engleski

A Cross-Linguistic Study of Preschoolers' Narratives and their Development - Coordination and subordination in preschoolers’ narratives in nine languages

Syntactic complexity and cohesive elements are indicators of expanded linguistic competence. The emergence of complex syntactic constructions depends on the actual complexity of a construction, its usage (frequency and communicative functions), and other developmental factors (social, cognitive development). Within the framework of the CDI-III, 54 children (3 ; 0-6 ; 0) in 9 languages each, have been tested for narrative competence. The data of two stories for each language have been annotated and analyzed for syntactic complexity: coordinating and subordinating relations between sentences, modal verbs, infinitives, serial verbs). Simple coordination of events following chronological order ('and then ...') developed early (3 ; 6-5 ; 0). Subordination was infrequent in preschoolers, with some increase (or stagnation) over age in most languages. Non-finite verbs were increasingly used by older children. Relative clauses were rare in all languages. Language specific features were apparent early, for example, clause chaining and serial verbs in Mandarin showed an early and steady increase over age ; Turkish children used more non-finite constructions ; Greek, which does not use infinitive, shows an age-related increase in subordinating conjunctions. Danish among others showed a very low rate of subordination, but increased coordination. Italian showed increase in all categories, but coordination was rare. German colloquial language avoids subordinate constructions in favor of (similar) coordinate structures. The cross-linguistic differences observed in the data may be explained both by typological and usage-based characteristics: Clause chaining, serial verbs, and subordination are functionally similar but of different grammatical complexity. Furthermore, languages may behave differently when it comes to the actual usage of patterns.

narratives; syntactic complexity; cohesive elements

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