Discourse cohesion in sign and speech

Abstract

This paper describes the development of discourse cohesion in bilingual children, through an analysis of narrative discourses produced by hearing children of deaf parents (HCDP) in both British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English. Reference mechanisms in both languages are described in the context of recent work on narrative and discourse organization development in spoken and sign language. Discourse cohesion is achieved in each language through different surface mechanisms, while following a similar underlying organization. The differences in use of referring expressions observed between two children reflect development across both languages in the ability to control and manipulate reference within discourse. Describing acquisition of cohesion mechanisms by bilingual hearing children of deaf families provides a unique opportunity to ask questions about developing two languages with cross-modality differences. An early development of language appropriate narrative devices is reported while apparent differences between languages, in the relative phase of discourse organization development within the same child is suggested. A second question is addressed concerning the impact of bilinguality through an examination of language mixing across modalities.