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As in many other countries, baseline data concerning the linguistic development of bilingual children in Sweden are lacking, and suitable methods for identifying developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilinguals are lacking as well. This study presents reference data from 108 typically developing (TD) Turkish/Swedish-speaking children aged 4;0–8;1, for a range of language tasks developed specifically for the assessment of bilinguals (LITMUS test battery, COST Action IS0804). We report on different types of nonword repetition (NWR) tasks (language-specific and language-independent), receptive and expressive vocabulary (Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks, CLTs), and narrative macrostructure comprehension and production (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives, MAIN) in Turkish, the children’s home language, and in Swedish, the language of schooling and society. Performance was investigated in relation to age, language exposure, type of task, and (for NWR and narratives) vocabulary size. There was a positive development with age for all tasks, but effects of language exposure and vocabulary size differed between tasks. Six bilingual Turkish/Swedish children with DLD were individually compared to the TD children. TD/DLD performance overlapped substantially, particularly for NWR, and more so for the production than the comprehension tasks. Surprisingly, the discriminatory potential was poor for both language-specific and language-independent NWR. DLD case studies underscored the importance of interpreting language scores in relation to exposure history, and the need for an increased emphasis on functional language skills as reported by parents and teachers when assessing and diagnosing DLD in bilinguals.

The Arabic-speaking community in Sweden is large and diverse, yet linguistic reference data are lacking for Arabic-Swedish-speaking children. This study presents reference data from 99 TD children aged 4;0–7;11 on receptive and expressive vocabulary in the minority and the majority language, as well as for three types of non-word repetition (NWR) tasks. Vocabulary scores were investigated in relation to age, language exposure, and socio-economic status (SES). NWR performance was explored in relation to age, type of task, item properties, language exposure, and vocabulary. Eleven children with DLD were compared to the TD group. Age and language exposure were important predictors of vocabulary scores in both languages, but SES did not affect vocabulary scores in any language. Age and vocabulary size had a positive effect on NWR accuracy, whilst increasing item length and presence of clusters had an adverse effect. There was substantial overlap between the TD and DLD children for both vocabulary and NWR performance. Diagnostic accuracy was at best suggestive for NWR; no task or type of item was better at separating the two groups. Reports from parents and teachers on developmental history, language exposure, and functional language skills emerged as important factors for correctly identifying DLD in bilinguals.

Comprehension of texts and understanding of questions is a cornerstone of successful human communication. Whilst reading comprehension has been thoroughly investigated in the last decade, there is surprisingly little research on children's comprehension of picture stories, particularly for bilinguals. This can be partially explained by the lack of cross-culturally robust, cross-linguistic instruments targeting early narration. This book presents an inference-based model of narrative comprehension and a tool that grew out of a large-scale European project on multilingualism. Covering a range of language settings, the book uses the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives to answer the question which narrative comprehension skills (bilingual) children can be expected to master at a certain age, and explores how such comprehension is affected (or not affected) by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Linking theory to method, the book will appeal to researchers in linguistics and psychology and graduate students interested in narrative, multilingualism, and language acquisition.

This study examines macrostructural aspects of narrative skills in 52 bilingual Swedish- and English-speaking children age 5–7. Elicited fictional story production and comprehension tasks were administered in parallel fashion in both Swedish and English (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives; Gagarina et al., 2012). Scores on the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives were compared across languages; moreover, story structure components in the narratives and answers to probe questions were qualitatively analyzed. Age effects (5-year-olds vs. 6- to 7-year-olds) for macrostructure production and narrative comprehension were evident, but no effect for language (Swedish/English). The results suggest that story structure is invariant across a bilingual child's two languages at a given age, with similar awareness of the intentions and goal-directed behavior of the story protagonists, irrespective of language.

This study investigates the referential forms children use to introduce characters in Swedish, in a cross-sectional sample of oral narratives by 100 Turkish/Swedish bilinguals aged 4 to 7 and in a longitudinal sample from age 4 to 6 ( N = 10). We analysed development with age and how language proficiency (expressive vocabulary) and exposure affect children’s use of referring expressions, with a focus on referential appropriateness. In addition, a qualitative analysis of the characteristics of high- and low-performing children was carried out. The results show significant effects of age and language proficiency, but not of language exposure on appropriate use of referring expressions. At age 7, 69% of the characters were introduced with an indefinite NP. The Turkish/Swedish bilinguals were found to lag behind in their use of indefinite NPs in comparison to Swedish-speaking children investigated in previous studies, with little crosslinguistic influence from L1 Turkish.

This article investigates verb placement, especially verb second (V2), in post-puberty second language (L2) learners of two closely related Germanic V2 languages: Swedish and German. Håkansson, et al. (2002) have adduced data from first language (L1) Swedishspeaking learners of German in support of the claim that the syntactic property of V2 never transfers from the L1 to L2 interlanguage grammars. Regardless of L1, learners are said to follow a hypothesized universal developmental path of L2 German verb placement, where V2 is mastered very late (only after Object-Verb, OV, has been acquired), if ever. Explanations include the notion of Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) being a more basic, 'canonical' word order (e. g. Clahsen and Muysken, 1986), so-called 'vulnerability' of the C-domain (Platzack, 2001), and 'processability', according to which SVX and Adv-SVX (i. e. V3) are easier to process (i. e. produce) than XVS (i. e. V2) (e. g. Pienemann, 1998). However, the empirical data comes exclusively from Swedes learning German as a third language, after substantial exposure to English. When these learners violate V2, syntactic transfer from English, a non-V2 language, cannot be ruled out. In order to control for this potential confound, I compare new oral production data from six adult Swedish ab initio learners of German, three with prior knowledge of English and three without. With an appropriate elicitation method, the informants can be shown to productively use non-subject-initial V2 in their German after four months of exposure, at a point when their interlanguage syntax elsewhere is non-targetlike (VO instead of OV). Informants who do not know English never violate V2 (0%), indicating transfer of V2-L1 syntax. Those with prior knowledge of English are less targetlike in their L3-German productions (45% V2 violations), indicating interference from non-V2 English. These results suggest that, contra Håkansson et al. (2002), learners do transfer the property of V2 from their L1, and that L2 knowledge of a non-V2 language (English) may obscure this V2 transfer. The findings also suggest that V2 is not difficult to acquire per se, and that V2 is not developmentally dependent on target headedness of the VP (German OV) having been acquired first.

In a recent study of the clause-initial position in verb-second declaratives (the prefield), Bohnacker & Rosén (2008) found significant differences between native Swedish and German concerning the frequencies with which constituents occurred in the prefield, as well as qualitative differences concerning the mapping of information structure and linear word order: Swedish exhibited a stronger tendency than German to place new information, the so-called rheme, later in the clause. Swedish-speaking learners of German transferred these patterns from their L1 to German. Their sentences were syntactically well-formed but had Swedish-style prefield frequencies and a strong pattern of Rheme Later, which native Germans perceive as unidiomatic, as an acceptability judgment and a rewrite-L2texts task showed. The present study extends Bohnacker & Rosén's work in three ways. Learners of the reverse language combination (L1 German, L2 Swedish) are investigated to see whether similar phenomena also manifest themselves there. Secondly, written and oral data from highly advanced learners are examined to see whether the learners’ persistent problems can be overcome by extensive immersion (3, 6 and 9 years of L2 exposure). Thirdly, besides investigating theme–rheme (old vs. new information), some consideration is given to another information-structural level, background vs. focus. The learners are found to overuse the prefield at first, with non-Swedish, German-style frequency patterns (e.g. low proportions of clause-initial expletives and high proportions of clause-initial rhematic elements). This is interpreted as evidence for L1 transfer of information-structural or discourse-pragmatic preferences. After 6 and 9 years, a substantial increase in clause-initial expletive subjects, clefts and lightweight given elements is indicative of development towards the target. The findings are related to current generative theorizing on the syntax-pragmatics interface, where it is often maintained that the integration of multiple types of information is one of the hardest areas for L2 learners to master.

This article investigates the information structure of verb-second (V2) declaratives in Swedish, German, and nonnative German. Even though almost any type of element can occur in the so-called prefield, the clause-initial preverbal position of V2 declaratives, we have found language-specific patterns in native-speaker corpora: The frequencies of prefield constituent types differ substantially between German and Swedish, and Swedish postpones new (rhematic) information and instead fills the prefield with given (thematic) elements and elements of no or low informational value (e.g., expletives) to a far greater extent than German. We compare Swedish learners of German to native controls matched for age and genre (Bohnacker, 2005, 2006; Rosén, 2006). These learners master the syntactic properties of V2 but start their sentences in nonnative ways. They overapply the Swedish principle of rheme later in their second language German, indicating first language (L1) transfer at the interface of syntax and information structure, especially for structures that are frequent in the L1.

This article investigates the L2 acquisition of clausal syntax in postpuberty learners of German and Swedish regarding V2, VP headedness, and verb particle constructions. The learner data are tested against L2 theories according to which lower structural projections (VP) are acquired before higher functional projections (IP, CP), VP syntax is unproblematic (invulnerable), but where grammatical operations related to the topmost level of syntactic structure (CP) are acquired late (e.g., Platzack's (2001) vulnerable C-domain). It is shown that such theories do not hold water: Native speakers of Swedish learning German and native speakers of German learning Swedish both master V2 from early on. At the same time, these learners exhibit a nontargetlike syntax at lower structural levels: residual VO in the case of the Swedish-L1 learners of German, and persistent nontarget transitive verb particle constructions in the German-L1 learners of Swedish. I argue that these findings are best explained by assuming full transfer of L1 syntax (e.g., Schwartz and Sprouse (1996) ).