A COMPARISON OF VERBAL MORPHOLOGICAL ERRORS IN SPANISH-SPEAKING ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS WITH AND WITHOUT DEVELOPMENTAL LANGUAGE DISORDERS

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess morphological markers in Spanish-speaking children, who are English language learners, with and without DLD, to determine the type of verb errors made by each group and the frequency of the verb errors. Methods: The participants in this study included 76 Spanish-English bilingual children between 4;3 and 8;2 with (n=52) and without DLD (n=24). Spontaneous language samples were collected in Spanish and English for each participant and the recordings of the samples were transcribed and then coded. The coding process specifically analyzed errors of verb morphology that were categorized as an omission of an obligatory context, a substitution of a verb, auxiliary, or copula, an overregularization, or marked as a verb error. Results: The proportion of accurate verbs and the number of obligatory contexts was significantly higher in bilingual children with TD in comparison with children with DLD when both languages were taken into account or when the best language was used. Verb errors were more frequent in English than in Spanish. In Spanish, substitution errors were the most frequent type of error, while in English, verb tense errors were most common. Lastly, a large percentage of children with DLD made verb omission errors in both languages.
Conclusion: Analysis of verb error type and frequency should be considered in the assessment of Spanish-English bilingual children to gather sufficient information about their language profile and determine accurate DLD diagnoses.