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Article published In:
Storytelling: How organization of narratives is (not) affected by linguistic skills
Edited by Ute Bohnacker and Natalia Gagarina
[Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 12:4] 2022
► pp. 509–539

The impact of language dominance on Russian-Hebrew bilingual children’s narrative production

Microstructure, macrostructure, and Internal State Terms

ORCID logo | Bar-Ilan University | Talpiot College of Education
| Bar-Ilan University
| Bar-Ilan University
| Bar-Ilan University

The study explores the effect of language dominance on microstructure, macrostructure, and Internal State Terms (ISTs) in narratives of Russian-Hebrew bilingual children and examines within-language and cross-language associations between narrative elements in two dominance groups. Narratives were collected from 38 Russian-Hebrew bilingual children aged 5;5–6;7 using the LITMUS-MAIN retelling procedures. The children were divided into L1-dominant (N = 19) and L2-dominant (N = 19) bilinguals based on performance on proficiency tests in L1/Russian and L2/Hebrew. The narratives were coded for microstructure measures: number of different words (NDW), total number of tokens (TNT), number of C-units (CUs), and Mean Length of C-unit (MLCU); and for macrostructure measures: Story Structure and Story Complexity. Ratios of IST tokens and types were calculated per C-unit. Children produced significantly higher NDW, TNT, and MLCU in L2/Hebrew than in L1/Russian. Scores on macrostructure measures and ratios of total ISTs were similar across languages. L1-dominant bilinguals demonstrated similarity between L1 and L2 for microstructure and IST types, whereas L2-dominant bilinguals produced more IST types in L2/Hebrew and had relatively few significant cross-language correlations. Findings for language dominance and cross-language differences are discussed for those narrative features which emerged as sensitive to these effects.

Keywords: narrative, bilingual children, dominance, macrostructure, microstructure, Internal State Terms
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Microstructure across languages in bilinguals’ narratives
    • 2.2Macrostructure across languages in bilingual narratives
    • 2.3Internal State Terms across languages in bilingual narratives
    • 2.4Overview of Russian and Hebrew structures
    • 2.5The present study
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Materials
      • Narrative assessment
      • Parental questionnaire
    • 3.3Procedure
    • 3.4Transcription and coding
      • Reliability
    • 3.5Data analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Effects of Dominance and Language on microstructure
    • 4.2Effects of Dominance and language on macrostructure
      • Story structure
      • Story complexity
    • 4.3Effects of Dominance and language on Internal State Terms
    • 4.4Within-language and cross-language relations of microstructure, macrostructure, and ISTs
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Microstructure abilities across languages and dominance groups
    • 5.2Macrostructure across languages and dominance groups
    • 5.3Internal State Terms across languages and dominance groups
    • 5.4Relationships among microstructure, macrostructure, and ISTs across languages and dominance groups
  • 6.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 31 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.20036.sve
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