delayed speech in bilingual children?

[Kelley Sacco]

---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Friday, March 30, 2001 4:05 PM +0100
From: Annick De Houwer <vhouwer at uia.ac.be>
To: Kelley Sacco <ks7t at andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: please help!

Van: Annick De Houwer <vhouwer at uia.ac.be>
Datum: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 13:56:04 +0100
Aan: Monika Pawlowska <pawlowsm at purdue.edu>,
<info-childes at mail.talkbank.org>
Onderwerp: Re: delayed speech in bilingual children?

Dear Monika,

1. A really valid answer to your first question is not quite possible since
as far as I know there have not been any studies with large groups of
children comparing onset of first words in bilingual (any language
combination) vs. in monolingual (any language) families. From the few
studies that are available on very young children raised bilingually we do
know that production of first words can occur at quite a young age. My
*impression* from the literature (and from knowing about lots of young
bilingual children) is that so far there are no real signs of differences.
As I've stated several times in literature overviews (see below), the
variation in language use (not only in timing of first words) seen in
monolingual children seems to be present in bilingual children as well.
Currently I'm working on a project (with Marc Bornstein) that compares
(amongst others) vocabulary development in monolingual and bilingual infants
raised in comparable social settings and I hope that soon we'll have some
better idea of an answer to your first question.
In any case, comparing bilingual children to monolingual children as if the
latter were the desired norm is not a good idea. Barbara Pearson has done an
admirable job at discussing the methodological and conceptual difficulties
involved: see Pearson, B., 1998, Assessing lexical development in bilingual
babies and toddlers, International Journal of Bilingualism 2(3), pp.
347-372.

2. The surest way to know whether a child RAISED WITH 2 LANGUAGES FROM BIRTH
(as opposed to exposure to a second language at a later age) has an
underlying language learning problem is to test BOTH languages. Only if the
child is showing problems in BOTH these languages can one infer an
underlying language learning problem. (I wrote articles in Dutch on this so
the reference won't be of much use to you - but you may want to refer to an
article in the Bilingual Family Newsletter by Li Wei, Nick Miller and
Barbara Dodd, 1997, Distinguishing communicative difference from language
disorder in bilingual children). Again here the issue of what norm to use
for comparison is important.

overviews:
De Houwer, A., 1995. Bilingual Acquisition, in the Handbook of Child
Language, Paul Fletcher & Brian MacWhinney, eds., Blackwell.
De Houwer, A., 1999. Language acquisition in children raised with two
languages from birth: an update, Revue Parole 9-10, 63-87.

Hope this helps.
Best regards,

Annick De Houwer

****************
Annick De Houwer, PhD
Associate Professor

UIA-PSW
University of Antwerp
Universiteitsplein 1
B2610-Antwerpen
Belgium

tel +32-3_8202863
fax +32-3-8202882
email annick.dehouwer at ua.ac.be


> Van: Monika Pawlowska <pawlowsm at purdue.edu>
> Datum: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 16:35:49 -0600
> Aan: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
> Onderwerp: delayed speech in bilingual children?
>
> Dear Info-CHILDES,
>
> I am looking for information about the following two questions:
>
> 1. When do children raised in a bilingual home start producing their
> first words and how do they compare to children raised in monolingual
> families?
>
> 2. Is there any way to tell whether delayed speech is caused by being
> exposed to two languages at the same time, or whether it is a sign of a
> deeper problem?
>
> I would appreciate references to any relevant studies.
>
> Thank you
>
> Monika Pawlowska
>
>


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