The study compared linguistic analyses of 27 language disabled and 30 normal language children in grades 1-6. The first procedure, cohesive tie analysis, examined surface characteristics of a text for connections between lingustic components that contribute to coherence; the second procedure, story grammar, examined underlying story organization as an indication of the deep structure aspects of coherence. Each S was asked to construct an oral and written story using a toy doll family as stimuli. Analysis of surface and deep structure semantic characteristics showed that language disabled Ss were extremely deficient in their ability to use deep structure knowledge of narrative organization in constructing stories. Surface structure aspects of narrative organization were similar except that the youngest language disabled Ss made significantly more errors in attempting to use cohesion than their normal peers. (CL)