Disentangling Bilingualism and Developmental Language Disorder in the Acquisition of Spanish Verbal Agreement Morphology.

Abstract

116 bilingual and monolingual children aged 4;0-6;11 with developmental language disorder (DLD) and typical development (TD) completed an elicited production task examining Spanish verbal agreement in the preterit past. Children with TD produced more target-like agreement than peers with DLD. Bilinguals and monolinguals with TD did not differ significantly from one another, but monolinguals with DLD produced more target-like agreement than bilinguals with DLD. Additionally, bilinguals with TD produced more target-like agreement than monolinguals with DLD. Therefore, rates of production of verbal agreement may be useful to distinguish between DLD and TD on quantitative grounds regardless of bilingualism effects. In addition to these quantitative analyses, we document underspecified forms (the overextension of tense-marked third person singular and plural) as well as minimal bare forms in children's production across groups.