This article discusses the function of a particular feature of sign language--mouth action--as it is expressed in various discourse contexts. Specifically, we examine forms of mouthing and mouth gesture as they are used in signed narrative and expository texts, highlighting the signers' choices during the production of these two text types. We…

When telling a story, a speaker needs to refer to story characters using appropriate expressions, which requires a mental model of the discourse. We hypothesize that, compared to those of adults, children's discourse models are based more on factors that are less cognitively demanding, such as animacy, and as they grow older, discourse factors…

Causal sequences can be segmented into cause and effect. However, some argue causal relations in discourse are by default in "effect-cause" order. Others claim "cause-effect" order is easier to process and the default way of expressing causality, due to iconicity. We conducted experiments testing participants' production…

Heritage language (HL) speakers seem to diverge from monolingual speakers in the acquisition of syntax-discourse interface phenomena. However, most of the studies reporting this finding do not make any distinction between different types of syntax-discourse interface structures. Therefore, it is an open question whether these structures are…

The study reported in this article examined the impact of task type on the ways in which learners resolve grammatical language-related episodes (LREs) and whether the level of engagement affects subsequent language development. Data were collected over a six-week period. Thirty-two Iranian second language (L2) learners were paired up to complete a…

Purpose: The study examined the contributions of Spanish and English oral narrative skills to English reading among 95 early elementary dual language learners (DLLs) from Spanish-speaking homes in the United States. This sample of first- and third-grade DLL children attended Spanish-English dual language immersion programs and received language…

This study investigated the effects of auditory and audiovisual text presentation on the three levels of mental representations assumed in theories of discourse processing. A sample of 106 children aged 7, 9, and 11 years listened to 16 short narrative texts, 8 of which were accompanied by a series of pictures illustrating the content.…

The aim of this paper is to compare speech and co-speech gestures observed during a narrative retelling task in five- and ten-year-old children from three different linguistic groups, French, American, and Italian, in order to better understand the role of age and language in the development of multimodal monologue discourse abilities. We asked 98…

The present study builds upon research in the CAF (complexity, accuracy, fluency) framework for examining learner performance to compare the lexical and syntactic complexity of learner output in spoken discourse and synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) during completion of narrative tasks. Data were generated from transcripts and…

The present linguistic analyses of two children (aged 8 and 10) with Asperger Syndrome (AS) and their two matched controls are based on dyadic therapist-child conversations and on picture description tasks. The circa 100 analysis features covering aspects of (i) lexicon (e.g. prominalization), (ii) structural characteristics of turns, (iii)…