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

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).