Revisiting nonword repetition as a clinical marker of developmental language disorder: Evidence from monolingual and bilingual L2 Cantonese

Cross-linguistically, nonword repetition (NWR) tasks have been found to differentiate between typically developing (TD) children and those with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), even when second-language TD (L2-TD) children are considered. This study examined such group differences in Cantonese. Fifty-seven age-matched children (19 monolingual DLD (MonDLD); 19 monolingual TD (MonTD); and 19 L2-TD) repeated language-specific nonwords with varying lexicality levels and Cantonese-adapted quasi-universal nonwords. At whole-nonword level scoring, on the language-specific, High-Lexicality nonwords, MonDLD scored significantly below MonTD and L2-TD groups which did not differ significantly from each other. At syllable-level scoring, the same pattern of group differentiation was found on quasi-universal nonwords. These findings provide evidence from a typologically distinct and understudied language that NWR tasks can capture significant TD/DLD group differences, even for L2-Cantonese TD children with reduced language experience. Future studies should compare the performance of an L2-DLD group and evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of Cantonese NWR.