Lexikal organistaion hos flerspråkiga barn - enligt den förkortade Kent-Rosanofflistan på svenska och arabiska

The aim of this study was to examine bilingual childrens lexical organization and to investigate weather bilingual children had undergone the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift in grade four. Thirty children from multi-ethnic areas were tested with Kent-Rosanoff word association test in both Swedish and Arabic. The results showed that more than 40% of the children had undergone the shift in both languages, 20 % had undergone the shift in only one of their languages and almost 40% had not made the shift in any language. A comparison with results from monolingual Swedish children in grade three in a previous thesis, showed that the bilingual children in this study did not reach the corresponding level of lexical organization. The study points to the necessity of including tests regarding lexical organization when assessing both mono- and bilingual children with suspected language impairment. The study also underscores the importance of supporting mother tongue development in bilingual children by for instance adequate mother tongue educatio