Developmental language disorder in sequential bilinguals: Characterising word properties in spontaneous speech

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) affects language acquisition in children.
• Sequential bilinguals present unique challenges in DLD identification.
• Understanding word properties' role in DLD is crucial for early intervention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if word properties in L2 spontaneous speech can serve as markers for DLD in sequential bilinguals.
• To analyze semantic, lexical, and phonological properties of nouns and verbs in children with and without DLD.
• To determine the utility of word-level features for identifying DLD in early L2 acquisition.

Main Methods:

• Compared word properties (imageability, concreteness, frequency, age of acquisition, phonological neighborhood, word length) in nouns and verbs.
• Analyzed spontaneous speech from 15 sequential bilinguals with DLD and 15 age-matched controls.
• Utilized linear mixed modeling to assess group and word category interactions.

Main Results:

• A significant interaction between group and word category was found for phonological neighborhood values.
• No significant differences were observed in imageability, concreteness, frequency, age of acquisition, or word length.
• Group-level differences were not consistently apparent at the word level.

Conclusions:

• Word properties alone may not be sufficient for identifying DLD in sequential bilinguals.
• The heterogeneity of DLD and early L2 acquisition similarities can obscure word-level distinctions.
• Further research is needed to explore more comprehensive markers for DLD in bilingual populations.