Grammatical profiles of Mandarin-English bilingual children at risk for developmental language disorder

Abstract

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is under-identified in US bilingual children who speak Asian languages. To achieve a better understanding of the manifestations of DLD in one of the largest Asian American populations, the current study examines the grammatical profiles of Mandarin–English bilingual children at risk for DLD. Fifty-five 4- to 7-year-old bilingual children were administered an experimental bilingual screener that consisted of four subtests. Parents completed questionnaires about children's language use and proficiency. Four children were identified as at-risk (AR) for DLD using a set of five indicators of risk status. A matched sample of eight children formed the typically developing (TD) comparison group. Welch's t-tests were conducted to compare the groups on 11 English grammatical structures, 7 Mandarin grammatical structures, and sentence repetition scores in both languages. The AR group showed significant deficits in English items targeting verb morphology, noun morphology, complex sentences, and sentence repetition. Mandarin items targeting passive voice, quantifiers, aspect, relative clause, and sentence repetition separated the two groups. As the first investigation of the grammatical profiles of Mandarin–English bilingual children at risk for DLD, the results highlighted several potential markers of DLD in this population that warrant further investigations.