Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-sk4tg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-14T23:24:59.377Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Telling stories in two languages: Narratives of bilingual preschool children with typical and impaired language*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2011

PERI ILUZ-COHEN  and
JOEL WALTERS
PERI ILUZ-COHEN
Affiliation:
Department of English, Bar-Ilan University
JOEL WALTERS*
Affiliation:
Department of English, Bar-Ilan University
*
Address for correspondence: Joel Walters, Department of English, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Two studies investigated five- and six-year-old preschool children's narrative production in an attempt to show how LI may impinge on narrative production in measurable ways. Study 1 analyzed renderings of familiar stories for group (typical language development vs. language impairment), story content (Jungle Book/Goldilocks) and language (English/Hebrew) differences on a range of discourse (story grammar categories), lexical (e.g., words, word types), morphosyntactic (e.g., verb inflections, prepositions) and bilingual (code-switching) measures. It showed intact performance for narrative structure in both groups and in both languages despite differences in lexis, morphosyntax and bilingualism. Study 2 pursued bilingual code-switching as a means to examine differences between children with typical language development (TLD) and language impairment (LI) in a retelling task where each child retold three stories (from native language/L1, second language/L2 and bilingual contexts) to interlocutors with different language preferences. Both groups showed sociolinguistic sensitivity in code-switching behavior, but frequency and directionality of code-switching revealed group differences. The article argues for the use of a range of indicators of LI including those unique to bilingual children.

Keywords

bilingual preschool childrennarrative abilitieslanguage impairmentcode-switching
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Special Issue 1: Bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment , January 2012 , pp. 58 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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.)

Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank Sharon Armon-Lotem, editor of this special issue, three anonymous reviewers, and the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 938) for its support.

References

Anderson, A. (2006). Literate language feature use in preschool age children with Specific Language Impairment and typically developing language. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Auer, P. (1998). Code-switching in conversation: Language, interaction and identity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bamberg, M. (ed). (1997). Narrative development: Six approaches. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. (2008). The psycholinguistics of developing text construction. Journal of Child Language, 35, 735–771.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berman, R. A., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating events in narrative: A cross linguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Castilla, A. P., Restrepo, M. A., & Perez-Leroux, A. T. (2009). Individual differences and language interdependence: A study of sequential bilingual development in Spanish–English preschool children. Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, 12, 565–580.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cleave, P. L., Girolametto, L. E., Chen, X., & Johnson, C. J. (2010). Narrative abilities children with specific language impairment: The impact of bilingualism. Journal of Communication Disorders, 43, 511–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clyne, M. (2003). Dynamics of language contact: English and immigrant languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dodwell, K., & Bavin, E. L. (2008). Memory and narratives of children with Specific Language Impairment. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 43, 201–218.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ervin-Tripp, S., & Reyes, I. (2005). Child codeswitching and adult content contrasts. International Journal of Bilingualism, 9, 85–102.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
Gardner-Chloros, P., Charles, R., & Cheshire, J. (2000). Parallel patterns? A comparison of monolingual speech and bilingual code-switched discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1305–1341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Genesee, F. (2003). Rethinking bilingual acquisition. In deWaele, J. M. (ed.), Bilingualism: Challenges and directions for future research, pp. 158–182. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Goralnik, E. (1995). Goralnik Diagnostic Test. Even Yehuda: Matan (in Hebrew).Google Scholar
Gottardo, A. (2002). Language and reading skills in bilingual Spanish–English speakers. Topics in Language Disorders, 23, 42–66.Google Scholar
Graybeal, C. (1981). Memory for stories in language-impaired children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 2, 269–283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F. (2002). Narratives in two languages: Assessing performance of bilingual children. Linguistics and Education, 13 (2), 175–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F, Simon-Cereijido, G., & Erickson Leone, A. (2009). Code-switching in bilingual children with specific language impairment. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13, 91–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iluz-Cohen, P. (2009). Language proficiency, language control and executive functions in bilingual children. Unpublished MA thesis, Bar Ilan University.Google Scholar
Jisa, H. (2000). Language mixing in the weak language: Evidence from two children. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1363–1386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, D. (2001). Narrative development in Hebrew and English. In Verhoeven, L. & Stromqvist, S. (eds.), Narrative development in a multilingual context, pp. 319–340. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S. C., Misra, M. M., & Guo, T. (2008). Language selection in bilingual speech: Evidence for inhibitory processes. Acta Psychologica, 128, 416–430.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kroll, J. F., & De Groot, A. M. B. (1997). Lexical and conceptual memory in the bilingual: Mapping form to meaning in two languages. In de Groot, A. M. B., & Kroll, J. F. (eds.), Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives, pp. 169–199. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1997). Some further steps in narrative analysis. The Journal of Narrative and Life History, 7 (1–4), 207–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In Helm, J. (ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts, pp. 12–44. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Lanza, E. (1997). Language mixing in infant bilingualism: A sociolinguistic perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lanza, E. (2001). Temporality and language contact in narratives by children bilingual in Norwegian and English. In Verhoeven, L. & Stromqvist, S. (eds.), Narrative development in a multilingual context, pp. 15–50. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacSwan, J. (1999). A Minimalist approach to intrasentential code switching. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
MacSwan, J. (2000). The architecture of the bilingual language faculty: Evidence from codeswitching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3 (1), 37–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matras, Y. (2000). Fusion and the cognitive basis for bilingual discourse markers. International Journal of Bilingualism, 4 (4), 505–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. (1994). Code-switching in young bilingual children: The acquisition of grammatical constraints. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 16, 413–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montanari, S. (2004). The development of narrative competence in the L1 and L2 of Spanish–English bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism, 8 (4), 449–497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers-Scotton, C. (2002). Contact linguistics: Bilingual encounters and grammatical outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, J., & Nicoladis, E. (2007). The influence of dominance and sociolinguistic context on bilingual preschoolers’ language choice. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10 (3), 277–297.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 in bilingual school children in Miami. In Oller, D. K. & Eilers, R. E. (eds.), Language and literacy development in bilingual children, pp. 135–174. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, B. Z., & de Villiers, P. A. (2005) Child language acquisition: Discourse, narrative and pragmatics. In Brown, K. and Lieven, E. (eds.), Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 2nd edn, pp. 686–693. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Peterson, C., & McCabe, A. (1983). Developmental psycholinguistics: Three ways of looking at a child's narrative. New York: Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, S. (1980). Sometimes I'll start a sentence in English y termino en espanol: Toward a typology of code-switching. In Amastae, J. & Elias-Olivares, L. (eds.), Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic aspects, pp. 230–263. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Raichlin, R. (2008). Codeswitching in Russian–Hebrew Preschool Bilingual Children. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Bar-Ilan University.Google Scholar
Ravid, D., & Berman, R. A. (2006). Information density in the development of spoken and written narratives in English and Hebrew. Discourse Processes, 41 (2), 117–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rice, M. L., Redmond, S. M., & Hoffman, L. (2006). MLU in children with LI and younger control children shows concurrent validity, stability, and parallel growth trajectories. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 793–808.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, A. I., & Kroll, J. F. (2006). Bilingual lexical activation in sentence context. Journal of Memory and Language, 55, 197–212.CrossRefGoogle 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 (2), 315–337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stein, N. L., & Glenn, C. G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary children, vol. 2. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Stein, N. L., & Trabasso, T. (1982). What's in a story? An approach to comprehension and instruction. In Glaser, R. (ed.), Advances in instructional psychology, vol. 2, pp. 213–267. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Stephens, D. A. (1986). Linguistic aspects of code-switching among Spanish/English bilingual children. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Arizona.Google Scholar
Tallal, P., & Stark, R. (1981). Speech acoustic-cue discrimination abilities of normally developing and language-impaired children. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 69, 568–574.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Toribio, A. (2001). On the emergence of bilingual code-switching competence. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4 (3), 203–231.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 (3), 225–236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Viberg, A. (2001). Age-related and L2-rleated features in bilingual narrative development in Sweden. In Verhoeven, L. & Stromqvist, S. (eds.), Narrative development in a multilingual context, pp. 87–128. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Studnitz, R., & Green, D. W. (2002) The cost of switching in a semantic categorization task. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5, 241–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walters, J. (2005). Bilingualism: The sociopragmatic–psycholinguistic interface. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.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
Zentella, A. C. (1997). Growing up bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar