Résumé
Today, more than half of the world’s population is bilingual. The speech-language pathology patients do not escape this situation; even if plurilingualism is not the cause of a developmental language disorder (DLD), the same types of disorders can appear in a bilingual subject, with repercussions on all his invested languages. The ideal speech-language pathology assessment would therefore consist of a qualitative and quantitative assessment of language abilities via bilingual standards. However, most test batteries are currently monolingually standardized, causing difficulties in diagnosing a bilingual child with a real DLD, not to be confused with transitory difficulties in acquiring the second language. After providing an overview of speechlanguage pathology practices in a multilingual context across Europe, our work focused on a local issue for speech-language pathologists in the Basque Country. A Basque language assessment tool (HIGA) was recently created in the Northern Basque Country to assess the oral language of Basque-speaking children aged from 4 to 8. Thus, we wanted to observe whether the Basque language development had specificities. Based on a literature review, we analysed studies from parental questionnaires, longitudinal studies and international databases in order to collect data on Bascophone children’s phonological acquisitions, lexical and morphosyntactic acquisitions. We then transferred these clinical data, creating tables of developmental benchmarks for speech-language pathologists, as well as illustrated chronological friezes intended for the general public. Thanks to this study, we have identified specificities in the Basque language development and therefore the need to establish these developmental benchmarks, in order tohelp the speech pathology assessment of bilingual Basque-speaking patients and thus to refine the boundary between language disorder and second language acquisition difficulty.