Typically-developing bilingual children often score lower than monolingual peers of the same age on standardized measures; however, research has shown that when assessed in more natural discourse contexts, bilinguals can perform similar to age-matched monolinguals in some language subdomains. This study investigated complex syntax production in simultaneous French–English bilingual children and monolingual age-matched peers, using structured and spontaneous measures. Surprisingly, the bilinguals scored higher than the monolinguals on the structured task. There was no difference between groups on the spontaneous measure; however, predictors of complex syntax production differed by language groups and by tasks. Contrary to other language subdomains showing bilingual English development as protracted relative to monolingual peers, these results point to a relative strength of complex syntax acquisition among simultaneous bilingual children. Differences in exposure relative to monolingual children may be less pronounced in syntax, in part because bilinguals can benefit from syntactic knowledge in their other language.

在标准化测量中，发育正常的双语儿童的得分通常低于同龄的单语同龄人；然而，研究表明，在更自然的话语环境中进行评估时，双语者在某些语言子领域的表现与年龄匹配的单语者相似。这项研究使用结构化和自发的测量方法，调查了法语-英语双语儿童和同龄单语同龄人的复杂句法生成情况。令人惊讶的是，双语者在结构化任务上的得分高于单语者。自发测量组之间没有差异；然而，复杂语法产生的预测因素因语言组和任务而异。与其他语言子领域显示双语英语发展相对于单语同龄人来说较长的相反，这些结果表明同时双语儿童在复杂语法习得方面具有相对优势。与单语儿童相比，语法方面的接触差异可能不太明显，部分原因是双语儿童可以从其他语言的句法知识中受益。