This paper investigates the language maintenance efforts of Arabic-heritage families whose preschool- and early primary school-age children are growing up bilingually with Arabic and Swedish. As a result of large-scale immigration to Sweden, Arabic has become by far the largest minority language, but very little is known about Arabic as a home language in this population. As part of a broader research project on child multilingualism, a questionnaire survey was administered to the parents of 100 Arabic/Swedish-speaking children. The resulting quantitative data on family language practices and beliefs were complemented by a smaller-scale follow-up interview study 2 years later. Family language practices targeted included parent-parent, parent-child and sibling interaction, language-fostering activities such as shared book reading, storytelling, and enrolment in home language education. Despite much diversity in family types concerning family constellations, parents' education, country of origin, Arabic language variety, and length of residence in Sweden, common traits emerge. Parents generally consider Arabic and Swedish to be equally important for their child to become proficient in. There is a strong focus on the transmission of Arabic in the home, and parents expect children to speak Arabic to them, though not all of them always do. In line with Swedish mainstream convention, most children are enrolled early in preschool. Parent-child interaction is reported to be mostly in Arabic, but in many homes, the agency of child and siblings leads to an increased use of Swedish, as does Swedish media consumption. In their home-language maintenance efforts, parents engage the help of extended family members, libraries, home-language teachers, and/or choose to enroll their child in a bilingual Arabic/Swedish preschool or a school with a particular profile that encourages Arabic. The families in the sample express little anxiety regarding their children's bilingualism and tend not to seek professional counsel in this matter. Swedish schools are reported to generally advise the parents to speak their native language as much as possible to their child. Whilst unusual from an international perspective, this finding is in line with minority-language maintenance advice previously documented for a different ethnolinguistic group in Sweden.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the crosslinguistic validity of the Crosslinguistic Nonword Repetition Test (CL-NWR) based on a large multicountry sample by investigating factors related to language ability, as well as potential confounds. Method: The data consisted of CL-NWR scores from children aged 37-165 months, collected by 18 research teams across 15 countries. Item-level analysis was employed to examine any nondesirable effects of gender, socioeconomic status, bilingual status, and the amount of exposure to the test language, as well as desirable effects of age, item length, and clinical status (children categorized as typically developing [TD], with developmental language disorder [DLD], or with reported language concerns [LC], respectively). Subsamples were used to evaluate the consistency of findings across three time points and between different versions of the CL-NWR. Results: Bayesian analysis provided strong evidence for the effects of age, item length, and clinical status on CL-NWR performance, as well as consistency across time points. In contrast, there was weak or no evidence for the effects of gender, socioeconomic status, bilingual status, amount of exposure, or test version. Additionally, there were two interactions between (a) item length and clinical status, suggesting that children with DLD found longer nonwords disproportionately more challenging than TD children, and (b) age and clinical status, with the gap between TD and LC groups narrowing with age. Conclusions: The CL-NWR was unaffected by environmental and demographic factors that often influence language assessments, including some nonword repetition tests. Performance was driven by factors reflecting language abilities. This makes the CL-NWR a unique and valuable tool for language assessment contributing to the identification of DLD in diverse linguistic, social, and geographical contexts.

In international comparisons, the Swedish heritage-language education (HLE) system is often described as being at the forefront of HLE in Europe. Following recent right-wing shifts in national politics, HLE has now come under threat. This article investigates the current state of HLE in Sweden, focussing on Arabic, through a survey of the literature, statistics on HLE provision and attendance and two empirical studies. Arabic is by far the most taught heritage-language in Swedish schools; research on Arabic HLE is surprisingly scarce though. Study 1, based on questionnaires and interviews, investigates the attitudes and experiences of parents of 100 Arabic-speaking preschool and primary-school children, cross-sectionally and longitudinally (age 4−10 years). Interview-based Study 2 sheds light on the practices and experiences of 17 HLE teachers. Both parents and teachers express appreciation of state-funded HLE, but critique similar aspects of its implementation (e.g. scheduling, class duration). Arabic HLE attendance is high. Teachers report that children make progress despite time constraints and heterogeneous groups. They emphasise how they align their lessons with other school subjects and act as cultural mediators. Unlike some parents, teachers view exposure to different varieties of Arabic in the HLE classroom as beneficial for developing children’s linguistic repertoires and promoting pluralism.

As in many other countries, baseline data concerning the linguistic development of bilingual children in Sweden are lacking, and suitable methods for identifying developmental language disorder (DLD) in bilinguals are lacking as well. This study presents reference data from 108 typically developing (TD) Turkish/Swedish-speaking children aged 4;0–8;1, for a range of language tasks developed specifically for the assessment of bilinguals (LITMUS test battery, COST Action IS0804). We report on different types of nonword repetition (NWR) tasks (language-specific and language-independent), receptive and expressive vocabulary (Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks, CLTs), and narrative macrostructure comprehension and production (Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives, MAIN) in Turkish, the children’s home language, and in Swedish, the language of schooling and society. Performance was investigated in relation to age, language exposure, type of task, and (for NWR and narratives) vocabulary size. There was a positive development with age for all tasks, but effects of language exposure and vocabulary size differed between tasks. Six bilingual Turkish/Swedish children with DLD were individually compared to the TD children. TD/DLD performance overlapped substantially, particularly for NWR, and more so for the production than the comprehension tasks. Surprisingly, the discriminatory potential was poor for both language-specific and language-independent NWR. DLD case studies underscored the importance of interpreting language scores in relation to exposure history, and the need for an increased emphasis on functional language skills as reported by parents and teachers when assessing and diagnosing DLD in bilinguals.

This study investigates the referential forms children use to introduce characters in Swedish, in a cross-sectional sample of oral narratives by 100 Turkish/Swedish bilinguals aged 4 to 7 and in a longitudinal sample from age 4 to 6 (N = 10). We analysed development with age and how language proficiency (expressive vocabulary) and exposure affect children's use of referring expressions, with a focus on referential appropriateness. In addition, a qualitative analysis of the characteristics of high- and low-performing children was carried out. The results show significant effects of age and language proficiency, but not of language exposure on appropriate use of referring expressions. At age 7, 69% of the characters were introduced with an indefinite NP. The Turkish/Swedish bilinguals were found to lag behind in their use of indefinite NPs in comparison to Swedish-speaking children investigated in previous studies, with little crosslinguistic influence from L1 Turkish.

This study explores the language maintenance efforts of Turkish heritage-speaker families in Sweden and their relation to state-level language policy from three angles. First, Swedish mainstream language ideology is described as it manifests in legislation, language policy and mother-tongue tuition. Then, the language practices of the families of 105 Turkish/Swedish children (age four to seven) are characterised via a questionnaire survey. This is complemented by findings from a follow-up study two years later, where ten of the families participated in interviews and home observations. Parents preferred to speak Turkish and wanted their child to learn and speak Turkish alongside Swedish. Another common denominator was the children's early, extensive preschool attendance. Parent-child interaction was predominantly Turkish, although second-generation parents raised in Sweden reported higher uses of the majority language Swedish. Exposure to Swedish increased over time due to schooling, sibling interaction and media use, but third-generation children still spoke Turkish to a considerable degree. In their heritage-language maintenance efforts, many parents enlisted the support of grandparents, mother-tongue tuition, and literacy activities. Parents generally considered Turkish and Swedish equally important and showed low levels of anxiety regarding their children's bilingualism, unlike what has been reported in studies of the same ethnolinguistic group in other national settings. The interviews revealed that parents who consulted Swedish health professionals and teachers were advised to speak and support the heritage language (Turkish) and maximise exposure to it in the home. Whilst unusual from an international perspective, this is in line with the official multilingual language ideology in Sweden.

The Arabic-speaking community in Sweden is large and diverse, yet linguistic reference data are lacking for Arabic-Swedish-speaking children. This study presents reference data from 99 TD children aged 4;0–7;11 on receptive and expressive vocabulary in the minority and the majority language, as well as for three types of non-word repetition (NWR) tasks. Vocabulary scores were investigated in relation to age, language exposure, and socio-economic status (SES). NWR performance was explored in relation to age, type of task, item properties, language exposure, and vocabulary. Eleven children with DLD were compared to the TD group. Age and language exposure were important predictors of vocabulary scores in both languages, but SES did not affect vocabulary scores in any language. Age and vocabulary size had a positive effect on NWR accuracy, whilst increasing item length and presence of clusters had an adverse effect. There was substantial overlap between the TD and DLD children for both vocabulary and NWR performance. Diagnostic accuracy was at best suggestive for NWR; no task or type of item was better at separating the two groups. Reports from parents and teachers on developmental history, language exposure, and functional language skills emerged as important factors for correctly identifying DLD in bilinguals.

This special issue investigates the use of referential expressions in elicited picture-based narratives by children with and without developmental language disorders, across a range of languages and language combinations. All contributions use the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN, Gagarina et al. 2012, 2019). The studies featured in this issue cover monolingual and bilingual children aged 4–11 years, but focus mainly on age 4–7, a period in a child’s life where great strides are made in the development of narrative skills. This collection of papers offers a new perspective on referentiality for several reasons: all studies use the same stimuli and by and large the same procedure for the elicitation of narratives. The stimuli, four picture-based stories, are controlled for comparability of protagonists, plot and story structure. They were designed as a ‘visual’ representation of a multidimensional model of story grammar. This methodological and theoretical base allows for a comparative investigation of referentiality (including reference introduction, maintenance and reintroduction) in narratives, across languages and populations. This introduction addresses theoretical aspects of referentiality in decontextualised discourse and reviews the literature regarding the impact of language-specific referential systems and the age and path of acquisition in typically developing children and children with developmental language disorders. We also discuss methodological aspects of eliciting referentiality in narratives in detail. This introduction thus seeks explanations for the diverse and sometimes contradictory empirical results regarding children’s mastery of referentiality. Finally, an overview of the contributions in the special issue is given.

This Special Issue focuses on family language policy as part of the language maintenance and shift efforts of Turkish heritage-speaker families in Australia, Belgium, France, Sweden and the Netherlands.

This paper explores family language policy in Turkish-speaking families in Sweden. Questionnaires were administered to the parents of 105 Turkish/Swedish children (age 4 - 7), targeting family language practices (including parent-parent, parent-child, child-parent, child-and-sibling conversation and language-fostering activities such as joint book reading, storytelling and mother tongue tuition), and parental language beliefs and attitudes. Despite much diversity in family types concerning parents' education, country of birth, native language and ethnic affiliation (e.g. Kurdish), common traits emerge: There is a strong focus on the transmission of Turkish in the home, in the face of early and extensive Swedish pre-school attendance. Parents mostly speak Turkish with the child. However, Sweden-born parents report higher uses of Swedish in the home, and sibling interaction also drives a shift towards Swedish. Parental education appears to affect Turkish joint reading activities. Most parents consider proficiency in Turkish and Swedish as equally important for their children. Parents who rank Turkish higher do not necessarily show more maintenance efforts, pointing to some inconsistency between attitudes and practices. Overall, the family language practices observed indicate strong bilingual ideologies and strong language maintenance ideologies, in line with Swedish official state-level language policy, which supports bilingualism and minority language maintenance.

The empirical evidence for whether narrative macrostructure skills are shared between a bilingual child's two languages is inconclusive, and it is not known how macrostructure (overall story structure) is influenced by general language proficiency and amount of exposure. The present study investigates these issues in 100 Turkish-Swedish bilingual 4-to-7-year-old children growing up in Sweden. Oral narratives were elicited in both Turkish and Swedish with two picture-based tasks from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) in the telling mode. We investigated to what extent the language of elicitation influences bilingual children's macrostructure (story structure, episodic complexity), and explored effects of age, narrative task, narrative length, expressive vocabulary and language exposure, both separately and combined, on macrostructure in the respective language. Story structure and episodic complexity were found to increase similarly with age in both Turkish and Swedish from 4 to 7 years. Scores did not differ between the two MAIN storytelling tasks. Expressive vocabulary and narrative length influenced story structure scores positively and similarly in both languages. Daily language exposure and length of exposure to Swedish did not show any significant effect. The results can be interpreted in support of a carry-over of narrative macrostructural skills between the two languages.

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Closely related Swedish and German both mark information status of referents morphologically, though little is known about its acquisition. This study investigates character introductions in the narratives of 4- and 6-year-old Swedish–German bilinguals ( N = 40) in both languages, elicited with MAIN Cat/Dog. We analyse effects of age group, language and animacy (human vs nonhuman characters) on the type of referring expression (indefinite NP and pronoun), as well as effects of language proficiency and exposure on the use of indefinite NPs for each language. We also explore which syntactic constructions indefinite NPs occur in. A significant difference was found between the two age groups, but not between languages. No effect was found of language skills or exposure. Four-year-olds used more pronouns and a lower proportion of indefinite NPs than 6-year-olds. Pronouns were more frequent for the human character than for nonhuman animate characters. Whilst animacy (humanness) promoted the use of pronouns, it did not affect the choice of morphological form for lexical NPs (indefinite/definite). The age groups differed in how indefinite NPs were used. Four-year-olds produced fewer narrative presentations (where a character is introduced as part of a typical story opening, e.g. Once upon a time there was a cat) than 6-year-olds, and more labellings (with only an NP, or a clausal predicative, e.g. That’s a cat). Qualitative analyses suggest that the children’s indefinite NPs in labelling constructions can be both referential (when setting the narrative scene), and type-denoting (when naming referents in individual pictures). Whilst the children’s abilities to introduce story characters develop measurably from 4 to 6 years in Swedish and German, appropriateness of character introductions not only depends on whether an indefinite NP is chosen, but also on the syntactic construction this indefinite NP is used in.

Home language education has a long tradition in Sweden and includes the teaching of Turkish to children who grow up bilingually with Swedish as their societal language and Turkish as their home and heritage language. The present paper characterises Turkish mother tongue instruction (MTI) and discusses its current status in the light of Swedish language policy, as it is reflected in official documents (legislation, policy papers and curricula) vis-a-vis its practical implementation by the municipalities. The paper also presents findings from a research project on Turkish-speaking preschool and primary school children and their families, concerning MTI attendance and attitudes towards Turkish, as well as on the experiences of Turkish MTI teachers in a Swedish setting.

Previous studies show mixed findings concerning whether higher-order story structure (macrostructure) is similar across bilinguals' two languages. It is not known how macrostructure is influenced by general language proficiency and amount of exposure. The present study investigates these issues in 46 German-Swedish bilingual 4 - to 6-year-olds. Narratives were elicited in both languages with two picture-based tasks from the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) in the telling mode. We investigate to what extent the language of elicitation (Swedish vs German) influences bilingual children's macrostructure (story structure, episodic complexity) and explore effects of narrative task, age, narrative length, expressive vocabulary and estimated language exposure, both separately and combined, on macrostructure in the respective language. Results show that macrostructural skills developed measurably with age from 4 to 6 years in both languages, with no task effects. Story structure scores were higher in the majority language Swedish than in German and developed differently with age. The effect of narrative length on story structure was similar in the two languages. Language exposure did not have any significant effect. Macrostructure scores were significantly affected by expressive vocabulary in German only. Generally, the results may be linked to slightly higher language proficiency in Swedish.

Abstract This study investigates story comprehension in 124 typically-developing children aged 4–6 growing up in Sweden, using the LITMUS Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN, Gagarina et al. 2012). 72 Swedish monolinguals and 52 Swedish-English bilinguals from similar socio-economic backgrounds told two MAIN stories each and answered standardised questions that probe inferencing of goals, thoughts and emotions of story characters. Overall comprehension scores were calculated, and responses to individual questions were analysed. Results were compared across age groups, languages, and tasks. Already at age 4, and certainly at age 6, overall comprehension scores were high, indicating good general understanding of the stories. Scores differed significantly between tasks, suggesting that comprehension of MAIN Cat/Dog is easier than Baby Birds/Baby Goats. On all tasks, protagonists’ goals were understood well at age 4, approaching ceiling (> 90%) at age 5–6. Internal states as initiating events were also relatively well understood. However, many children struggled to infer emotional reactions of protagonists when this necessitated taking the whole plotline into account. We suggest that the processing abilities of the average 6-year-old are not yet developed enough to master every aspect of inferential understanding probed on the MAIN. Results held across languages and mono-/bilinguals, suggesting that they generalise.