Reference to characters in narratives of Russian-Hebrew bilingual and Russian and Hebrew monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder and typical language development

Abstract

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.

Referential expressions in monolingual and bilingual children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A study of informativeness and definiteness

“…Starting with bilingual language acquisition, we found that bilingual children's performance was on par with that of monolingual peers. Our results support previous research which showed that bilingualism does not negatively affect informativeness of referential expressions in bilingual children, despite lower proficiency in that language (Andreou et al, 2015;Fichman & Altman, 2019;Fichman et al, 2020;Serratrice & De Cat, 2020;Topaj, 2010). This line of reasoning was also supported in a recent study which showed no differences between monolingual, bilingual and bi-dialectal children on measures of comprehension and processing of various factors with pragmatic meanings: relevance, scalar, contrastive, manner implicatures, novel metaphors and irony (Antoniou et al, 2020).…”

“…Several studies have demonstrated that the referential choices in narratives by bilingual children are similar to those made by their monolingual peers in both languages (Andreou, Knopp, Bongartz & Tsimpli, 2015;Fichman & Altman, 2019;Fichman, Walters, Melamed & Altman, 2020;Topaj, 2010). Serratrice and De Cat (2020) found that bilingual children aged 5-7 years were as knowledgeable about the choice of referential expressions as monolingual peers when their language proficiency in English was controlled for.…”

“…For example, negative cross-linguistic influence has been demonstrated for the acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew for Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals. The Hebrew definite marker ha-is used by Hebrew-speaking monolinguals by the age of two years (Berman & Lustigman, 2012;Zur, 1983), whereas Russian-Hebrew bilinguals acquiring Hebrew are less accurate with definiteness marking than their monolingual peers are (Armon-Lotem & Avram, 2005;Fichman et al, 2020;Meir, Walters & Armon-Lotem, 2017). These findings imply that definiteness marking is related to languagespecific properties of the language pair that a bilingual child speaks.…”

Opportunities and challenges in the analysis of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN)

“…focusing on the degree of ambiguity of null subjects, clitics and article drop, operationalised as an ordinal variable). Fichmann et al (2020) focused on the appropriateness of pronoun use (vs full NPs) in introduction and maintenance contexts, and (in Hebrew only) on the appropriateness of definite articles in referent-introduction contexts. Hardly any pronouns were produced in introduction contexts, suggesting adequate levels of discourse competence.…”

A new perspective on referentiality in elicited narratives: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Here, both individual differences and differences between the two age groups are documented. Fichman et al (2022) report on 51 Russian-and Hebrew-speaking children aged 5;6-6;7 with and without a diagnosis of DLD: 17 Russian monolinguals (9 DLD, 8 TD), 16 Hebrew monolinguals (5 DLD, 11 TD) and 18 sequentially bilingual first language (L1)-Russian/second language (L2)-Hebrew children (8 DLD, 10 TD). The languages differ typologically in the referential domain: Hebrew has overt articles which Russian lacks, pro-drop differs somewhat and Russian has more complex gender-marking.…”