Past tense production in children with SLI and bilingual children The influence of vocabulary and non-word repetition

We investigated whether (1) 7–9-year-old children with SLI, bilingual children (BIL) and monolingual (TD) children differed on Dutch past tense production of real and pseudo-verbs and (2) whether non-word repetition (NWR), receptive vocabulary, and group status contributed to past tense production. Past tense patterned as SLI < BIL < TD, for NWR as SLI < BIL = TD and for vocabulary SLI = BIL < TD. Vocabulary and SLI group status were significant predictors of real-verb past tense inflection. SLI and bilingual group status were predictors of pseudo-verb past tense inflection. These findings confirm the association between vocabulary and past tense and the difficulty that children with SLI and bilingual children have with both skills.