WHAT DO SPECIFICALLY-LANGUAGE IMPAIRED AND SECOND LANGUAGE CHILDREN HAVE IN COMMON?
Johanne Paradis Studies of children with SLI acquiring their L1 and of normally-developing children acquiring an L2 have until now been conducted mostly in isolation of each other. Despite this independence, both lines of inquiry have shown similar descriptions of the acquisition process and perhaps more importantly, similar theoretical preoccupations. Such parallels highlight the need to bring these two research areas together. After completing my doctoral work on L2 and bilingual children, I began post-doctoral research on children with SLI. When I read my first transcript of a language sample from a French-speaking child with SLI, I was instantly struck with how much it read like the samples of the French L2 children I had previously been working with. Consequently, in collaboration with Martha Crago at McGill University, I began a series of direct cross-learner comparative studies designed to investigate just how alike (or different) morphosyntactic and lexical acquisition patterns
