John Benjamins Publishing Company
Discourse cohesion in the elicited narratives of early Russian-German sequential bilinguals
Abstract
This study examines aspects of discourse cohesion in the elicited narratives of early Russian-German sequential bilinguals at age four to six and compares them to the narratives of monolingual Russian-speaking children at the same age as well as to a group of monolingual adults. This examination quantitatively and qualitatively inspects two groups of devices that establish referential and relational cohesion: (anaphoric) pronouns and connectives. The results show that bilinguals of all age groups produce longer utterances and use more word tokens per story in comparison to monolinguals. The younger group of bilinguals demonstrates higher rates of the use of referential and relational cohesive devices. Moreover, in bilingual children the extension of the use of cohesive devices from the local level to the level of more general discourse organization is more pronounced than in monolinguals. This finding is explained as a bilingual advantage over monolinguals reflecting the sensitivity of bilinguals to establishing cohesive ties in discourse. Thus, the results of this study expand evidence showing that advantages of bilinguals over monolinguals in some areas of language and cognitive competence.
Abstract
This study examines aspects of discourse cohesion in the elicited narratives of early Russian-German sequential bilinguals at age four to six and compares them to the narratives of monolingual Russian-speaking children at the same age as well as to a group of monolingual adults. This examination quantitatively and qualitatively inspects two groups of devices that establish referential and relational cohesion: (anaphoric) pronouns and connectives. The results show that bilinguals of all age groups produce longer utterances and use more word tokens per story in comparison to monolinguals. The younger group of bilinguals demonstrates higher rates of the use of referential and relational cohesive devices. Moreover, in bilingual children the extension of the use of cohesive devices from the local level to the level of more general discourse organization is more pronounced than in monolinguals. This finding is explained as a bilingual advantage over monolinguals reflecting the sensitivity of bilinguals to establishing cohesive ties in discourse. Thus, the results of this study expand evidence showing that advantages of bilinguals over monolinguals in some areas of language and cognitive competence.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Foreword xi
-
Part I. How language is acquired and lost in multilingual settings
- Case marking in child L1 and early child L2 German 3
- First exposure learners make use of top-down lexical knowledge when learning words 23
- Wh -questions in Dutch 47
- The emergence of a new variety of Russian in a language contact situation 63
- The acquisition of gender agreement marking in Polish 81
- Discourse cohesion in the elicited narratives of early Russian-German sequential bilinguals 101
- German segments in the speech of German-Spanish bilingual children 121
- Agreement within early mixed DP 137
- Gender marking in L2 learners and Italian-German bilinguals with German as the weaker language 153
- A bidirectional study of object omissions in French-English bilinguals 171
- Foreign language reforms in Swiss primary schools 189
- “Multilingual brains” 207
-
Part II. How language changes in multilingual settings
- Subject-verb inversion in 13th century German and French 223
- Multilingual constructions 241
- Pseudo-coordinations in Faroese 259
- Toward a fused lect 281
- The formation and distribution of the analytic future tense in Polish-German bilinguals 297
- Changing conventions in English-German translations of popular scientific texts 315
- Perception and interpretation of intonational prominence in varieties of South African English 335
- The prosody of Occitan-French bilinguals 349
- Diachronic prosody of a contact variety 365
- Devoicing of sibilants as a segmental cue to the influence of Spanish onto current Catalan phonology 391
-
Part III. How language is used in multilingual settings
- Explaining the interpreter’s unease 407
- Measuring bilingual accommodation in Welsh rural pharmacies 419
- Becoming bilingual in a multilingual context 437
- List of contributors 457
- Name index 461
- Subject index 469
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Foreword xi
-
Part I. How language is acquired and lost in multilingual settings
- Case marking in child L1 and early child L2 German 3
- First exposure learners make use of top-down lexical knowledge when learning words 23
- Wh -questions in Dutch 47
- The emergence of a new variety of Russian in a language contact situation 63
- The acquisition of gender agreement marking in Polish 81
- Discourse cohesion in the elicited narratives of early Russian-German sequential bilinguals 101
- German segments in the speech of German-Spanish bilingual children 121
- Agreement within early mixed DP 137
- Gender marking in L2 learners and Italian-German bilinguals with German as the weaker language 153
- A bidirectional study of object omissions in French-English bilinguals 171
- Foreign language reforms in Swiss primary schools 189
- “Multilingual brains” 207
-
Part II. How language changes in multilingual settings
- Subject-verb inversion in 13th century German and French 223
- Multilingual constructions 241
- Pseudo-coordinations in Faroese 259
- Toward a fused lect 281
- The formation and distribution of the analytic future tense in Polish-German bilinguals 297
- Changing conventions in English-German translations of popular scientific texts 315
- Perception and interpretation of intonational prominence in varieties of South African English 335
- The prosody of Occitan-French bilinguals 349
- Diachronic prosody of a contact variety 365
- Devoicing of sibilants as a segmental cue to the influence of Spanish onto current Catalan phonology 391
-
Part III. How language is used in multilingual settings
- Explaining the interpreter’s unease 407
- Measuring bilingual accommodation in Welsh rural pharmacies 419
- Becoming bilingual in a multilingual context 437
- List of contributors 457
- Name index 461
- Subject index 469
