The perception and expression of verb morphology in bilinguals with specific language impairment

Most of the researches are about bilingual children with specific language impairment and importance of it in recognition and treatment. This study aimed to assess verb morphology in bilinguals with specific language impairment (SLI) and compare them with normal bilinguals. Six bilingual (Azeri and Persian) children with specific language impairment at the age of 7-8 years were collected from clinics of Tehran، Iran. They were evaluated about verb morphology using narrative speech and specific language impairment test and then، compared with six age-matched and six other language-matched children as control group. Children with specific language impairment were diagnosed by exhibiting a significant delay (more than one year) in language that can not be explained by intelligence deficits، hearing loss or visual impairment. We used Man-Whitney test for comparing the groups. Bilingual children with specific language impairment had delay in comparison with their age-matched group in subject-verb agreement (p=0. 020) and articulating tense morphemes (p=0. 019). They also had meaningful delay in using proper tense of verbs (past، present، and future) in comparison with language-matched control group (p=0. 029). Comparison of typical development of bilingual children and bilinguals with specific language impairment shows that verb morphology is a good clinical marker for diagnosing and treatment of these children.