Connective use in the narratives of bilingual children and monolingual children with SLI

Abstract

Differences between monolinguals and bilinguals are often attributed to crosslinguistic influence. This paper compares production of discourse connectives by Dutch–Russian bilinguals (Dutch-dominant), typically-developing Dutch/Russian monolinguals and Russian-speaking children with SLI. If non-target-like production in bilinguals is due to crosslinguistic influence, bilinguals should perform differently from both impaired and unimpaired monolinguals. However, if differences between bilinguals and monolinguals are due to other factors (e.g., input quantity, processing capacities), bilinguals’ language production might be similar to that of children with SLI. The results demonstrate that language dominance determines the direction of crosslinguistic influence. In terms of frequency distributions of Russian connectives across pragmatic contexts, the bilingual group performed differently from both monolingual groups and the differences were compatible with the structural properties of Dutch. However, based on error rates and types bilinguals could not be distinguished from the SLI group, suggesting that factors other than crosslinguistic influence may also be at play.

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

“…However, earlier research has shown that children that are biliterate still show differential performance with discourse connectives depending on the task they receive. Tribushinina, Mak and colleagues (2017a) studied Dutch–Russian bilingual children, who attend a regular Dutch school during the week and a complementary (weekend) school where they learn to read and write in Russian. 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.…”

“…Tribushinina, Mak and colleagues (2017a) studied Dutch–Russian bilingual children, who attend a regular Dutch school during the week and a complementary (weekend) school where they learn to read and write in Russian. 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.…”

“…More specifically, we focus on additive connectives, i.e., connectives used to add or contrast information (e.g., and, but ). Bilingual children are known to make many errors with Russian additive connectives and these errors are generally compatible with the properties of the other language they are acquiring (Tribushinina, Mak, Andreiushina, Dubinkina & Sanders, 2017; Tribushinina et al, 2017b). In this paper, we use an eye-tracking experiment in the Visual World Paradigm to test the hypothesis that such errors are caused by processing limitations rather than different (or incomplete) knowledge of semantic-pragmatic properties of the connectives.…”

“…As mentioned before, several studies have shown that bilingual children have difficulty with the correct use of the connectives i and a in production. Tribushinina et al (2017a) showed that 8-year-old Dutch–Russian simultaneous bilingual children made many errors in the production of these connectives. Particularly, they had a tendency to use the connective i for shift-relations in contexts where this was not licensed by the possibility of interpreting the sentences as causally related (an example of such an error is given in 10).…”

Referential Choices and Specific Language Impairment: Sensitivity to Contrast Levels and Grammatical Role

“…Several studies have reported, for example, that children with SLI have diffi culties producing appropriate narrative discourses beyond the appropriateness of their referential choices (e.g., Norbury & Bishop, 2003). The diffi culties range r om sentence complexity, use of connectives, and use of internal state language to aspects of narrative organization and complexity (Tribushinina et al, 2015a and2015b;Tsimpli et al, 2016). In our study, we concentrate on two very narrowly defi ned pragmatic and grammatical factors, contrast and grammatical role, respectively.…”