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.

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Purpose The study explores referential cohesion in the narratives of bilingual preschool children with typical language development (TLD) and with specific language impairment (SLI). Referential cohesion requires integration of multiple discourse factors and is expected to pose a challenge for children with bilingual SLI due to weak proficiency in both languages. Method Narratives were elicited from 45 bilinguals speaking Russian as the home language (L1) and Hebrew as the societal language (L2; 15 with SLI), 20 Hebrew-speaking monolinguals (10 with SLI), and 20 Russian-speaking monolinguals (10 with SLI) using a story retelling procedure. Bilinguals were tested in both languages. Analyses examined the effect of impairment (SLI vs. TLD) in bilinguals and monolinguals. Language effects were examined in cross-language comparisons of bilinguals (L1 vs. L2) and in differences between monolingual groups (Russian vs. Hebrew speakers) for the use of referential expressions. Results Bilingual children with SLI used a higher proportion of pronouns for character introduction and had fewer pronouns, which have been described as “adequate” ( Colozzo & Whitely, 2014 ) than bilingual children with TLD. No language effect emerged for bilinguals, who performed similarly in their L1 and L2, but a significant cross-linguistic difference emerged in the monolingual data: Russian-speaking children mainly used nouns to introduce and maintain characters, whereas Hebrew-speaking children mainly used pronouns for introduction and maintenance of characters. Conclusion The difficulty of children with SLI in creating a referential connection between a pronoun and a noun phrase is discussed in light of the interaction of local and global processes in narratives, which is shown to be weaker in children with SLI.

This research analyzed adequacy of referential expressions in the narratives of bilingual and monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and typical language development (TLD), aiming to shed light on the relative contribution of morpho-syntactic, discourse-pragmatic, and semantic constraints. Narratives were collected from 51 children using a storytelling procedure ( MAIN – Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives). Participants were 18 bilingual Russian-Hebrew preschool children (8 with DLD), 17 monolingual Russian speakers (9 with DLD), and 16 monolingual Hebrew speakers (5 with DLD) aged 5;6–6;7. Referential expressions were coded for form (noun phrase [NP] or pronoun) and character function (Introduction or Maintenance). Analyses addressed the effects of proficiency group (TLD/DLD), language group (bilingual/monolingual), and language (Russian/Hebrew) on inadequate pronoun use and definiteness. Results demonstrated that children in all groups introduced characters using NPs. Children with DLD used more morpho-syntactically inadequate pronouns, such as incorrect gender, while both children with DLD and those with TLD used similar numbers of discourse-pragmatically inadequate pronouns. Bilinguals used more morpho-syntactically inadequate pronouns than monolinguals. In Hebrew, bilingual children with DLD omitted definite articles for character Maintenance more frequently than bilingual children with TLD and monolingual Hebrew-speaking children with DLD. Wrong gender assignment indicates that children with DLD have difficulties with morpho-syntactic constraints. Omission of definite articles for character Maintenance indicates a possibility of both morpho-syntactic and semantic difficulties that bilingual children with DLD acquiring Hebrew face. The results offer insight into the nature of the difficulty observed in bilingual children with DLD in using referential expressions.