Story Grammar Elements and Mental State Terms in the Expression of Enabling Relations in Narratives of Bilingual Preschool Children

ABSTRACT

The present research analyzes causal relations between events in the narratives of bilingual preschool children with typical development (BiTD) and with developmental language disorder (BiDLD). The analyses focused on story grammar elements (attempts and goals) and mental state terms between events in Enabling relations as features contributing to narrative discourse coherence. Narratives, collected from 48 bilingual children (14 with DLD) aged 5;06–6;06, were examined for the expression of enabling causal relations in both L1/Russian and L2/Hebrew. Children in both groups showed frequent omission of goals, but they used mental state terms to convey Enabling relations between events across episodes. Coherence is argued to be affected by syntactic, referential, and lexical skills.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the children and their parents who participated in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The study was supported by Israel Science Foundation (ISF), grant number 1716/19 and by a grant from the Israeli Ministry of Education.