bilingual children

Purpose This longitudinal study examined the development of complex syntax in Spanish–English bilingual children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) from prekindergarten (PK) to 3rd grade. We evaluated syntactic complexity and grammaticality using Subordination Index (SI) and ungrammaticality (UG), overall subordinate clause use using the percentage of complex utterances, and subordinate clause-type development (nominal, adverbial, and relative clauses) in English and Spanish. Method Fifty-four bilingual children (39 typically developing TDL, 15 DLD) completed narrative retells in English and Spanish in PK, 1st, and 3rd grade. Language samples were analyzed using SALT-derived SI and UG measures, and utterances were coded for subordinate clause presence and type. Linear mixed models examined the effects of Grade and Group separately by language and outcome. Results Both groups showed developmental increases in syntactic complexity and subordination across grades, but patterns differed by language. In English, TDL and DLD children showed broadly similar growth, with no significant group differences in SI, overall subordinate clause use, or clause-type production. In Spanish, the heritage language, group differences were more pronounced. TDL children showed significant gains in overall subordination and nominal clause use, whereas children with DLD showed limited growth after 1st grade. Clause-type analyses revealed reduced growth and lower diversity of subordinate clauses in Spanish among children with DLD, particularly for nominal clauses. Conclusions Complex syntax developed in both groups across languages; however, Spanish showed greater vulnerability than English, particularly for children with DLD. Clause-type analyses revealed group differences not fully captured by global syntactic measures, highlighting the importance of examining complex syntax in the heritage language. This study provides longitudinal evidence of distinct syntactic trajectories across the two languages in bilingual children with and without DLD.

Introduction Event nominalizations are a central feature of academic language: they compress complex events into nominal structures, increasing informational density while reducing the transparency of thematic-role assignment. The present eye-tracking study examined whether nominalizations impose greater processing demands than corresponding active and passive constructions in developing readers, and whether these effects vary across readers with different linguistic and literacy profiles. Methods Seventy-nine fifth- and sixth-grade children participated in the study: 28 typically developing monolingual Italian children, 21 monolingual Italian children with developmental dyslexia, and 30 typically developing bilingual children with migrant background and Italian as the societal language. Participants silently read short passages in which the same target event was expressed either as a nominalization, a passive construction, or an active construction, and then answered comprehension questions while their eye movements were recorded. Accuracy, standard eye-movement measures, and scanpaths were analyzed to capture comprehension outcomes and online reading strategies. Results Nominalizations did not significantly reduce comprehension accuracy, but they affected online processing during both initial reading and the question-answering phase. Scanpath dissimilarity was higher for nominalizations than for both verbal constructions during initial reading, and than for passives during question-answering in correctly answered trials. In these trials, nominalizations were also associated with a higher probability of partial rescanning and a lower probability of minimal rescanning relative to active texts, indicating greater reliance on rereading when answering questions correctly. Moreover, children with dyslexia showed a generalized increase in processing effort, whereas bilingual children displayed an intermediate profile, with increased reliance on rereading during question-answering. Discussion These findings indicate that nominalizations significantly influence online reading processes even when questions are answered correctly, suggesting additional demands in retrieving information about event participants. Overall processing patterns differed across reader groups, and children with dyslexia showed the greatest effort in both online reading and question-answering.

Narrative competence is vital for children’s language and cognitive development. Nevertheless, few studies have focused on Chinese-English bilingual children, and even fewer have examined how phonological awareness (PA) is associated with their narrative skills. Using a battery of parallel phonological and narrative tasks in both Chinese and English, this quantitative study examined age-related patterns in narrative skills and their relationship with phonological awareness (PA) in a cross-sectional sample of 106 Chinese-English bilingual children aged three to six. The results indicate age-related increases in children’s narrative skills in both Chinese and English, although the patterns differed across the two languages. Additionally, PA demonstrated significant associations with narrative skills in both languages, including cross-linguistic associations across Chinese and English measures. Specifically, English syllable segmentation and Chinese narrative skills significantly predicted English narrative performance. Meanwhile, Chinese non-word repetition, phoneme segmentation, rhyming discrimination, and English narrative skills predicted Chinese narrative performance. These findings suggest that phonological awareness (PA) is closely associated with bilingual children’s narrative skills, with significant cross-linguistic associations between Chinese and English measures. The study has valuable implications for language teaching and bilingual education, underscoring the importance of fostering PA in early childhood to support narrative development across languages.

شایستگی روایت‌گری برای رشد زبانی و شناختی کودکان اهمیت اساسی دارد. با این حال، پژوهش‌های اندکی بر کودکان دوزبانه چینی-انگلیسی متمرکز شده‌اند و تعداد کمتری نیز به بررسی چگونگی ارتباط آگاهی واجی (PA) با مهارت‌های روایت‌گری آن‌ها پرداخته‌اند. این مطالعه کمی با استفاده از مجموعه‌ای از آزمون‌های موازی واجی و روایت‌گری در هر دو زبان چینی و انگلیسی، الگوهای مرتبط با سن در مهارت‌های روایت‌گری و رابطه آن‌ها با آگاهی واجی (PA) را در یک نمونه مقطعی متشکل از ۱۰۶ کودک دوزبانه چینی-انگلیسی در بازه سنی سه تا شش سال بررسی کرد. نتایج نشان می‌دهد که مهارت‌های روایت‌گری کودکان در هر دو زبان چینی و انگلیسی با افزایش سن بهبود می‌یابد، اگرچه این الگوها در دو زبان متفاوت است. افزون بر این، آگاهی واجی ارتباط معناداری با مهارت‌های روایت‌گری در هر دو زبان نشان داد، از جمله ارتباطات میان‌زبانی میان سنجه‌های چینی و انگلیسی. به طور مشخص، قطعه‌بندی هجا در زبان انگلیسی و مهارت‌های روایت‌گری چینی، عملکرد روایت‌گری انگلیسی را به طور معناداری پیش‌بینی کردند. در همین حال، تکرار واژه‌های بی‌معنی چینی، قطعه‌بندی واجی، تمایز قافیه و مهارت‌های روایت‌گری انگلیسی، عملکرد روایت‌گری چینی را پیش‌بینی کردند. این یافته‌ها نشان می‌دهد که آگاهی واجی (PA) ارتباط نزدیکی با مهارت‌های روایت‌گری کودکان دوزبانه دارد و ارتباطات میان‌زبانی معناداری میان سنجه‌های چینی و انگلیسی وجود دارد. این مطالعه پیامدهای ارزشمندی برای آموزش زبان و آموزش دوزبانه دارد و بر اهمیت تقویت آگاهی واجی در اوایل کودکی به منظور حمایت از رشد روایت‌گری در زبان‌های مختلف تأکید می‌کند.