Germany: 

Prof. Dr. Cornelia Hamann (Universität Oldenburg)

Prof. Dr. Solveig Chilla (PH Heidelberg)

Prof. Dr. Monika Rothweiler (Universität Bremen)

France: 

Prof. Dr. Laurie Tuller (Université Tours)

Prof. Dr. Philippe Prévost (Université Tours)

Prof. Dr. Sandrine Ferré (Université Tours)

Prof. Dr. Christophe dos Santos (Université Tours)

Lina Abed Ibrahim (Universität Oldenburg)

Tatjana Lein (Universität Bremen)

Hilal San (Pädagogische Hochschule Heidelberg)

DFG (Deutschland) & ANR (Frankreich) (DFG-ANR-Programm)

36 months, 2013-2016

The situation of children growing up in multilingual settings is becoming more and more frequent within the European Union, in general, and, specifically, in France and in Germany. For many of these children, exposure to the national language begins with organized (pre-)school, and therefore acquisition of this language has the status of an early second language (L2) for them. This means that, in these early developmental stages, these children very often perform significantly below monolingual children on standardized language measures. The poor performance characteristic of these early ages has been shown to lead to both over-diagnosis and under-diagnosis of developmental language impairment, each of which is damaging and costly for the individuals, their families, and society as a whole. One of the reasons for over-diagnosis is the general lack of assessment tools for language development in bilingual children due to current incomplete understanding of what constitutes normal language development in bilingual/second language children.
The goal of this project is to uncover crosslinguistic ways of identifying language impairment which are independent of the language combinations involved, and which therefore should lead to the validation of crosslinguistic tools for assessing children and also to provide insight into the underlying nature of developmental language impairment. It is both practically and theoretically relevant to investigate the validity of using not only language specific, but also crosslinguistic criteria for identifying Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual contexts. We propose to achieve this general aim via systematic investigation of two different target languages (child L2s), French and German, paired with a variety of the same home languages (child L1s), Arabic, Portuguese, and Turkish. We hypothesize that this research design will allow for interesting examination of key variables, notably L1 influence and L1 and L2 linguistic typological similarity. A crosslinguistic approach to bilingual language development and SLI may furthermore shed light on theoretical approaches to child bilingualism (simultaneous and successive) and SLI. This project thus aims to contribute to understanding of child multilingualism and SLI, with clear implications for relevant teacher training, and for clinical evaluation by speech-language therapists.

Lein, Tatjana & Cornelia Hamann & Monika Rothweiler & Lina Abed Ibrahim & Solveig Chilla & Hilal San (to appear, 2015). SLI in Bilinguals: Testing Complex Syntax and Semantics in German. In: GASLA proceedings 2015, Bloomington (USA). Somerville (MA): Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Hamann, Cornelia, Chilla, Soolveig, Gagarina, Natalia and Lina Abed Ibrahim: Syntactic Complexity and Bilingualism: How (a)typical bilinguals deal with complex structures. In: Di Domenico, Elisa. Complexity in acquisition. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Abed Ibrahim, Lina & Lein, Tatjana & Rothweiler, Monika & Hamann, Cornelia (to appear). SLI in Bilinguals: Comparing LITMUS-Tasks to a Standardized Test with Bilingual Norms.In: dos Santos. Proceedings of Bisli.

Abed Ibrahim, Lina & Cornelia Hamann (2014). Intervention effects in the acquisition of relative clauses. What a sentence repetition task shows across populations.Talk held at the 7th NWLK (Nordwestdeutsches Linguistisches Kolloquium), Oldenburg (Germany). December 12-13.

Lein, Tatjana & Monika Rothweiler (2014). Comprehension of Wh-Questions in mono- and bilingual children with and without Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Talk held at the 7th NWLK (Nordwestdeutsches Linguistisches Kolloquium), Oldenburg (Germany). December 12-13.

San, N. Hilal & Solveig Chilla (2014). Language assessment of Turkish-German bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Talk held at the 7th NWLK (Nordwestdeutsches Linguistisches Kolloquium), Oldenburg (Germany). December 12-13.

Lein, Tatjana & Monika Rothweiler & Lina Abed Ibrahim & Cornelia Hamann & Solveig Chilla & Hilal San (2015). SLI in bilinguals: Testing complex syntax and semantics in German. Talk held at the 13th GASLA (Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference), Bloomington (USA). March 4-6.

Abed Ibrahim, Lina & Cornelia Hamann & Tatjana Lein & Monika Rothweiler & Solveig Chilla & Hilal San (2015). Sentence repetition in the majority language German: Which error types and structures can identify bilingual children with SLI. Talk held at the 10th ISB (International Symposium on Bilingualism), New Jersey (USA). May 20-24.

Sentence Repetition Tasks for Bilinguals with German as the Majority Language – language assessment and linguistic investigation. Thematic Session at ISB 10, Rutgers University, May 2015.

Hamann, Cornelia & Lina Abed-Ibrahim & Solveig Chilla & Natalia Gagarina (2015). Relative Clauses and Passives: What sentence repetition tasks across acquisition modes can reveal about linguistic theory. Talk held at the 10th ISB (International Symposium on Bilingualism), New Jersey (USA). May 20-24.

Lein, Tatjana & Cornelia Hamann & Monika Rothweiler & Lina Abed Ibrahim & Solveig Chilla & Hilal San (2015). SLI in bilinguals: Comparing Cost tasks to a standardized test. Talk held at Bi-SLI (Bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment Conference), Tours (France). July 2-3.

Cornelia Hamann (2015). Types of syntactic complexity: How typical and atypical bilinguals deal with complex structures. MORLANG, Perugia.

San, Hilal & Solveig Chilla (2015). First language (L1) assessment of Turkish-German bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Poster presentation held at the 10th ISB (International Symposium on Bilingualism), New Jersey (USA). May 20-24.

San, Hilal & Solveig Chilla (2015). First language (L1) assessment of Turkish-German and Turkish-French bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Poster presentation held at Bi-SLI (Bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment Conference), Tours (France). July 2-3.