic continuum? In Bishop, D. V. M. & Leonard, L. B. (eds.), Speech and language impairments in children: Causes, characteristics, intervention and outcome, pp. 99–113. Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M., Bright, P., James, C., Bishop, S. J., & van der Lely, H. K. J. (2000). Grammatical SLI: A distinct subtype of developmental language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21, 159–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chilla, S., & Babur, E. (2010). Specific Language Impairment in Turkish–German successive bilingual children. Aspects of assessment and outcome. In Topbas, S. & Yavas, M. (eds.), Communication disorders in Turkish in monolingual and multilingual settings, pp 354–370. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H. (1989). The grammatical characterization of developmental dysphasia. Linguistics, 27 (1), 897–920.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H. (1991). Child language and developmental dysphasia. Linguistic studies of the acquisition of German. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Crago, M., & Gopnik, M. (1994). From families to phenotypes: Research into the genetic basis of specific language impairment. In Watkins, R. & Rice, M. (eds.), New directions in specific language impairment, pp. 35–51. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.Google Scholar
Crago, M., & Paradis, J. (2003). Two of a kind? Commonalities and variation in languages and language learners. In Levy, Y. and Schaeffer, J. (eds.), Language competence across populations: Towards a definition of specific language impairment, pp. 97–110. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Kohnert, K. (2007) Language disorders in bilingual children and adults. San Diego: Plural Publishing.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. (1998). Children with Specific Language Impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Meisel, J. (2007). The weaker language in early child bilingualism: Acquiring a first language as a second language? Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 495–514.Google Scholar
Paradis, J. (1999). What do specifically-language impaired and second language children have in common. Child Language Bulletin, 19, 4–6.Google Scholar
Paradis, J. (2007). Bilingual children with specific language impairment: Theoretical and applied issues. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 551–564.Google Scholar
Paradis, J., Crago, M., & Genesee, F. (2005/2006). Domain-specific versus domain-general theories of the deficit in SLI: Object pronoun acquisition by French–English bilingual children. Language Acquisition, 13, 33–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., Crago, M., Genesee, F., & Rice, M. (2003). Bilingual children with specific language impairment: How do they compare with their monolingual peers? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46, 1–15.Google Scholar
Paradis, J., Genesee, F., & Crago, M. (2006). Domain-general versus domain-specific accounts of specific language impairment: Evidence from bilingual children's acquisition of object pronouns. Language Acquisition, 13, 33–62.Google Scholar
Pearson, B. (2002). Narrative competence among monolingual and bilingual school children in Miami. In Oller, K. & Eilers, R. (eds.), Language and literacy in bilingual children, pp. 135–174. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rice, M. L., & Wexler, K. (1996). Toward tense as a clinical marker of specific language impairment in English-speaking children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 39, 1239–1257.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roeper, T. (2009). Multiple grammars and SLI. Paper presented at the Research Conference on Bilingualism and SLI, Jerusalem, Israel.Google Scholar
Rothweiler, M., Babur, E., & Kroffke, S. (2007). Spezifische Sprachentwicklungsstörung im Kontext kindlicher Mehrsprachigkeit: Ergebnisse zur Kasusmorphologie in der Erstsprache Türkisch. Sprache-Stimme-Gehör, 31, 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schulz, P., & Wenzel, R. (2007). Comprehension and production of wh-questions in early L2 learners of German: Like or unlike SLI? Paper presented at ISB6, Hamburg.Google Scholar
van der Lely, H. (1998). SLI in children: Movement, economy, and deficits in the computational–syntactic system. Language Acquisition, 7, 161–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar