Impact of First Language Loss on Grammar in a Bilingual Child

Abstract

I followed a young bilingual Puerto Rican Spanish-English speaking child during a 2-year period (ages 4 years 7 months to 6 years 5 months). Spanish language samples were collected periodically while the child interacted with a familiar adult and analyzed for evidence of grammatical errors and reduction in morphosyntactic complexity. The child's use of various communicative strategies was also assessed. These included code switching and the use of general Spanish reference words (e.g., locatives, demonstrative pronouns) and phrases. Results suggest a progressive reduction of morphological and syntactical complexity in Spanish. The observed errors tended to affect mainly Spanish inflectional morphology (e.g., verb agreement errors, gender agreement errors). The incidence of syntactic errors such as incorrect word order in the production of noun phrases was low. The child also presented a variety of strategies that aided her in communicating effectively. When the data were contrasted to previous research on typical monolingual Spanish, child first language loss, and specific language impairment, both similarities and differences were observed. Similarities were noted in the child's use of inflectional morphology, whereas differences were noted in the specific errors produced. Possible explanations for the observed patterns in the child's use of Spanish are discussed. Implications for assessing the language skills of bilingual minority language children are presented and suggestions for future research are provided.