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JCPSLP Volume 18, Number 1 2016 32
in the EL1 participants, who also acquired inflectional
marking of plurals late in comparison to monolingual
speakers of StdE. Use of a quantifier is a feature of plural
marking in SCE in adult speakers of SCE (Deterding &
Poedjosoedarmo, 2001).
Conclusions and implications
Language dominance impacts the development of
language/s and is an important consideration for clinicians
working with multilingual children. Bilingual language
development in English is not the same as monolingual
language development in English, and is highly variable
between individuals. There are clear indications of language
dominance influencing the English spoken by the ML1
children in this study, indicating that analysis of assessment
data must occur within the context of the languages the
child speaks. For bilingual populations, assessment of
expressive language abilities must account for differences in
the acquisition and age of emergence of morphological
features, otherwise assessment results will be of little value
in determining whether language impairment exists.
Clinicians working with bilingual and multilingual clients
need to obtain accurate data on language use and
dominance, considering changing patterns of exposure to
and use of language/s over time and in different contexts.
Bilingual populations are heterogeneous, so each child’s
exposure and use of their languages needs to be
considered carefully to facilitate accurate diagnosis and
intervention planning. The characteristics of the individual
child’s languages need to be considered, as well as the
possible influence of those languages on the English used.
Limitations and future directions
A major strength of this study is the number of children
involved. However, it was a “snapshot”, cross-sectional
study which was not able to reflect the individual pathways
in development of English for the participants. General
patterns in noun plural marking in English across language
groups and between age groups can be reported on, but it
is not possible to look at the development of skills over
time.
Another limitation of this study was the absence of
a validated measure of language dominance. For more
detailed investigation of the impact of language dominance
on children’s expressive language output, assignment to
different language groups should ideally be determined
through utilising a validated, reliable measure of determining
language dominance.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the children and
kindergartens who participated in this study.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone
are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
References
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2012). 2011 Census shows
Asian languages on the rise in Australian households.
[Online]. Retrieved 31 July 2013 from .
au/websitedbs/censushome.nsf/home/CO-60
Bedore, L. M. & Peña, E. D. (2008) Assessment of
bilingual children for identification of language impairment:
Current findings and implications for practice. International
Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 11(1), 1–29.
in the home compared to those who speak Mandarin in the
home). This illustrates how in a multilingual context where
the educational language is English, there are differences in
grammatical marking even with forms that typically emerge
early in a StdE context. Thus, it is essential to consider a
child’s language dominance when assessing his or her oral
language skills, considering factors such as their exposure
and usage of language over time and in different contexts.
“Consistent use” is often defined in research studies
as being when use occurs 90% of the time (e.g., Brown,
1973). This is difficult to apply in the English spoken in
Singapore as use of morphological markers is context
dependent and optional in sentences where the context is
clear. For the EL1 participants in this study, while at times
they used the plural “-s”marker and quantifiers to indicate
plurality, relative consistency in use was not demonstrated
until approximately 6 years. This is much later than would
be expected for other forms of StdE spoken around the
world where it emerges by approximately 2;6 years (Brown).
These findings for this dialectal form of English therefore
also have practical clinical implications in that consistent
use of the marker among Singaporean English dominant
children would not be expected until approximately 6 years
of age, and assessment and intervention targets should
reflect this difference. Language dominance is an important
factor here, as emergence and consistency of use will be
dependent on each child’s exposure to and use of SStdE.
For the ML1 group, there was minimal noun plural
marking and they did not show usage of morphological
marking for plurality by the age of 6;8. These data for the
ML1 participants marking of plurality represent a novel
finding and are striking because of the obvious impact of
language exposure and use for this language group. After
two to three years of learning English in kindergarten, there
was still no use of the plural “-s”marker demonstrated
although there was a steady but non-significant increase
in the use of a quantifier to indicate plurality throughout the
preschool years.
Language dominance
The results for both main language dominance groups are
markedly different and can be explained by the impact of
the children’s language dominance. While the language
environment in Singapore is complex and language use and
dominance are highly variable across the population, these
findings relate to similar findings of different patterns of
acquisition of morphology for other bilingual populations
such as for bilingual Mandarin–English speakers (Jia, 2003)
and Spanish–Standard American English speakers in the
United States (Bland-Stewart & Fitzgerald, 2001) in that the
acquisition of plural marking differs from that of monolingual
English speakers.
That the ML1 participants were not using inflectional
marking of noun plurals despite immersion in a SStdE
educational environment can in part be explained by the
characteristics of Mandarin. Plurality in Mandarin does not
occur through inflectional marking, but is indicated by a
number and a measure word being placed before the noun
(Yip & Rimmington, 1997). This could explain the pattern
in our results of quantifier use occurring in the stead of
inflectional marking.
There may also be impact of the characteristics of SCE
which is the dialectal form of English most likely to be
spoken with young children in Singapore (Gupta, 1994).
In SCE, morphological marking is not mandatory but is
context dependent. The use of quantifiers was also seen