Linkage in narratives: A comparison between monolingual speakers of French and Italian, and early and late French-Italian bilinguals

In the course of language acquisition learners have to deal with the task of producing narrative texts that are coherent across a range of conceptual domains (space, time, entities) -- both within as well as across utterances. The organization of information is analyzed in this study, on the basis of retellings of a silent film, in terms of devices used in the coordination and subordination of events within the narrative sequence. The focus on subordination reflects a core grammatical difference between Italian and French, as Italian is a null-subject language while French is not. The implications of this contrast for information structure include differences in topic management within the sequence of events. The present study investigates in how far Italian-French bilingual speakers acquire the patterns of monolingual speakers of Italian. It compares how early and late bilinguals of these two languages proceed when linking information in narratives in Italian.

Frauen im Matthäusevangelium – revisited

This article tries to rediscover the role women play in the text of the Gospel of Matthew, in dialogue with former works about women in the Gospel. The focus lies on the way women are presented in the narratives and on the question if their performance in the story identifies them as disciples although they are never called disciples explicitly. Whereas the main story of the gospel has to be called androcentric showing women in stereotypical gender roles, this analysis reveals an underlying counter story that shows women in gender roles unexpected for the time the text was written in. This counter story already starts in the genealogy by breaking through the male line of succession referring to five women. Through the main part of the Gospel several other stories show women in unexpected places and roles. The counter story culminates in the passion and resurrection stories where women take over the main acting parts, instead of the male disciples, thus helping the story to continue.