The acquisition of Swedish as second language in a group of Arabic-speaking pre-school children: word order patterns and phrasal morphology

Abstract

Children with Swedish as a second language (L2) and Swedish children with specific language impairment (SLI) have displayed interesting similarities in their linguistic development. A group of 18 normally developed Arabic-speaking children, five and six years old, were tested with respect to their development of word order patterns and phrasal morphology in the noun phrase. The results were in accordance with Pienemann's processability theory, that predicts the order of acquisition of both morphological and syntactical structures. The results on word order patterns showed similarities between L2 and SLI children. Processability theory could be a powerful tool in analyzing the grammar in children with SLI.

Key Words:

• second language acquisition
• child language
• word order
• phrasal morphology
• interlanguage