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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Mar 26.
Published in final edited form as: J Monolingual Biling Speech. 2019 Jun 24;1(1):118–142. doi: 10.1558/jmbs.11125

Spanish-English Bilingual Children’s Relative Use of English Tense and Agreement Morphemes

Irina Potapova 1, Sonja L Pruitt-Lord 2
PMCID: PMC7996399  NIHMSID: NIHMS1679946  PMID: 33778490

Abstract

Best practice for bilingual speakers involves considering performance in each language the client uses. To support this practice for young clients, a comprehensive understanding of how bilingual children develop skills in each language is needed. To that end, the present work investigates relative use of English tense and agreement (T/A) morphemes – a skill frequently considered as part of a complete language assessment – in Spanish-English developing bilingual preschoolers with varying levels of language ability. Results indicate that developing bilingual children with both typical and weak language skills demonstrate greater use of copula and auxiliary BE relative to third person singular, past tense and auxiliary DO. Findings thus reveal a relative ranking of T/A morphemes in developing bilingual children that differs from that of English monolingual children, who demonstrate relatively later emergence and productivity of auxiliary BE. In turn, findings demonstrate the importance of utilizing appropriate comparisons in clinical practice.

Keywords: BILINGUALISM, TENSE AND AGREEMENT MORPHOLOGY, MORPHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT, PRECOCIOUS BE, TYPICAL BILINGUAL LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, LOW LANGUAGE SKILLS

Introduction

Approaches to bilingual language assessment and treatment are improving in the field of speech-language pathology (e.g. Rojas & Iglesias, 2009; Kohnert, 2010; Gillam, Peña, Bedore, Bohman & Mendez-Perez, 2013; Fabiano-Smith & Hoffman, 2018). One important advance has been the recognition that language assessment must account for performance in each language the client uses. To support this practice for young clients, the field requires more detailed information about how bilingual children develop skills in each language, as we cannot assume that monolingual norms are appropriate for bilingual children (Paradis, 2005). With the use of appropriate bilingual reference groups and careful measurement of abilities in a single language, we can arrive at clinically relevant information (Gillam et al., 2013; Potapova, Kelly, Combiths & Pruitt-Lord, 2018) which, in combination with other culturally and linguistically sensitive approaches (e.g. parent interview; Paradis, Emmerzael & Duncan, 2010), contributes to a holistic bilingual language evaluation.

In characterizing how bilingual children develop skills in each language, it is important and practical to focus on areas that are prevalent in language assessment. For monolingual and bilingual preschool-age and early school-age children who speak English, this includes use of English tense and agreement (T/A) morphemes (monolingual: Gladfelter & Leonard, 2013; Bedore & Leonard, 1998; Rice & Wexler, 1996; bilingual: Gutiérrez-Clellen, Simon-Cereijido & Wagner, 2008; Potapova et al., 2018), including third person singular (−3s; she walks), past tense (−ed; he jumped), copula BE (cop BE; I am fast), auxiliary BE (aux BE; they are going), and auxiliary DO (aux DO; Do they run?). Across languages, weaknesses in morphosyntax are characteristic of developmental language disorder (DLD; also known as specific language impairment, primary language impairment or language impairment; e.g. Leonard, 2014); in English, T/A morphemes have been identified as presenting a particular challenge for monolingual and bilingual children with DLD compared to other grammatical features (e.g. Rice, Wexler & Cleave, 1995; Gutiérrez-Clellen et al., 2008). While the development of English T/A marking has been relatively widely studied in monolingual children, developmental patterns are less clearly understood in young developing bilinguals.

As such, the present study aims to clarify the relative use of these key morphemes in preschool-aged Spanish-English developing bilinguals with varying levels of language ability. Results will support clinical decision-making by providing information about English-language performance in developing bilingual children and, in turn, allowing us to determine whether bilingual trajectories in T/A use differ from those of monolingual peers. Presently, we use a productivity-based approach to measuring morpheme use that is appropriate for monolingual and bilingual children who are developing skills in English T/A use (Hadley & Short, 2005; Potapova et al., 2018).

English tense and agreement morphemes in monolingual and bilingual children

Typically developing monolingual English children begin using T/A morphemes – −3s, −ed, cop BE, aux BE and aux DO – around two years of age (Hadley & Short, 2005; Rice, 2010). English T/A marking in obligatory contexts increases over the next two years of life, as children demonstrate increasingly adult-like productions (Goffman & Leonard, 2000; Rice, Wexler & Hershberger, 1998). It has long been recognized that use of each morpheme category is not mastered simultaneously (e.g. Brown, 1973). Instead, converging evidence indicates that T/A development in English monolinguals is characterized by relatively early emergence and productive use of cop BE, and relatively later emergence and productive use of aux BE.

Developmental trends in morpheme use have been clarified with a productivity-based approach offered by Hadley, Rispoli and colleagues (e.g. Hadley & Short, 2005; Hadley & Holt, 2006; Rispoli, Hadley & Holt, 2009; Hadley, Rispoli, Holt, Fitzgerald & Bahnsen, 2014). The T/A Productivity Score (TAP score), first described in Hadley and Short (2005), is a type-based measure that awards points to children for contrastive uses of each of the five T/A morpheme categories in spontaneous language sample (see the present Methods section and Hadley & Short, 2005, for further details on this measure). Critically, this approach has been shown to mitigate limitations of accuracy-based measures for children in the early stages of English acquisition and provide diagnostically relevant information about a child’s morphological development (Rispoli et al., 2009).

Using sub-scores for each morpheme category taken from the TAP score, Rispoli, Hadley & Holt (2012) captured initial instances of T/A marking, or T/A emergence, in monolingual English-speaking children followed longitudinally between 21 and 33 months. Across monolingual children with typical language development, use of cop BE consistently emerged first, with aux BE trailing behind the remaining morphemes. This relative ranking was maintained across multiple testing points, and their pattern of emergence may be summarized as: cop BE > −3s, −ed, aux DO > aux BE. T/A use may also be measured with regard to proportion of correct use, or accuracy rates. For example, Paradis, Rice, Crago and Marquis (2008) found that monolingual English-speaking children in a similar age range (2;6–3;8) produced cop and aux BE more successfully than aux DO in the context of a structured probe, with no difference in use from −3s or −ed. Though this set of findings is consistent with the understanding that different morphemes are used with differing degrees of success during language development, this analysis did not allow for a direct comparison between each morpheme category: cop and aux BE were collapsed into a single category, as were −3s and −ed.

In older monolingual children, a productivity-based approach continues to provide clinically relevant information about language development and helps capture use of specific morpheme categories (e.g. Guo & Eisenberg, 2014). As children surpass the initial stages of T/A use, the TAP score helps capture productivity, or T/A use in increasingly varied morphosyntactic contexts. Like Rispoli et al. (2012), Gladfelter and Leonard (2013) used sub-scores from the TAP score to compare relative use of the five T/A morpheme categories in children aged 4;0–4;6 and 5;0–5;6 with typical language development and peers with DLD. Results revealed the same relative rankings for cop and aux BE: for both groups, cop BE was the most frequently used morpheme, and aux BE was among the least productively used. Children in the typically developing group further demonstrated greater productivity of −3s and aux DO relative to aux BE and −ed, such that their pattern of use could be summarized as: cop BE > −3s, aux DO > aux BE, −ed. Children with DLD demonstrated greater productivity of −3s than aux BE, such that their pattern might be described as: cop BE > −3s > aux DO, aux BE, −ed. Thus, the two groups evinced patterns that were remarkably similar, with the children with DLD demonstrating an expected delay relative to their typically developing counterparts (e.g. Rice, 2010). These findings confirmed the relative ranking of use between the morpheme categories demonstrated by younger monolingual children. Taken together with earlier work, these results demonstrated that additional significant distinctions between morpheme categories may emerge as children develop.

Recent work indicates that the TAP score, a cumulative score summing up performance across five English T/A categories, is also an appropriate measure for preschool-aged English-speaking developing bilinguals (Potapova et al., 2018). However, the developmental trajectory of individual T/A morpheme use has yet to be investigated in developing bilingual children utilizing this approach. Instead, our understanding of T/A morpheme use in young bilinguals acquiring English more frequently relies on accuracy rates and grammaticality judgements in structured probes. In this work, developmental patterns for typically developing bilingual children learning a second language (L2) have been shown to diverge from the monolingual trajectory.* Specifically, a pattern of ‘precocious BE’ has been identified in typically developing children learning English as a second language from a large array of language backgrounds (Paradis, 2010). For example, where Paradis et al. (2008) found that monolingual children performed comparably on a composite of cop BE and aux BE and a composite of −3s and −ed, the same study revealed that typically developing bilingual children with English as an L2 (4;2–7;10) and with eight different native languages produced cop and aux BE more successfully than −3s and −ed. Emerging evidence further indicates that precocious BE is mirrored in bilingual children with English as an L2 and with weak language skills – Paradis (2008) found that two bilingual children with DLD consistently demonstrated higher performance on a composite of cop BE and aux BE relative to a composite of −3s and −ed over time (see also Paradis 2010, 2016).

Other work has utilized error analyses in language samples to identify patterns of T/A use in bilingual children. Using this approach, Ionin and Wexler (2002) provide further evidence for preferential use of cop and aux BE: Russian-speaking children (3;9–13;10) who were learning English omitted cop and aux BE less frequently than −3s and −ed in spontaneous language samples, though comparable analyses for aux DO were unavailable. Gutiérrez-Clellen et al. (2008) importantly demonstrated that accuracy of T/A marking differed across Spanish-English bilingual children (4;5–6;5) with typical development and those with DLD, and provided accuracy rates for each English T/A morpheme category. Consistent with related work, cop BE was observed to be among the most successfully used morphemes and −3s was among the least in a sample that included both English-dominant bilingual children and Spanish-speaking English language learners. However, statistical analyses were not employed to test differences across categories.

Altogether, available research suggests a tentative ranking of cop BE, aux BE > −3s, −ed, aux DO for developing bilinguals. However, given methods employed in prior work, it is not yet clear if further distinctions between morpheme categories may exist. Moreover, explorations of relative English T/A use in bilingual children have yet to employ productivity-based measures, which have been shown to be valuable for children who are acquiring English. Presently, we build upon efforts in Potapova et al. (2018) and use the TAP score to measure productivity of individual T/A morpheme categories and test for specific distinctions between them in Spanish-English bilingual children with varying language skills. This approach both complements existing work in T/A use in bilingual children acquiring English and facilitates comparisons with work featuring monolingual children. Recognizing the relevance of morphosyntactic performance – including T/A use in English speakers – to developmental language disorder, it is important to understand young bilinguals’ patterns of performance to inform clinical practice.

Present study

The present study aims to enhance our understanding of English T/A morpheme use in developing bilingual children. Participants included Spanish-dominant preschoolers with typical language abilities, as well as bilingual peers with relatively weak language skills. Our first aim was to identify a ranking of relative use of the five English T/A morphemes in young bilinguals using a productivity-based approach. Thus, our first research question was (1) What is the relative productivity of English T/A morphemes in Spanish-English developing bilingual children with varying language skills? To answer this question, we compared use of each target morpheme category in spontaneous language samples using the TAP score (Gladfelter & Leonard, 2013; Potapova et al., 2018) at the beginning and end of the academic year. Next, we considered a more conservative test of relative rankings between the target morphemes and asked (2): What is the pattern of emergence of T/A morphemes in Spanish-English developing bilingual children with varying language skills? To answer this, we identified children who began the year with no observed uses of any target English T/A morphemes and evaluated their T/A performance at the end of the school year. By focusing on children who began the school year with relatively limited productive English skills, results may better reflect an earlier stage of development of English morphological skills, or T/A emergence.

It was predicted that differences in productivity and emergence would be identified across morpheme categories. Specifically, cop BE and aux BE were anticipated to be the most productive, consistent with prior work in bilingual children learning English (Paradis & Blom, 2016; Ionin & Wexler, 2002) and unlike the established monolingual trajectory, in which aux BE emerges last (Rispoli et al., 2012; Gladfelter & Leonard, 2013).

Method

Participants

Participants were preschool-aged Spanish-English developing bilinguals identified from an ongoing community-based research project under direction of the second author. Data were analysed for children who met the following criteria: Spanish exposure of at least 30% of the time in the home (Pearson, Fernandez, Lewedeg & Oller, 1997); non-verbal cognition scores within or above normal limits; language samples completed at the beginning and end of the school year; and caregiver questionnaires completed during data collection.

In total, 132 Spanish-English developing bilingual preschoolers (mean age = 4;2, SD = 5.33 months; 59 females) were included in the study. Per parent questionnaires, participants were exposed to Spanish 72.04% of the time at home, on average (SD = 20.32, range = 33.33–100). All participants were recruited from the same preschool site in an English-speaking school setting that required below-poverty standards to participate, with data collection for the first testing point completed within two months of the start of the academic year. Average performance on the Figure Ground and Form Completion subtests of the Leiter International Performance Scale – Revised (Roid & Miller, 1997), a non-verbal cognition measure, was within normal limits (M = 11.67, SD = 1.97, range = 7–16.5). Maternal education was reported by 78 participants and was 9.97 years (SD = 2.86, range = 3–16), on average.

Participants were subsequently considered for inclusion in one of two groups, developing bilingual children with typical language development (BiTD) or developing bilingual children with low language skills (BiLL), on the basis of caregiver report (Gutiérrez-Clellen & Kreiter, 2003; Restrepo, 1998). Caregivers provided information about their child’s language background and history via questionnaire in their preferred language. Children were assigned to the BiTD group if the caregiver report indicated no concerns with language development. This group included 100 children (mean age = 4;1, SD = 5.6 months, range = 3;0-5;6). Conversely, children whose caregivers did report concerns with language performance were considered for the BiLL group. This group included 32 children (mean age = 4;2, SD = 4.5 months, range = 3;5–5;5). Group differences in language ability were confirmed with consideration of language sample performance. Children in the BiTD group demonstrated significantly higher performance than counterparts in the BiLL group in mean length of utterance in words at the beginning and end of the year (ps < .03, as evidenced by one-tailed t-tests; Rojas & Iglesias, 2009). Predicted group differences were also found at the beginning of the academic year for number of different words, number of complete and intelligible utterances and type–token ratio (all ps < .042, as evidenced by one-tailed t-tests; see Table 1). Notably, BiTD and BiLL participants were comparable in characteristics that may be relevant to language performance, including age, Spanish and English exposure at home, and maternal education (all ps > .226; see Table 1).

Table 1.

Participant characteristics for bilingual children with typical development (BiTD) and bilingual children with low language (BiLL) at the beginning (Time 1) and end (Time 2) of the academic year

Background Broad language sample measures
Age % Spanish heard % English heard Maternal education (in years) MLUw NDW Complete and intelligible utterances
Time 1* Time 2* Time 1* Time 2 Time 1* Time 2
BiTD Mean 4;1 73.30 26.70   9.95 2.64 3.30 95.07 132.92 104.66 144.58
SD 5.6 months 20.08 20.08   2.92   .94   .87 53.71   48.79   64.11   67.73
BiLL Mean 4;2 68.08 31.92 10.06 2.28 2.96 76.91  129.7   77.25 138.43
SD 4.5 months 20.89 20.89   2.70   .79   .75 42.84   41.43   43.74   53.72
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*

p < .05

Procedure

With support from teachers and classroom personnel, caregivers received information about the larger study, consent forms, and caregiver questionnaires. Children whose caregivers provided signed consent forms were then eligible to complete an assessment battery associated with the larger research project. Data collection took place at the preschool at both the beginning (Time 1) and end (Time 2) of the academic year, with each wave of data collection completed in two to four weeks and multiple sessions planned for each participant. Children were tested individually, and session length was determined by child engagement. Examiners included supervised graduate and undergraduate students in speech-language pathology trained to administer the assessment battery, including collecting spontaneous language samples.

Measures

Morpheme use was measured with the TAP score, a productivity-based measure that provides sub-scores for each morpheme category and which has been utilized to answer similar research questions for monolingual children (Hadley & Short, 2005; Rispoli et al., 2012). TAP scores and, accordingly, morpheme category sub-scores, were derived from language samples collected at Time 1 and at Time 2. Language samples were elicited following a set play protocol, using toy car, garage, and picnic sets, and a standard set of pictures for story retells. Digitally recorded language samples were orthographically transcribed and coded by trained research assistants following conventions for the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; Miller & Iglesias, 2012) software. Time 1 samples included 97.92 complete and intelligible child utterances (SD = 60.75), on average, and Time 2 samples included 145.16 (SD = 64.63), on average.

Morpheme category sub-scores

TAP scores were determined following Hadley and Short (2005), with points awarded for contrastive, or sufficiently different, uses of −3s, −ed, cop BE, aux BE and aux DO. To meet this criterion, children are required to use different lexical verbs for the bound morphemes (−3s, −ed) to earn points. For the copula and auxiliary verbs, children are required to produce different combinations of subjects (e.g. the sister is and the brother is) or surface forms of the morpheme (e.g. the sister is and the sister was). Correct uses and over-regularizations are eligible for scoring, but, critically, repeated uses of lexical verbs (e.g. he eat/3s, she eat/3s) or subject and surface form combinations (the baby is tired; the baby is hungry) do not contribute to the child’s score. Similarly, no points are awarded for errored productions (e.g. morpheme omissions, tense and agreement errors), nor for forms that are less likely to indicate grammatical processing, including contracted copula and auxiliary verbs used with pronouns (e.g. he’s going; see Hadley & Short, 2005 for detailed scoring criteria; see also Rispoli & Hadley, 2011).

Children may earn up to five points per morpheme category, yielding a TAP score ranging between zero and 25 points and morpheme category sub-scores ranging from zero to five points. Given the present goal of identifying patterns of use across morpheme categories, the measures of interest were the morpheme sub-scores. Sub-scores and total TAP scores were derived by trained graduate research assistants for each participant at each time point. SALT codes were used to extract relevant utterances and facilitate scoring. Reliability, completed for over 10% of the samples, was 93.85% for TAP scores.

Results

What is the relative productivity of T/A morphemes in Spanish-English developing bilingual children?

The relationship between productivity (i.e. morpheme sub-score) and morpheme category (−3s, −ed, cop BE, aux BE, aux DO) was investigated with linear mixed effects models run separately for performance at Time 1 and at Time 2 using R (R Core Team, 2013) and the package ‘lme4’ (Bates, Maechler, Bolker & Walker, 2015). Fixed effects included group status (BiTD, BiLL) and morpheme category, allowing for their interaction. When morpheme category was found to be a significant predictor of morpheme sub-score, specific relationships between the five target morphemes were determined using the package ‘multcomp’ (Hothorn, Bretz & Westfall, 2008). In addition, models included fixed effects for participant characteristics expected to be associated with English-language performance: percentage exposure to English at home and chronological age. Subject intercepts were entered as random effects, and p-values for tested effects were obtained by likelihood ratio tests of the model with the targeted effect included against a reduced model without that effect.

In service of identifying group-level patterns, outlier analyses were conducted. Outlying sub-scores for each morpheme category were identified as observations that fell 1.5 times the interquartile range above the third quartile, or 1.5 times below the first quartile within each group. For each time point, there were a total of 660 observations (five observations for each of 132 participants). At Time 1, a total of 5.6% of all observations were excluded across the two groups; at Time 2, 3.3% of observations were excluded.* If a participant had an outlying data point in a morpheme category, linear mixed effects modelling allowed for their remaining observations to contribute to analyses; that is, the exclusion of individual observations did not result in the exclusion of that participant. The resulting morpheme sub-scores for each participant group are provided in Table 2.

Table 2.

Morpheme sub-scores for developing bilingual children with typical development (BiTD) and developing bilingual children with low language (BiLL) at Times 1 and 2

Time 1 Time 2
cop BE aux BE −3s −ed aux DO cop BE aux BE −3s −ed aux DO
BiTD Mean 1.93 1.18 .47 .39 .33 2.94 2.62 1.43 1.46 .47
SD 1.99 1.70 .73 .63 .55 1.98 1.87 1.51 1.60 .68
BiLL Mean 1.47   .29 .29 .47   0 2.50 1.72   .57   .58 .49
SD 1.81   .60 .53 .80   0 1.72 1.63   .97   .58 .69
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Time 1: Morpheme productivity

All fixed effects were found to be significantly predictive of morpheme sub-scores. BiTD children outperformed BiLL participants, F(1, 123.91) = 6.275, p = .014. As expected, morpheme productivity increased with greater English exposure, F(1, 123.56) = 6.957, p = .009, and age, F(1, 121.69) = 9.431, p = .003. Critically, the effect of morpheme category was significant, F(4, 488.41) = 31.237, p < .001, indicating that there were differences in sub-scores across the five target morphemes and that it would be possible to identify a relative ranking between them.

The interaction between morpheme category and group was not significant (p = .086). Relationships between the multiple levels of morpheme category were thus compared using a more parsimonious model which included the significant fixed effects and no interaction. Results indicated that cop BE was significantly more productive than all other morpheme categories (ps < .001 for all comparisons) and that aux BE was significantly more productive than −3s, p = .002; −ed, p < .001; and aux DO, p < .001. The remaining morphemes (−3s, −ed and aux DO) did not significantly differ in scores (ps > .474). The pattern of relative productivity at Time 1 may be summarized as: cop BE aux BE > −3s, −ed, aux DO (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

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Relative productivity of English T/A morphemes for BiTD and BiLL groups at the beginning of the school year (Time 1). Error bars represent one standard error of the mean. Significant differences in use across morpheme categories are represented with ‘>‘

Time 2: T/A morpheme productivity

At the end of the academic year, BiTD children continued to outperform BiLL participants, F(1, 131.50) = 10.349, p = .002, and productivity increased with age, F(1,127.20) = 24.798, p < .001. Again, morpheme category significantly predicted morpheme scores, F(4, 508.95) = 48.600, p < .001, indicating that children earned higher scores for some morphemes than for others. Neither English exposure, as indexed by caregiver report at the beginning of the year, nor the interaction between morpheme category and group were significant (ps > .187).

As such, analyses to determine relative productivity of the target T/A morphemes were conducted on a reduced model which excluded the morpheme category by group interaction and English exposure. Again, cop BE was significantly more productive than all other morpheme categories (ps < .001 for all comparisons, except p = .041 for aux BE) and aux BE was significantly more productive than the remaining morphemes (ps < .001). Productivity for −3s and −ed did not significantly differ, and each morpheme was significantly more productive than aux DO (ps < .001). The resulting relative ranking of productivity was cop BE > aux BE > −3s, −ed > aux DO. See Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Figure 2.

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Relative productivity of English T/A morphemes for BiTD and BiLL groups at the end of the school year (Time 2). Error bars represent one standard error of the mean. Significant differences in use across morpheme categories are represented with ‘>’

What is the pattern of emergence of T/A morphemes in Spanish-English developing bilingual children?

To better isolate patterns of T/A emergence, the larger data set with all observations included (i.e. prior to outlier removal) was refined to select a subset of children who demonstrated no productive uses of the target morphemes at the beginning of the year. It was reasoned that, by highlighting these participants and considering their morpheme use at Time 2, we would more stringently test for relative rankings between morpheme categories. Participants who met the criteria for this subset included 14 BiLL children and 30 BiTD children. All analyses paralleled those for the first research question.

As with the larger sample, we began with outlier analyses to clarify group-level patterns within the subset. Of the 220 observations available for 44 participants, 7.7% of observations were excluded at Time 2;* as before, exclusion of an observation from a participant did not require the removal of that participant from analyses. Analyses were conducted solely for Time 2 data, as all participants, by design, demonstrated equivalent performance at the beginning of the year (i.e. sub-scores of zero for each morpheme category). The resulting morpheme sub-scores are provided in Table 3.

Table 3.

Morpheme sub-scores at Time 2 for the subset of children demonstrating no productive uses of target T/A morphemes at the beginning of the year, including developing bilingual children with typical development (BiTD) and developing bilingual children with low language (BiLL)

Time 2
cop BE aux BE −3s −ed aux DO
BiTD Mean   1.8   1.8 0.62 0.46   0
SD 1.97 1.67 0.77 0.74   0
BiLL Mean 1.33 1.14     0 0.36   0
SD 0.98 1.29     0   0.5   0
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Results indicated that, at the end of the academic year, morpheme category significantly predicted morpheme sub-scores, F(4, 161.897) = 17.098, p < .001, and this effect did not interact with language group (p = .562). The effect of language exposure and group were not significant (p = .542, p = .099, respectively), but chronological age approached significance (p = .073). Thus, an updated model reflected the significant predictors from the Time 2 model for the full data set: fixed effects of language group, morpheme category, and chronological age. Morpheme category continued to be a significant predictor, F(1, 160.833) = 22.147, p < .001, and both language group and chronological age were marginally significant (p = .074 and p = .072, respectively).

Subsequent analyses were run on this reduced model to characterize relative emergence of the target T/A morphemes. Results indicated that cop BE and aux BE were more productive than the remaining morphemes (ps < .001), and the remaining morphemes did not significantly differ in productivity (ps > .307). Patterns of relative emergence may be summarized as: cop BE, aux BE > −3s, −ed, aux DO (see Figure 3). This pattern was maintained when a fully reduced model, including only morpheme category as a fixed effect, was used: cop and aux BE were more productive than the remaining morphemes (ps < .001), and the remaining morpheme sub-scores did not differ from one another (ps > .296).

Figure 3.

Figure 3.

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Relative emergence of English T/A morphemes for BiTD and BiLL groups at the end of the school year (Time 2). Error bars represent one standard error of the mean. Significant differences in use across morpheme categories are represented with ‘>’

Discussion

Bilingual language development is characterized by notable variability (Paradis, 2005) – and clinicians are tasked with evaluating these variable profiles to accurately identify language disorders within patterns of differences in language use associated with bilingualism (Oetting, 2018). Though there are instances of common ground in language development between monolingual and bilingual children (e.g. both groups tend to acquire nontense morphemes such as plural -s and progressive -ing more readily than T/A morphemes; Paradis, 2005), parity in developmental patterns between bilinguals and monolinguals cannot be assumed. Accordingly, we must critically investigate developmental patterns within bilingual children to help provide an evidence base for clinical practice. Further, a careful consideration of how bilinguals perform in one language offers opportunities to consider issues of theoretical relevance, including cross-linguistic influence, a phenomenon observed across multiple linguistic domains for child and adult bilingual speakers (e.g. Potapova & Pruitt-Lord, 2019; De Houwer, 2018; Kehoe, 2018; Liceras, Fuertes & de la Fuente, 2012; Paradis, 2001; Nicoladis, 2006; MacWhinney, 2005).

In the present work, we aimed to provide detailed information on how a key marker of language impairment in English, T/A morpheme use, is demonstrated in developing bilingual children at an age when language assessment is common (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 2016). Our analyses allowed us to determine a relative ranking of use between the morpheme categories and, in turn, compare this bilingual pattern with established monolingual patterns. Recall that substantial evidence indicates that, for English-speaking monolingual children, the developmental trajectory of T/A morphemes is cop BE > −3s, −ed, aux DO > aux BE. This pattern has been identified in the earliest stages of T/A acquisition, or emergence, in monolingual English-speaking children (Rispoli et al., 2012), with a similar pattern persisting for monolinguals aged 4;0–5;6 (Gladfelter & Leonard, 2013). Meanwhile, available work indicates that bilingual children learning English demonstrate a different pattern of typical English T/A development, with enhanced use of both BE forms (Paradis & Blom, 2016; Ionin & Wexler, 2002). We confirm this finding here in Spanish-English developing bilingual preschoolers, with consistently high use of both forms of BE relative to the remaining categories: cop BE, aux BE > −3s, −ed, aux DO. Further, our work indicates that young developing bilinguals’ patterns of English T/A use may grow to include additional distinctions between morpheme categories: cop BE > aux BE > −3s, −ed > aux DO.

The current findings contribute to our understanding of English T/A development in bilingual children in several ways. First, our inclusion of a large sample of children with weak language skills facilitates the extension of such investigations into clinical practice. In addition, this work both includes all five target morphemes and maintains distinctions between each morpheme category throughout analyses. Our use of spontaneous language samples is not only consistent with best practice for culturally and linguistically diverse children (Stockman, 1996), it also allows for measurement of forms that may not be included in structured probes. Further, while use of productivity-based measures have been shown to be appropriate for bilingual children in the early stages of learning English (Potapova et al., 2018), the present paper utilizes this approach to consider relative productivity of individual morpheme categories, expanding the methods used to investigate T/A development in bilingual children. Finally, we offer analyses of performance at two time points, with an effort to capture both relative productivity of T/A marking as well as T/A emergence. Our work thus supplements methods employed in studies of developing bilingualism and supports comparisons with recent work in monolingual children.

Relative use of English T/A morphemes in Spanish-English bilingual children

Across analyses, a similar pattern emerged for the five target morphemes, with additional levels of granularity offered by analyses at multiple time points and with varying analysis groups for our two research questions. One distinction between morpheme categories was evinced across all three sets of analyses (the complete sample at Time 1, the complete sample at Time 2, and the subset at Time 2): cop and aux BE were used more productively than the remaining morphemes, −3s, −ed and aux DO (cop BE, aux BE > −3s, −ed, aux DO).

Observed here in the participants’ spontaneous language samples, this distinction between both forms of BE and the remaining morphemes is consistent with prior work in developing bilingual children that utilized structured probes (e.g. Paradis 2008; Paradis et al., 2008; Paradis, 2010; Paradis & Blom, 2016). One possibility is that this distinction is the most robust, as no other distinctions were evinced in analyses for our second research question. However, this analysis utilized a subset of children who, by design, were in the particularly early stages of acquiring English T/A morphemes. Not only were these participants selected on the basis of no productive uses at the beginning of the school year, but our sample as a whole was characterized by greater exposure to Spanish at home. Further, it is broadly representative of developing bilinguals in the United States that the first substantial exposure to English occurs upon entering the school environment (Bedore & Peña, 2008). This distinction in morpheme categories may thus be interpreted as the earliest to emerge. Additionally, the subset represented one-third of our larger sample, potentially resulting in limited power to capture further distinctions across morpheme categories. Indeed, factors that consistently predicted morpheme use in analyses for the complete sample (i.e. participant group and chronological age) were only marginally significant for the subset. Moreover, because of the subset selection criteria, these participants may have demonstrated limited performance at Time 2 which restricted the predictive potential of those factors. Despite using a smaller sample characterized by relatively low productivity in English, the results of our second research question indicated that there was a meaningful difference in Spanish-English bilingual children’s productive use of cop and aux BE relative to the remaining morphemes as T/A skills are emerging.

Within our larger sample, further distinctions between morpheme categories were identified, particularly when followed over time. By maintaining categorical differences between cop BE and aux BE in our analyses, we were able to observe that cop BE was significantly more productive than aux BE at both the beginning and the end of the academic year (cop BE > aux BE > −3s, −ed, aux DO) for the complete sample. At Time 2, an additional distinction was realized: aux DO significantly trailed behind all other morpheme categories (cop BE > aux BE > −3s, −ed > aux DO). Of note, the participants were clearly below ceiling on morpheme sub-scores (and overall TAP scores) at both testing points, indicating that, as a whole, participants were in the process of developing morphological skills (see Gladfelter & Leonard, 2013, for similar findings in preschool-aged monolinguals). The variability in morpheme productivity within each group (see Rispoli et al., 2012) further indicates that the participants were in a stage of developing English language skills, with some children demonstrating higher productivity than others. Indeed, children from Spanish-dominant homes entering school with English as the language of instruction can be expected to be in the process of acquiring English language skills more broadly and to move towards mastery of those skills as they advance in school (Rojas & Iglesias, 2013; Pham & Kohnert, 2014). As such, analyses including the entire sample may be also be considered reflective of developmental patterns. Present findings thus indicate that morphological development in young bilinguals is both simultaneous and sequential, with a relative ranking between morphological categories within a period of general morphosyntactic and linguistic development.

Cross-linguistic factors

Though the focus of the present paper was to characterize English language use in bilingual children, the findings are also consistent with a perspective of bilingual language development that is highly interactive and dynamic (Kan & Kohnert, 2008; Kohnert 2010). Under this perspective, use of a target language is understood to be impacted by knowledge of the non-target language. This potential for cross-linguistic influence helps explain why bilingual children may differ from monolingual peers in T/A use. For example, the relatively high use of both cop and aux BE in English may be explained by positive transfer associated with a relatively similar structure in the participants’ native language, Spanish. In English, cop and aux BE are unbound morphemes that frequently precede nouns, adjectives or verbs; the translation equivalents in Spanish, ser and estar, are similar in morphological structure and syntactic function. As precocious use of both cop and aux BE has been recognized in English-speaking bilingual children from a variety of native language backgrounds (see Paradis, 2010), transfer effects likely do not fully explain patterns of performance. Potentially, these unbound morphemes are less marked than their inflected counterparts, with children who are acquiring grammatical skills in multiple languages being particularly sensitive to this difference in markedness (Paradis, 2010). Further, we also found differences in use between the BE categories. As in monolingual English speakers, cop BE was the most productively used morpheme category, suggesting that still other factors may be at play, including a morpheme category’s input frequency (Rispoli et al., 2012; Hadley, Rispoli, Fitzgerald & Bahnsen, 2011). And yet transfer may also be related to the relatively low use of −3s, −ed and aux DO in the current study. Both −3s and −ed may require children to produce complex consonant clusters in word-final position (e.g., jumps). Such a structure is incompatible with the phonotactics of Spanish, which allow only a limited selection of word-final consonants (see Combiths, Barlow, Potapova & Pruitt-Lord, 2017). Similarly, there is no clear counterpart of aux DO in Spanish. Thus, it is possible that there is interference as children attempt to produce each of these forms. Future investigations may serve to identify the contributions of these various factors.

Age, exposure and language ability effects

In addition to addressing our research questions, our findings also offer opportunities to consider factors relevant to language development more broadly, including chronological age, relative language exposure and language ability. At Time 1 and Time 2, morpheme use in our larger data set increased with age in months, with a similar trend for our subset in our second research question. This is to be expected, as monolingual and bilingual children alike increase in language skills over time. Similarly, increased exposure to English at home significantly predicted English morpheme use, reflecting an association between access to input and language performance (e.g. Hoff, 2003; Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer & Lyons, 1991). However, this relationship between input and morpheme sub-scores was only significant at Time 1 for the entire sample. At Time 2, for both the complete sample and for the subset, the factor was not significant. Though this might be interpreted as exposure playing less of a role over the course of the year, we understand this pattern of findings to reflect measurement methods. Specifically, Spanish and English exposure were reported at the beginning of the year. As a result, this descriptor did not reflect the children’s exposure to both languages by the second testing point, when exposure and dominance patterns have likely shifted. Potentially, an updated measure of language exposure collected at Time 2 would better predict morpheme use.

Morpheme use was also associated with language group: BiTD participants outperformed BiLL participants, with significant group differences for the complete data set at Time 1 and Time 2, and a trend in the expected direction for the subset at Time 2. Though bilingual children may differ from monolingual children in myriad ways, research indicates that bilingual children with DLD struggle in similar areas of language as monolingual children with DLD, including T/A marking in English (Gutiérrez-Clellen et al., 2008). In the current work, this is reflected in terms of T/A productivity, with BiLL children using individual morpheme categories less contrastively than BiTD peers (see also Potapova et al., 2018). As language ability was not found to interact with morpheme category in any analysis, results suggested that bilingual children with relatively low language skills demonstrated a comparable ranking of morpheme categories as their typically developing peers, despite having lower relative scores. This not only mirrors findings in monolingual children, it reinforces our understanding that weak language skills are not characterized by deviant patterns of language use, but by delayed patterns of acquisition and mastery (Rice, 2010). However, given restrictions with interpreting null results, it is important to continue to consider this relationship in future research.

Clinical implications

These findings serve as a reminder of the importance of using appropriate reference groups when considering language performance – neither bilingual group in the present study demonstrated the pattern of morpheme use observed in English-speaking monolingual children. Consequently, expectations rooted in an understanding of monolingual performance would be inappropriate for bilingual children, regardless of language ability. In addition, present findings may offer guidelines for what clinicians may expect in English performance when assessing Spanish-English bilingual children. To illustrate, our findings suggest that delayed onset of aux DO is more expected in a Spanish-English bilingual child than difficulty with producing either cop or aux BE; importantly, established monolingual norms would fail to predict bilingual children’s relative success with aux BE.

Limitations and future directions

The current work aimed to understand the relative use of English T/A morphemes in Spanish-English bilingual children to support clinical decision-making for bilingual children. Additional steps may be taken to strengthen and expand this work.

Bilingual experiences and contexts differ largely across the world, with potentially far-reaching implications for language development. Consequently, it is important that the specific context of this study be noted. This study included children from largely Spanish-dominant homes, a minority language in Southern California, enrolled in a preschool programme where English, the majority language, was the language of instruction. As is the case for many children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in the United States, this transition likely resulted in increased overall exposure to English (Bedore & Peña, 2008); moving forward, it is likely that these participants will experience a change in dominance from their heritage language to the majority language (Pham & Kohnert, 2014; Rojas & Iglesias, 2013). The current measures thus likely reflect the profiles of children who are in the relatively early stages of acquiring English skills. Accordingly, the patterns of morphosyntactic development observed here are consistent with those observed for children who may be described as dual language learners, English language learners, or sequential bilinguals (e.g. Paradis et al., 2008), and not simultaneous bilinguals (e.g. De Houwer, 2009). Future work that systematically investigates the impact of language status, language dominance, and age of acquisition would enhance our understanding of English T/A development in bilinguals. Similarly, it will be important to include bilingual children from other linguistic and cultural backgrounds. By extending the productivity-based measures of English T/A use to children whose native language is not English or Spanish, the roles of the native language (i.e. cross-language influence) and the second language (i.e. input and language structure) may be clarified. In particular, it would be telling to consider productivity of cop and aux BE in bilingual children whose native language does not share a structurally similar morpheme or to measure use of −3s and −ed in children whose native language allows complex word-final consonant clusters. Finally, extensions of productivity-based measures to languages beyond English would allow for a more complete picture of morphosyntactic development in bilingual children, including the role of cross-linguistic influence.

The current study would also be improved with more frequent measurement points, specifically in efforts to capture the emergence of T/A morphemes. Presently, we strived to reflect emergence by identifying children that began the academic year with no productive uses of the target morphemes and evaluating their use of the target morphemes at the end of the year. However, by the end of the year, there was evidence of use of multiple morphemes; as such, we are unable to determine which morpheme category emerged first with certainty. With language samples collected more regularly, this question would be better addressed.

There are also considerations with regard to how morpheme use is measured. Original scoring protocol prevents children from earning points for copula and auxiliary verbs contracted to pronouns (e.g. he’s) to avoid inflated scores for potentially rote forms (Rispoli & Hadley, 2011). It is possible that such contracted forms are indicative of grammatical processing in the current sample; if this is the case, that would reveal only greater differences between the forms of BE and the bound morphemes, for which scores would remain unaffected. Similarly, future extensions may also consider raising the scoring maximum of five points per morpheme (see Rispoli et al., 2012). However, as current participants demonstrated T/A use that was clearly below ceiling, such a scoring adjustment was not expected to alter present findings. Indeed, the fact that our participants did not reach ceiling on this measure suggests that similar analyses with young school-age bilinguals may be appropriate to further inform our understanding of how T/A skills develop in the context of dual language learning.

Summary

This research was motivated by the need to better understand developing bilingual children’s performance in each language to support best practice for children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Using language sampling and a productivity-based measure of morpheme use, we confirmed and clarified patterns of English use in developing bilingual children reported in previous works. Specifically, we found a clear distinction in productive uses between copula and auxiliary BE relative to third person singular, past tense and auxiliary DO; in addition, findings suggested further distinctions, with more productive uses of copula BE than auxiliary BE, and with particularly low rates for auxiliary DO. This relative ranking between the morpheme categories differs from the trajectory identified for monolingual English speakers, for whom auxiliary BE emerges last and is used least productively. Though multiple influential factors likely impact bilingual children’s use of grammatical features in each language, the current findings are consistent with patterns of cross-language influence, which have been identified in all aspects of language use for bilingual speakers. In addition, these results illustrate the importance of utilizing appropriate reference groups during language assessment. Ultimately, detailed information about bilingual children’s development in a single language bolsters a clinician’s toolkit as they utilize a combination of culturally and linguistically appropriate measures to arrive at a holistic language assessment.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants, their families and the teachers who took part in our community-based collaboration. We would also like to thank the members of the Child Language Development, Disorders and Disparities Lab for research assistance and helpful discussions about this work. In particular, we would like to recognise the efforts of Sophia Kelly and Allegra Schiff. We continue to be grateful to Dr Pamela Hadley, who graciously shared training materials for the TAP score.

Funding

The first author was supported by an NIH NIDCD F31 (grant number DC016194). In addition, funding for the project was provided by an NIH NIDCD RO3 (grant number DC012141) and a research grant from a local community foundation.

Footnotes

*

Of note, simultaneous bilingual children have been shown to demonstrate morphosyntactic development that closely resembles that of monolingual peers (see De Houwer, 2009).

*

BiLL group, Time 1: −3s, .6% of observations; −ed, 0%; cop BE, 0%; aux BE, 2.5%; aux DO, 3.1%; BiTD group, Time 1: −3s, 2%; −ed, 0%; cop BE, 2.4%; aux BE, 0%; aux DO, 1%; BiLL group, Time 2: −3s, 1.3%; −ed, 3.8%; cop BE, 0%; aux BE, 0%; aux DO, 1.9%; BiTD group, Time 2: −3s, 0%; −ed, 0%; cop BE, 0%; aux BE, 0%; aux DO, 2.2%.

*

BiLL group form subset, Time 2: −3s, 4.3% of observations; −ed, 4.3%; cop BE, 2.9%; aux BE, 0%; DO, 2.9%; BiTD group from subset, Time 2: −3s, .7%; −ed, 1.3%; cop BE, 0%; aux BE, 0%; DO, 2.7%.

Contributor Information

Irina Potapova, San Diego State University, School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-1518, USA; San Diego State University & University of California, San Diego.

Sonja L. Pruitt-Lord, San Diego State University, School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-1518, USA

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