The production of referring expressions in oral narratives of Chinese–English bilingual speakers and monolingual peers

Abstract

This study evaluates the extent to which the production of referring expressions such as noun phrases and pronouns to fulfill various discourse functions in narratives of Chinese–English bilingual children matches that of their monolingual peers in each of the two languages. Spoken narratives in English and Chinese were elicited from 30 9-year-old participants from each of the three groups: Chinese–English bilinguals and their monolingual peers in each of the two languages using the wordless picture book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Narrative analysis focused on the referring expressions that are used to introduce, re-introduce, and maintain reference to story characters in the narratives. Results show that (1) monolingual Chinese and English speakers differed significantly in the preferred referring expressions for the discourse functions; (2) the Chinese–English bilinguals differed from their monolingual peers in the distribution of referring expressions for referent introduction in English and re-introduction in Chinese; and (3) bilinguals resembled their monolingual peers in their differentiated use of referring expressions for referent maintenance in each of the two languages. These results suggest that the patterns of production of referring expressions in discourse by bilingual speakers may be unique, and fall in between those by their monolingual peers in each of the languages.