Det var en gång en get som war klein… : En explorativ studie om bisatser hos svensk-tyskspråkiga förskolebarn

Sammanfattning: Bilingual children's language can display traits that mimic language disorder symptoms, and a good understanding of bilingual language development is essential in order to avoid misdiagnosis. This study explores the production of subordinate clauses in 46 typically developing Swedish-German speaking children aged 4–6 years. Transcripts of a picture-based narrative test in Swedish and German have been used to manually analyse the (1) number of subordinate clauses per age group, language and individual (2) presence and shape of the subordinator (3) distribution of subordinate clause types and (4) proportion of targetlike/non-targetlike word order in subordinate clauses. It is shown that the production of subordinate clauses is dynamic also in older bilingual pre-schoolers, and both similarities and differences compared to monolingual children are present. Clausal subordination increases across the age range at a group level, but with sizeable individual differences. Development in the two languages does not follow a homogeneous pattern, as e.g. demonstrated by the choice of clause types. Subordinators are largely targetlike and omissions are rare, but code switching occurs to some extent. The bilinguals’ word order exhibits signs of cross-linguistic influence, with a noticeable percentage of incorrect verb placement in German. Given this rather complex picture, a stronger focus on subordinate clauses in formal language assessments applied in Sweden would be desirable.