Cohesion in the Narratives of Normal and Language-Disordered Children

An adaptation of Halliday and Hasan's (1976) description of cohesion in English was applied to the spoken narratives of normal and language-disordered children. Three major questions were addressed: (a) the influence of the nonlinguistic environment on the use of cohesion, (b) the nature of language disorder as displayed in the use of cohesion, and (c) the relationship between comprehension and use of cohesion. Twenty normal and 20 language-disordered children, aged 7:6-10:6, were included in the study. Each child produced two narratives, one for an adult listener who saw a movie with the child and one who had not. Results indicate that both groups of subjects altered their use of cohesion as a function of the listener's needs in the same way. However, the normal and language-disordered subjects differed in their manner of cohesive organization, their cohesive adequacy, and their comprehension of the story.