Connective processing by bilingual children and monolinguals with specific language impairment: distinct profiles

Abstract

Production studies show that both Russian-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and bilingual children for whom Russian is a non-dominant language have difficulty distinguishing between the near-synonymous connectives i 'and' and a 'and/but'. I is a preferred connective when reference is maintained, whereas a is normally used for reference shift. We report an eye-tracking experiment comparing connective processing by Russian-speaking monolinguals with typical language development (TLD) with that of Russian-Dutch bilinguals and Russian-speaking monolinguals with SLI (age 5-6). The results demonstrate that the processing profiles of monolinguals with TLD and bilinguals are similar: both groups use connective semantics immediately for predicting further discourse. In contrast, children with SLI do not show sensitivity to these semantic differences. Despite similar production profiles, bilinguals and monolinguals with SLI are clearly different in connective processing. We discuss the implications of these results for the possible causes of the errors in the two populations.

Understanding the semantic functions of but in middle childhood: The role of text- and sentence-level comprehension abilities

“…text micro- and macro-structure; Cain et al, 2005; Cain & Nash, 2011; Carretti, Motta, & Re, 2016; Crosson & Lesaux, 2013; Levorato & Zammuner, 1985; Peterson, 1986; Tribushinina, Dubinkina, & Sanders, 2015; Vion & Colas, 2005). For instance, the recent work of Tribushinina and colleagues (2015; see also Mak et al, 2017) on Russian 7-year-olds showed that the correct use of two quasi-synonymous connectives in a narrative task required both the understanding of semantic relations between events at the text level and the integration of semantic and syntactic information of connectives at the sentence level.…”

Keeping two languages apart: Connective processing in both languages of Russian–German bilinguals

“…In narrative elicitation tasks, Tribushinina et al (2017a) show that 8-year old children made an error in 40% of the cases where they used i for reference shift. At the same time Mak et al (2017) show that 5-year children at the same complementary school performed similarly to a monolingual control group in the VWP-task. These results can be explained in terms of a higher processing load in the narrative elicitation task.…”

“…We used the materials from earlier experiments (Mak et al, 2013, 2017). These consisted of four types of items.…”

“…Earlier research has shown that Dutch–Russian bilinguals showed an asymmetry between production and comprehension of the additive connectives i “and” and a “and/but” in Russian, with non-target-like performance in a narrative elicitation task (Tribushinina et al, 2017a) and target-like performance in a simple comprehension task (Mak, Tribushinina, Lomako, Gagarina, Abrosova & Sanders, 2017). The additive connectives in Dutch and Russian reveal intriguing semantic and pragmatic differences.…”

Creativity in the University Teaching of the Russian Language in the Republic of Serbia

“…В связи с этим русский язык представлен в учебных программах во всех уровнях образования и во многих странах мира [8]. Его значение явно возрастает в странах, где он ранее был обязательным предметом, как например, в бывших республиках СССР [7,4] В эмпирической части исследования было установлено, что студенты имеют идентичные оценки о зависимости эффективности учебно-воспитательного процесса от творчества преподавателей при обучении студентов русскому языку. Было установлено, что на оценку студентов не оказывает влияние год/курс учебы и их общая успеваемость.…”