Lexicon in Bilingual Language Impaired Children

[Fred Genesee]

Edith: we (Johanne Paradis, Martha Crago and I) have looked at the grammatical
development of English-French bilingual children with specific language
impairment -- we found that the nature and extent of their impairment was the
same as that of monolingual Enlgish and monolingual French chldren of the same
age with SLI. These findings suggest that children with language impairment are
not more handicapped learning two than one language. However, this study did
not look at lexical development so extrapolating to this domain would be
conjecture at this time. 

Of course, when examiming the lexical development of bilingual children, it is
important to take into account their combined vocabularies (as Barbara Pearson
and her colleagues have written about) because young bilingual children often
exhibit smaller vocabularies in each language than monolinguals but have
comparable vocabulies if you combine across languages.

The bottom line is that, as far as I know, the research you are looking for has
not been done yet.

Fred Genesee



At 02:32 PM 24/03/2005 +0100, M.M.R. (Manuela) Julien wrote: 
>
> Dear Edith,
>
> I think that the idea that learning two languages would be to much for a
> child with a language impairment is not justified. There is no evidence, as
> far as I know, to support that changing from bilingualism to monolingualism
> helps children with language problems overcome their problems. One of the
> risks of such a sudden switch is that the communication with the family wil
> be disturbed. 
> This is a very delicate issue and there are many factors which need to be
> considered before taking a decision. For instance,  what are the wishes of
> the parents regarding the childs bilingualism, what is the parents command of
> the language they choose to use if they insist on droping one of  the
> languages? Are they able to offer the child a rich exposure to that
> language?  
>
> Colin Baker has written about this issue on " A parents’ and teachers’ guide
> to bilingualism,  Multilingual Matters ltd. Clevedon, England 2000
>  
> The following book, written bij Elke Montanari  Montanari (2004), is also
> worth reading (it does not deal with language disorders but gives good advice
> to parents on several issues regarding raising children to be multilingual).
> The original book was written in German so you can refer it to these parents.
>
> "Hoe kinderen meertalig opgroeien, PlanPlan producties, Amsterdam"
>
> Nazife Cavus en myself are at the moment writting an artikel about this
> issue, in Dutch,  which wil be published in the LO & FO (the Dutch monthly 
> magazine of the association of speech and language therapists). 
>
> I hoop this wil help you
>
> Manuela Julien (neurolinguist and speech and language therapist)
> Haags Audiologisch Centrum Effatha, The Netherlands
>
>
>  
> At 14:01 21-3-2005, you wrote:
>>
>> Dear childes-readers,
>> I would like to ask you for some advice. I work with language impaired
>> children in the Netherlands and one of them has got serious language delay,
>> especially in lexical skills. She eldues to gesticulation in both languages.
>> I'd like to have some advice on what language choice the parents should
>> make. Is it better to have her exposed to one language only or would it be
>> more advisable to let both her parents (German-Spanish and living in a
>> mostly German environment) use their mothertongues? I imagine that two
>> languages are a little overtaxing for the kid. Is simultaneous development
>> of two lexicons two much for a language impaired?
>> Grateful for any suggestion,
>> Edith Schlag, MSc, SLT
>> Delft, The Netherlands
>



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