Development or impairment?

Abstract

Joanne Paradis' Keynote Article on bilingualism and specific language impairment (SLI) is an impressive overview of research in language acquisition and language impairment. Studying different populations is crucial both for theorizing about language acquisition mechanisms, and for practical purposes of diagnosing and supporting children with language problems. If the child is a second language (L2) learner it is assumed that the support should differ from the kind of language therapy given to children with language disorders. The article deals with the interface of bilingual development and child language disorders in two dimensions: the discussion concerns the disentangling of bilingual and L2 development from children with SLI, as well as monolingual and bilingual children with diagnosis of SLI. Traditionally, discussions of language impairments have only dealt with children in monolingual environments, but during the last decades an increasing number of studies have extended the analyses to bilingual populations. Contrary to expectations, grammatical development of monolingual children with SLI has been found to be more similar to L2 children than to monolingual first language (L1) children (e.g., Crago & Paradis, 2003; Grüter, 2005; Håkansson & Nettelbladt, 1993, 1996; Paradis & Crago, 2000). These findings are intriguing, and they have inspired new research on both bilingualism and language impairment.