Changes in English Past Tense Use by Bilingual School-Age Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Bilingual children's acquisition of English past tense is complex.
• Understanding typical development (TD) versus developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilinguals is crucial.
• Previous research indicated different error patterns in past tense acquisition.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine changes in English past tense accuracy and errors in Spanish-English bilingual children.
• To compare children with typical development (TD) and developmental language disorder (DLD).
• To analyze the impact of age and verb type on past tense acquisition.

Main Methods:

• Elicited production task to assess English past tense errors over 1 year.
• Tested 33 Spanish-English bilingual children (TD and DLD groups).
• Used mixed-model linear regression and 4-way repeated-measures ANOVA.

Main Results:

• Children were more accurate with regular/novel verbs than irregular verbs.
• Children with TD were more accurate than children with DLD.
• Younger children showed more improvement, especially in regular/novel verb conditions. Bare stem and overregularization were common errors.
• Children with DLD made more stem + ing errors with novel verbs.

Conclusions:

• Bilingual children, especially those with DLD, face prolonged difficulty with irregular past tense verbs.
• Age impacts past tense acquisition, with younger children showing greater gains.
• Findings support usage-based theories of language acquisition and impairment in bilingual children.