Domain-General Versus Domain-Specific Accounts of Specific Language Impairment: Evidence From Bilingual Children's Acquisition of Object Pronouns

Abstract

In this study, we tested the predictions of 2 opposing perspectives on the nature of the deficit in specific language impairment (SLI): the domain-general, cognitive/ perceptual processing view and the domain-specific, linguistic representational view. Data consisted of spontaneous speech samples from French-English bilingual children with SLI; younger, typically developing, bilingual language peers, and monolingual French comparison groups. We analyzed the children's use of direct object clitics/pronouns and definite articles in French and English. The bilingual children had more difficulty with clitics in French than articles in French and pronouns in English; and bilingual children with SLI performed like their younger, unaffected bilingual peers and like monolinguals with SLI. We argue that these findings present challenges to the domain-general perspective and support the claim that domain-specific limitations in linguistic representation are a component of SLI.

English past tense use as a clinical marker in older bilingual children with language impairment

“…Recent studies challenge such views. Reports of French-English bilinguals in Canada show similar language-specific error profiles when comparing bilingual and monolingual children with LI, thus weakening earlier claims regarding the negative influence of bilingualism (Paradis, Crago, Genesee, and Rice, 2003;Paradis, Crago, and Genesee, 2006;Paradis, 2008). Although converging profiles of LI in bilingual and monolingual children have been taken as evidence that learning two languages does not create additional impairment for bilingual children, more studies involving other social and linguistic contexts are needed, especially those involving sequential bilinguals (Bedore and Peña, 2008).…”

Assessment of Bilingual Children for Identification of Language Impairment: Current Findings and Implications for Practice

“…This deficit yields difficulties in tense marking in a language like English (e.g. Rice et al, 1997); or difficulties in the production of copula and auxiliary forms in French and German (Paradis & Crago, 2001;Rice et al, 1997); and difficulties in clitic production in Romance languages (Bedore & Leonard, 2005;Paradis et al, 2005Á06). In the Computational Complexity Hypothesis, as discussed by Jakubowicz (2003), basic functional categories such as the passé compose (a ferme´'had closed') are easier to generate than functional categories that require supplemental information such as the pluperfect construction (.…”

Redefining ‘Chinese’ L1 in SLP: Considerations for the assessment of Chinese bilingual/bidialectal language skills

“…In turn, most cross-linguistic studies of the morphosyntactic aspects of language impairment focus on morphological problems such as inflections and/or tense marking rather than syntactic issues (Paradis, Crago, & Genesee, 2005).…”