Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-mwwwr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-30T16:05:22.091Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Macrostructure, microstructure, and mental state terms in the narratives of English–Hebrew bilingual preschool children with and without specific language impairment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2015

CARMIT ALTMAN ,
SHARON ARMON-LOTEM ,
SVETA FICHMAN  and
JOEL WALTERS
CARMIT ALTMAN*
Affiliation:
Bar Ilan University
SHARON ARMON-LOTEM
Affiliation:
Bar Ilan University
SVETA FICHMAN
Affiliation:
Bar Ilan University
JOEL WALTERS
Affiliation:
Bar Ilan University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Carmit Altman, School of Education, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. E-mail: carmit.altman@biu.ac.il
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Children's bilingual status is important because the interest here is in narrative performance in both languages of bilingual children, in particular the within-subject, cross language comparisons. As Paradis (2010) has argued, there are some structures where performance differences will point to a temporary lack of opportunity for mastery, whereas other structures will be markers of underlying difficulties. We expect the discriminators to be language specific, depending on attested vulnerabilities for each of the languages involved. Narratives were examined for macrostructure (goals, attempts, and outcomes), microstructure (e.g., length, lexis, and morphosyntax), and mental state terms (MSTs). Thirty-one preschool children (TLD = 19, SLI = 12) retold stories accompanied by six pictures that were matched across content (Baby Birds/Baby Goats) and to the extent possible across languages (first language/second language) for macrostructure, microstructure, and MSTs in the framework of the Working Group on Narrative and Discourse Abilities in COST Action 0804 Language Impairment in a Multilingual Society: Linguistic Patterns and the Road to Assessment. The macrostructure results confirmed previous findings showing similar performance in both languages for children with TLD and those diagnosed with SLI. Consistent with previous findings on narrative abilities among bilingual children, microstructure analysis of verbal productivity, length of communication units, and lexical diversity distinguished children with TLD from those with SLI. An analysis of MSTs yielded more MSTs in children's second language, in particular more mental verbs. The most prevalent MSTs used in all narratives were early acquired perceptual and motivational verbs (“see” and “want”). Overall, distinctions between narratives of children with TLD and SLI were found primarily for microstructure features, where error analysis was particularly important in uncovering possible markers, especially in second languages.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 1: Narrative abilities in bilingual children , January 2016 , pp. 165 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Altman, C., Burstein-Feldman, Z., Yitzhaki, D., Armon-Lotem, S., & Walters, J. (2014). Family language policies, reported language use and proficiency in Russian–Hebrew bilingual children in Israel. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35, 216–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armon-Lotem, S. (2010). Instructive bilingualism: Can bilingual children with SLI rely on one language in learning a second one? Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 29–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armon-Lotem, S. (2014). Between L2 and SLI: Inflections and prepositions in the Hebrew of bilingual children with TLD and monolingual children with SLI. Journal of Child Language, 41, 1–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Armon-Lotem, S., Altman, C., Joffe, S., Oz-Abutbul, H., & Walters, J. (2015). Ethno-linguistic identity, language exposure and language acquisition in bilingual preschool children from English and Russian-speaking backgrounds. In Grüter, T. & Paradis, J. (Eds.) Input and experience in bilingual development (pp. 77–98). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Armon-Lotem, S., & Amiram, O. (2012). The assignment of gender in L2 Hebrew: The role of the L1 gender system. Brill's Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics, 4, 232–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a “theory of mind”? Cognition, 21, 37–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berman, R. A., & Neeman, Y. (1994). Development of linguistic forms: Hebrew. In Berman, R. A. & Slobin, D. I. (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study (pp. 285–328). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Biddle, K. R., McCabe, A., & Bliss, L. S. (1996). Narrative skills following traumatic brain injury in children and adults. Journal of Communication Disorders, 29, 447–469.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blom, E., & Paradis, J. (2014). Sources of individual differences in the acquisition of tense inflection by English second language learners with and without specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics. Advance online publication. doi:10.1017/S014271641300057XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borer, H. (1974). Parametric syntax: Case studies in Semitic and Romance languages. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Botting, N. (2002). Narrative as a tool for the assessment of linguistic and pragmatic impairments. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 18, 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1976). Semantic factors in the acquisition of rules for word use and sentence construction. In Morehead, D. & Morehead, A. (Eds.), Directions in normal and deficient language development (pp. 99–179). Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Burns, F. A., de Villiers, P. A., Pearson, B. Z., & Champion, T. B. (2012). Dialect neutral indices of narrative cohesion and evaluation. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 43, 132–152.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, E. V. (1978). Strategies for communicating. Child Development, 49, 953–959.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1990). On the pragmatics of contrast. Journal of Child Language, 17, 417–431.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, E. V. (2009). What shapes children's language? Child-directed speech, conventionality, and the process of acquisition. In Mueller Gathercole, V. C. (Ed.), Routes to language: Studies in honour of Melissa Bowerman (pp. 233–254). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cleave, P. L., Girolametto, L. E., Chen, X., & Johnson, C. J. (2010). Narrative abilities in monolingual and dual language learning children with specific language impairment. Journal of Communication Disorders, 43, 511–522.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Curenton, S. M., & Justice, L. M. (2004). African American and Caucasian preschoolers’ use of decontextualized language: Literate language features in oral narratives. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 35, 240–253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Faulkner, D., & Coates, E. (2011). Exploring children's creative narratives: Some theoretical, methodological and applied perspectives. In Faulkner, D. & Coates, E. (Eds.), Exploring children's creative narratives (pp. 1–10). Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiestas, C. E., & Peña, E. D. (2004). Narrative discourse in bilingual children: Language and task effects. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 35, 155–168.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Füste-Hermann, B., Silliman, E. R., Bahr, R. H., Fasnacht, K. S., & Federico, J. E. (2006). Mental state verb production in the oral narratives of English- and Spanish-speaking preadolescents: An exploratory study of lexical diversity and depth. Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 21, 44–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gagarina, N., Klop, D., Kunnari, S., Tantele, K., Välimaa, T., Balčiūnienė, I., et al. (2012). MAIN: Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives. ZAS papers in linguistics 56. Berlin: Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft.Google Scholar
Gagarina, N., Klop, D., Kunnari, S., Tantele, K., Välimaa, T., Balčiūnienė, I., et al. (in press). Assessment of narrative abilities in bilingual children. In Armon-Lotem, S., de Jong, J., & Meir, N. (Eds.), Methods for assessing multilingual children: Disentangling bilingualism from language impairment. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Gillam, R. B., & Johnston, J. R. (1992). Spoken and written language relationships in language/learning-impaired and normally achieving school-age children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 35, 1303–1315.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goralnik, E. (1995). Goralnik Diagnostic Test [in Hebrew]. Even Yehuda, Israel: Matan.Google Scholar
Greenhalgh, K. S., & Strong, C. J. (2001). Literate language features in spoken narratives of children with typical language and children with language impairments. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 32, 114–125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F., Simon-Cereijido, G., & Leone, A. E. (2009). Code-switching in bilingual children with specific language impairment. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13, 91–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutierrez-Clellen, V. F., Simon-Cereijido, G., & Wagner, C. (2008). Bilingual children with language impairment: A comparison with monolinguals and second language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 3–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hunt, K. W. (1965). Grammatical structures written at three grade levels. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.Google Scholar
Huttenlocher, J., Smiley, P., & Charney, R. (1983). The emergence of action categories in the child: Evidence from verb meaning. Psychological Review, 90, 72–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iluz-Cohen, P., & Armon-Lotem, S. (2013). Language proficiency and executive control in bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16, 884–899.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iluz-Cohen, P., & Walters, J. (2012). Telling stories in two languages: Narratives of bilingual preschool children with typical and impaired language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 58–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaderavek, J. N., & Sulzby, E. (2000). Narrative production by children with and without specific language impairment: Oral narratives and emergent readings. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 43, 34–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies of Black English vernacular. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1997). Some further steps in narrative analysis. Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7, 395–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W. (2013). The language of life and death: The transformation of experience in oral narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liles, B., Duffy, R., Merritt, D., & Purcell, S. (1995). Measurement of narrative discourse ability in children with language disorders. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 38, 415–425.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lucas, J. A. (1980). Developing reading skills through the short story. Teaching and Learning, 1, 20–28.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES Project: Tools for analyzing talk. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Mandler, G. (1979). Organization and repetition: Organizational principles with special reference to rote learning. In Nilsson, L. G. (Ed.), Perspectives in memory research. Hillsdale. NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Marshall, C. R., & van der Lely, H. K. J. (2012). Irregular past tense forms in English: How data from children with specific language impairment contribute to models of morphology. Morphology, 22, 121–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? New York: Dial Press.Google Scholar
Merritt, D. D., & Liles, B. Z. (1987). Story grammar ability in children with and without language disorder: Story generation, story retelling, and story comprehension. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 30, 539–552.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Newman, R. M., & McGregor, K. K. (2006). Teachers and laypersons discern quality differences between narratives produced by children with or without SLI. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 1022–1036.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Norbury, C. F., & Bishop, D. V. M. (2003). Narrative skills of children with communication impairments. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 38, 287–313.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olley, L. (1989). Oral narrative performance of normal and language impaired school aged children. Australian Journal of Human Communication Disorders, 17, 43–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. (2005). Grammatical morphology in children learning English as a second language: Implications of similarities with specific language impairment. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 36, 172–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J. (2010). The interface between bilingual development and specific language impairment. Keynote article for special issue with peer commentaries. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 3–28.Google Scholar
Paradis, J. (2011). Individual differences in child English second language acquisition: Comparing child-internal and child-external factors. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 1, 213–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, B. Z. (2001). Language and mind in the stories of bilingual children. In Verhoeven, L. & Lundquist, S. (Eds.), Narrative development in a multilingual context (pp. 373–398). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, B. Z. (2002). Narrative competence among monolingual and bilingual school children in Miami. In Oller, D. K. & Eilers, R. E. (Eds.), Language and literacy in bilingual children (pp. 135–174). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., & de Villiers, P. A. (Eds.). (2005). Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (2nd ed.). Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1, 515–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravid, D., Levie, R., & Ben-Zvi, G. A. (2003). The role of language typology in linguistic development: Implications for the study of language disorders. In Levy, Y., & Schaeffer, J. (Eds.), Language competence across populations: Towards a definition of specific language impairment. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Reilly, J., Losh, M., Bellugi, U., & Wulfeck, B. (2004). “Frog, where are you?” Narratives in children with specific language impairment, early focal brain injury, and Williams syndrome. Brain and Language, 88, 229–247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rice, M., & Bode, J. (1993). GAPS in the verb lexicons of children with specific language impairment. First Language, 13, 113–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roth, F. P., & Spekman, N. J. (1986). Narrative discourse: Spontaneously generated stories of learning-disabled and normally achieving students. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 51, 8–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schneider, P., Hayward, D., & Dubé, R. V. (2006). Storytelling from pictures using the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument. Journal of Speech Language Pathology and Audiology, 30, 224–238.Google Scholar
Simon-Cereijido, G., & Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F. (2009). A cross-linguistic and bilingual evaluation of the interdependence between lexical and grammatical domains. Applied Psycholinguistics, 30, 315–337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Soodla, P., & Kikas, E. (2010). Macrostructure in the narratives of Estonian children with typical development and language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 1321–1333.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stein, N. L., & Glenn, C. G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children. In Freedle, R. (Ed.), New directions in discourse processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Albex.Google Scholar
Strong, C. J., & Shaver, J. P. (1991). Stability of cohesion in the spoken narratives of language-impaired and normally developing school-aged children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 34, 95–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
To, C. K. S., Stokes, S. F., Cheung, H. T., & T'sou, B. (2010). Narrative assessment for Cantonese-speaking children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 648–669.Google ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. (1992). First verbs: A case study of early grammatical development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trabasso, T., & Nickels, M. (1992). The development of goal plans of action in the narration of a picture story. Discourse Processes, 15, 249–275.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trabasso, T., & Stein, N. L. (1994). Using goal-plan knowledge to merge the past with the present and the future in narrating events on line. In Haith, M., Benson, J., Roberts, R., & Pennington, B. (Eds.), The development of future-oriented processes (pp. 323–352). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Trabasso, T., Stein, N. L., Rodkin, P. C., Park Munger, M., & Baughn, C. R. (1992). Knowledge of goals and plans in the on-line narration of events. Cognitive Development, 7, 133–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uccelli, P., & Páez, M. M. (2007). Narrative and vocabulary development of bilingual children from kindergarten to first grade: Developmental changes and associations among English and Spanish skills. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 38, 225–236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Unsworth, S. (2013). Assessing the role of current and cumulative exposure in simultaneous bilingual acquisition: The case of Dutch gender. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16, 86–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walters, J. (2005). Bilingualism: The sociopragmatic-psycholinguistic interface. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Westby, C. E. (2005). Assessing and remediating text comprehension problems. In Catts, H. W. & Kamhi, A. G. (Eds.), Language and reading disabilities (2nd ed., pp. 157–232). Boston: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Wiig, E. H., Secord, W. A., & Semel, E. M. (2004). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals—Preschool 2. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt/Psych Corporation.Google Scholar
Zdorenko, T., & Paradis, J. (2008). The acquisition of articles in child second language English: Fluctuation, transfer or both? Second Language Research, 24, 227–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar