Joel Walters

Purpose: The article aimed to examine cross-linguistic differences in macrostructure abilities in the narratives of 5- to 6-year-old preschool children from diverse heritage language (HL) backgrounds who speak Hebrew as the societal language (SL). Method: Data were collected from 104 preschool children (ages 5–6 years), bilingual speakers of English–Hebrew ( n = 34), Russian–Hebrew ( n = 50), and French–Hebrew ( n = 20). Narratives were collected via retelling in both languages with support from six colored pictures following the procedures and coding of the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings–Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN). Story scripts in each language reflect story grammar (SG) elements, including setting (time, place, and main characters) and three episodes per story, where each episode contains goal, attempt, and outcome. Stories retold in both languages were transcribed and coded for macrostructure features, following the LITMUS-MAIN coding procedure. The coding included story structure (sum of all elements, maximum score = 17), structural complexity (number of goal–attempt or goal–outcome sequences and number of goal–attempt–outcome sequences), and individual SG elements. All three components of macrostructure were analyzed for cross-linguistic and cross-group differences. Results: Analyses revealed significant cross-linguistic differences in most components for the English–Hebrew group, but not for the Russian–Hebrew or French–Hebrew groups. More subtle differences were revealed by structural complexity analysis, such that narratives of HL English–Hebrew and Russian–Hebrew bilinguals included more goal–attempt and goal–outcome combinations. The presence of individual SG elements was also higher in HL than in SL, and this trend was more evident in the English–Hebrew group. Conclusions: Cross-linguistic differences in macrostructure might not be universal; rather, each HL group has unique profiles of storytelling. We discuss ethnolinguistic identity and cultural values as possible factors contributing to these differences. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.33325110

Purpose: This article investigates the development of oral narrative skills in children through the lens of internal states in a large cross-linguistic data set of comparable fictional stories. Method: In a joint effort of research groups around the world, 5,507 picture-based stories were elicited from 2,763 monolingual and bilingual typically developing (TD) children aged 3–13 years in 32 countries across 44 languages with the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN; Gagarina et al., 2019 ). These were transcribed and coded for internal state terms (ISTs) that express story characters' thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. Using generalized mixed models, we investigated the likelihood of a child producing ISTs in the stories, as influenced by age, monolingualism versus bilingualism, and, for bilinguals, first language versus second language, elicitation mode (telling vs. retelling), IST type, story type, and story length. Results: We found strong positive effects of age and elicitation mode (retelling) on IST production, but no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals or for bilinguals in their two languages. Children were far more likely to produce ISTs as initiating events than ISTs as reactions. Story length only predicted IST production in younger children, but not in older ones. Conclusions: As shown by this large-scale sample, children's skills in making explicit the internal states of characters in fictional stories develop substantially during the primary school years, across languages, and for both monolingual and bilingual learners. The robust facilitative effect of retelling suggests that retelling may be particularly suitable to use with MAIN when researchers/clinicians are interested in assessing a child's ability to verbalize internal states. Future research should examine ISTs in children with developmental disorders and explore their application in intervention. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.33857551

Purpose: The current study investigated the contribution of age, age of bilingual onset (AoB), parental book reading, and language proficiency to the narrative macrostructure (story structure) skills of bilingual preschool children. Method: Forty English–Hebrew bilingual kindergarteners ( M = 64.88 months) in Israel participated in the study. Children retold narratives in both the home language (HL)/English and the societal language (SL)/Hebrew. Data were coded for macrostructure using seven story grammar (SG) elements (character, problem, internal response to the problem, goal, attempt, outcome, and internal response to the outcome). To identify predictors of macrostructure abilities, information was collected regarding age, oral and written language exposure (AoB and parental book reading), and language proficiency (standardized test scores and a receptive vocabulary task) in both languages. Results: Findings showed superior story structure scores in the HL/English for the total SG and complete episode scores (goal, attempt, outcome), as well as more frequent production of character and the internal response to the problem. Regression analysis indicated that HL/English parental book reading predicted SL/Hebrew macrostructure performance. Conclusions: The study demonstrates the importance of HL literacy practices for SL macrostructure performance. Findings are discussed in light of Cummins' linguistic interdependence hypothesis.

Changes in narrative skills among Russian-Hebrew bilingual preschoolers with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) were examined following Bilingual Narrative Intervention. Eight children with DLD and nine typically developing children participated in two six-session intervention blocks, first in the home language HL/Russian and then in the societal language SL/Hebrew. Intervention sessions involved retelling single-episode stories accompanied by icons/gestures, repetition, and peer interaction. Narrative skills were assessed at four-time points. Results showed that while typically developing children performed better overall, both groups followed similar trajectories. Children performed better in HL/Russian across all assessments. Macrostructure improved in both groups after HL/Russian intervention, particularly for “Feeling” and “Goal” elements. Bilingual typical language development children showed higher lexical diversity, with significant improvement following HL/Russian intervention. Children with bilingual DLD made more errors in HL/Russian, but similar error rates emerged between groups for SL/Hebrew. Earlier age of onset of bilingualism correlated with better macrostructure in SL/Hebrew but not in HL/Russian. Findings underscore the need for tailored intervention in both languages which considers clinical status and bilingual children’s background.

Ethnic identity (EI) and language attitudes have been researched from different schools of thought, and very few studies sought to explore the nature of the relationship between these constructs (H...

Purpose: We examined the role of narrative microstructure (production of words and sentences) and narrative macrostructure (organization of events) in the use of internal state terms (ISTs) in narratives of bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD) in their school language (SL). Method: Fifty-eight Russian–Hebrew bilingual preschool children aged 55–78 months divided into two groups participated: 16 bilingual children diagnosed with bilingual DLD and 42 with typical language development (TLD). Narratives were elicited in SL/Hebrew using the wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You? Narratives were transcribed and coded for frequency of ISTs and classified as perceptual, linguistic, motivational, linguistic, emotional, or physical. ISTs were also examined in terms of their role in microstructure (tokens and types) and macrostructure (Character, Setting, Initiating Event, Internal Response, Plan, Attempt, and Consequence) categories. Results: In terms of microstructure, bilingual children with DLD produced fewer word types and tokens in general and fewer perceptual ISTs than bilingual TLD peers. In terms of macrostructure, children with DLD used six out of the seven story grammar elements in their narratives less than bilinguals with TLD. For ISTs and macrostructure, bilinguals with DLD produced fewer linguistic ISTs in Attempts than their peers with TLD. Conclusions: Bilingual children with DLD have difficulties in producing ISTs, and this difficulty is shown to be related to both microstructure and macrostructure abilities. Suggestions for clinical intervention are offered to assist children with DLD in producing narratives that involve mental state language related to characters' feelings, intentions, and goals.

Bilingualism and aphasia can present with the same linguistic manifestations, particularly when one language is only acquired to a moderate level of proficiency. Thus, in this chapter, we examine a wide range of narrative features in order to try to distinguish language production in healthy bilingualism from language production in people with aphasia (PWA). Narratives were elicited from bilingual and monolingual people with conductive or anomic aphasia and from healthy bilingual and monolingual adults, and were transcribed and coded for macrostructure, microstructure, and fluency features. Quantitative findings showed that the narratives of PWA were distinguishable from those of healthy adults primarily by grammaticality (particularly for bilingual PWA), and to a lesser extent by verb diversity and by fluency, but not by macrostructure categories, narrative length, or sentence complexity. These findings, together with a qualitative analysis of the results, highlight the importance of carefully analyzing individual data as well as both languages of bilingual PWA.

Mountain Jewish immigrants to Israel from the Eastern Caucasus used two heritage languages, Juhuri (Judeo-Tat) and Russian. Juhuri was their home and Russian the societal languages prior to migration. In Israel, Juhuri and Russian are Heritage Languages and Hebrew is the societal language. The present study reports on frequency of use and codeswitching behaviour across three generations of Mountain Jewish speakers in order to account for patterns of language maintenance and language shift (LMLS). Audio-recorded conversations were collected from six female middle-generation speakers (G1.5: ages 33–50) with their mothers (G1: ages 60–75) and children (G2: ages 9–21). Findings for language use showed significant cross-generational differences, where use of both Russian and Juhuri declined and use of Hebrew increased across generations. Juhuri was maintained only among G1 participants, G1.5 speakers using it mainly for comprehension and G2 speakers abandoning it entirely. G1.5 participants maintained Russian for interaction with parents but did not use it with their children, for whom Hebrew was the dominant means of communication. Code-switching data showed the same overall shift to Hebrew with some maintenance of Russian among G1.5 speakers. Results are discussed in terms of LMLS and motivations for code-switching.

The present study investigated bilingual language control among preschool children in a sentence repetition task containing unilingual stimuli and codeswitched stimuli within prepositional phrases (PPs). Cross-language errors, that is, codeswitches that were not part of the stimulus sentences, were taken as evidence of difficulties in language control. Specifically, we investigated cross-language errors as a function of stimulus sentence type (codeswitched or unilingual), CS site within the PP, directionality (English or Hebrew stimulus sentences), and group status (children with typical language development (TLD), and children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)). We also examined cross-language errors in terms of word class and locus in the sentence. The participants were 65 English (home language)–Hebrew (societal language) bilinguals with TLD and 13 with DLD, ages 5;5–6;10 (M = 5;11). Stimulus sentences contained five codeswitch conditions within prepositional phrases, for example, a codeswitched preposition (P) or a codeswitched preposition, determiner and noun (P+DET+N), and a ‘no switch’ condition. The stimuli were 36 English and 36 Hebrew sentences (+24 fillers) matched for semantic content and syntax. English sentences contained switches to Hebrew, and Hebrew sentences contained switches to English. The results showed more cross-language errors for codeswitched than unilingual sentence stimuli. The children with TLD showed a directionality effect, producing more cross-language errors in Hebrew sentence stimuli than in English, but the children with DLD did not. The children with DLD had more cross-language errors than their peers with TLD for English stimuli. Most cross-language errors appeared in the sentence-final, adverbial temporal phrase. Findings are discussed in terms of language co-activation and competition in order to account for the difference in performance on unilingual versus codeswitched stimuli and in light of sociopragmatic and psycholinguistic factors to account for the directionality effect among children with TLD and the lack thereof among children with DLD.