Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T14:19:20.132Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Simultaneity in children's narratives: the case of when, while and as*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Marilyn N. Silva
Marilyn N. Silva*
Affiliation:
California State University, Hayward
*
Department of Human Development, California State University, Hayward CA 94542, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examines the use of the co-temporal connectives when, while and as in the elicited narratives of 71 children between 4;10 and 11;11. A group of 26 adults provided comparison data. Subjects were asked to ‘tell a story’ about each of three sets of story pictures. Analysis of the adult data confirmed a preference for preposed over postposed when clauses and supported the notion of a continuum of simultaneity for when, while and as. The oldest children (like the adults) were more likely to prepose when clauses than were younger children, a finding which suggests that with increasing awareness of the information needs of the listener, children begin to use preposed adverbial clauses as information ‘guideposts’. Surprisingly, however, children in general were far more likely than adults to use durative predicates with when clauses and did not use co-temporal as – substituting when or while in those contexts in which as appeared in the adult protocols. These two findings are shown to be connected, since aspect in the adult data is differentially distributed with respect to the three connectives. It is hypothesized that for narrative purposes children acquire when before while and while before as, in the order of increasing specificity and constraint, with the determining factor being a convergence of syntax, semantics and information flow.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , October 1991 , pp. 641 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This paper is based on my doctoral dissertation, completed at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1983. Portions of it, now substantially revised, appeared in the Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1981) and Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 23 (1984). Materials published therein are used with the permission of BLS and Stanford University. I am indebted to Christine Yamate, the gifted artist who created the sets of pictures used for this study, and to the children and teachers at the following schools: Vista School, Albany, California; The Academy, Berkeley, California; Berkeley Christian School, Berkeley, California; Bancroft Cooperative Kindergarten, Berkeley, California; and Longfellow School, Oakland, California. My thanks go to Wally Chafe, Orin Gensler and Eve Sweetser for comments on an earlier version, and to Dan Alford, Rainer Bauer, Glynn Custred, Dora Dien, Jim Murphy, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable commentary on the current version. All errors, it goes without saying, are my own.

References

REFERENCES

Bamberg, M. G. W. (1987). The acquisition of narratives: learning to use language. Berlin: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1988). On the ability to relate events in narrative. Discourse Processes 11, 469–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, L. & Harner, L. (1989). On the developmental contour of child language: a reply to Smith & Weist. Journal of Child Language 16, 207–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bloom, L., Lahey, M., Hood, L., Lifter, K. & Fiess, K. (1980). Complex sentences: acquisition of syntactic connectives and the semantic relations they encode. Journal of Child Language 7, 235–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bowerman, M. (1986). First steps in acquiring conditions. In Traugott, E. C., Meulen, A. ter, Reilly, J. S. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), On conditionals. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: the early stages. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chafe, W. L. ( 1984). How people use adverbial clauses. Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 10, 437–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clancy, P., Jacobsen, T. & Silva, M. (1976). The acquisition of conjunction: across-linguistic study. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 12, 71–80.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1970). How young children describe events in time. In d'Arcais, G. B. Flores & Levelt, W. J. M. (eds), Advances in psycholinguistics. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1971). On the acquisition of the meaning of before and after. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 10, 266–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1973). How children describe time and order. In Ferguson, C. A. & Slobin, D. I. (eds), Studies of child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. & Clark, E. V. (1968). Semantic distinctions and memory for complex sentences. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 20, 129–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Curme, G. O. (1947). English grammar. New York: Barnes & Noble.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, A. R. (1980). A syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic analysis of conjunction. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 19, 70–8.Google Scholar
Feagans, L. (1980). Children's understanding of some temporal terms denoting order, duration, and simultaneity. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 9, 41–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fowler, H. W. (1965). A dictionary of modern English usage. Revised edition. New York & Oxford: O.U.P.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. (eds), Syntax and Semantics, 9: Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Heinämäki, O. T. (1974). Semantics of English temporal connectives. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
Jordan, M. P. (1974). ‘Besides moreover however and but’ conjunctions – order out of confusion. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 4, 133–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1983). Language acquisition as a problem-solving process. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 22, 1–22.Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1986). Some fundamental aspects of language development after age 5. In Fletcher, P. & Garman, M. (eds), Language acquisition: studies in first language development. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Keller-Cohen, D. (1974). The expression of time in language acquisition. Paper presented at the winter meeting of the Linguistic Society of America.Google Scholar
Keller-Cohen, D. (1975 a). Children's verbal imitation, comprehension and production of temporal structures. Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.Google Scholar
Keller-Cohen, D. (1975 b). Cognition and the acquisition of temporal reference. Paper presented at the tenth regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Lakoff, R. (1971). If's, and's, and but's about conjunction. In Fillmore, C. J. & Langendoen, D. T. (eds), Studies in linguistic semantics. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Quirk, R. & Greenbaum, S. (1973). A concise grammar of contemporary English. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Reilly, J. S. (1986). The acquisition of temporals and conditionals. In Traugott, E. C., ter Meulen, A., Reilly, J. S. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), On conditionals. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In Ferguson, C. A. & Slobin, D. I. (eds), Studies of child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1988). The development of clause chaining in Turkish child language. Paper presented at the Fourth Conference on Turkish Linguistics, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.Google Scholar
Werner, H. & Kaplan, B. (1963). Symbol formation. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar