Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T16:53:40.999Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“El nen s'ha menjat una aranya”: The development of narratives in Catalan speaking children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2020

Marta CABALLERO ,
Melina APARICI ,
Mònica SANZ-TORRENT ,
Ros HERMAN ,
Anna JONES  and
Gary MORGAN
Marta CABALLERO
Affiliation:
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
Melina APARICI
Affiliation:
Universitat Autonoma Barcelona, Spain
Mònica SANZ-TORRENT
Affiliation:
Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
Ros HERMAN
Affiliation:
City University of London, UK
Anna JONES
Affiliation:
University College London, UK
Gary MORGAN*
Affiliation:
City University of London, UK
*
*Corresponding author: Gary Morgan, City University London - Language and Communication Science Northampton Square, London, EC1v 0HB E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The production of a well-constructed narrative is the culmination of several years of language acquisition and is an important milestone in children's development. There is no current description of narrative development for Catalan speaking children. This study collected elicited narratives in Catalan from 118 children aged 4;0–10;11. Narratives were scored for macrostructure and microstructure. Narrative scores improved with age with maximum performance for macrostructure by 9 years. Children's ability to use micro-structural components of Catalan is variable with some developments continuing beyond 9 years. The results are discussed in relation to theoretical arguments about universal and specific features of narrative development. We conclude by highlighting the usefulness of the new test for future language assessment of children acquiring Catalan.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 47 , Issue 5 , September 2020 , pp. 1030 - 1051
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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.)

References

Andreu, L., Sanz-Torrent, M., Guàrdia Olmos, J., & MacWhinney, B. (2011). Narrative comprehension and production in children with SLI: An eye movement study. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 25, 767–783.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beals, D. E., & Snow, C. E. (2002). Deciding what to tell: Selecting and elaborating narrative topics in family interaction and children's elicited personal experience stories. Talking to adults: The contribution of multiparty discourse to language acquisition, 15–31.Google Scholar
Bel, A., Perera, J., & Salas, N. (2010). Anaphoric devices in spoken and written narrative discourse: Data from Catalan. Written Language and Literacy, 13(2), 236–259.Google Scholar
Berman, R.A., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating events in narrative: A cross-linguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bohnacker, U. (2016). Tell me a story in English or Swedish: Narrative production and comprehension in bilingual preschoolers and first graders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37, 19–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Botting, N. (2002). Narrative as a tool for the assessment of linguistic and pragmatic impairments. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 18(1), 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crais, E. R., & Lorch, N. (1994). Oral narratives in school–age children. Topics in Language Disorders, 14(3), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friend, M., & Bates, R. P. (2014). The union of narrative and executive function: different but complementary. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 469.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Griffin, T. M., Hemphill, L., Camp, L., & Wolf, D. P. (2004). Oral discourse in the preschool years and later literacy skills. First Language, 24(2), 123–147.Google Scholar
Hemphill, L., Picardi, N., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (1991). Narrative as an index of communicative competence in mildly mentally retarded children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 12(03), 263–279.Google Scholar
Howard, A. A., Mayeux, L., & Naigles, L. R. (2008). Conversational correlates of children's acquisition of mental verbs and a theory of mind. First Language, 28, 375–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Institut d'Estudis Catalans (2017). https://www.iec.cat/activitats/entrada.aspGoogle Scholar
Jones, A., Marshall, C., Botting, N., Atkinson, J., Toscana, E., Denmark, T., Herman, R., & Morgan, G. (2016). Narrative skills in deaf children who use spoken English: dissociations between macro and microstructural devices. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 59, 268–282CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1980). Psychological processes underlying pronominalization and non-pronominalization in children's connected discourse. In Kreiman, J. & Ojedo, E. (Eds.), Papers from the para session on pronouns and anaphora (pp. 231–250). Chicago: Chicago. Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1986). Some fundamental aspects of language development after age 5. In Fletcher, P. & Garman, M. (Eds.), Language Acquisition. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral sessions of personal experience. In Helm, J. (Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Liles, B., Duffy, R., Merritt, D., & Purcell, S. (1995). Measurement of narrative discourse ability in children with language disorders. Journal-of Speech-and Hearing Research, 38, 415–425.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
López-Orós, M., & Teberosky, A. (1998). La evolución de la referencia en catalán en narraciones orales y escritas. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 83, 75–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandler, J. M., & Johnson, N. S. (1977). Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology, 9, 111–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, P. J. (1994). Narrative practices: Their role in socialization and self-construction. The remembering self: Construction and accuracy in the self-narrative, 6, 158–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nippold, M. W, Frantz-Kaspar, M., Cramond, P., Kirk, C., Hayward-Mayhew, C., & Mackinnon, M. (2013). Conversational and Narrative Speaking in Adolescents: Examining the Use of Complex Syntax. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57, 1044–1092Google Scholar
Norbury, C. F., & Bishop, D. V. (2003). Narrative skills of children with communication impairments. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 38(3), 287–313.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Norbury, C., Gemmell, T., & Paul, R. (2014). Pragmatics abilities in narrative production: a cross-disorder comparison. Journal of Child Language, 41(03), 485–510.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pankratz, M. E., Plante, E., Vance, R., & Insalaco, D. M. (2007). The diagnostic and predictive validity of the Renfrew Bus Story. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 38(4), 390–399.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pearson, B., & de Villiers, P. (2006). Discourse, Narrative and Pragmatic Development. Encyclopaedia of Language & Linguistics, pp12-31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, C., & McCabe, A. (1983). Developmental psycholinguistics: Three ways of looking at a child's narrative. New York: Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pizzuto, E., & Caselli, M. (1992). The acquisition of Italian morphology: Implications for models of language development. Journal of Child Language, 19(3), 491–557. doi:10.1017/S0305000900011557Google ScholarPubMed
Roch, M., Florit, E., & Levorato, C. (2016). Narrative competence of Italian–English bilingual children between 5 and 7 years. Applied Psycholinguistics, 37(1), 49–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roth, F. P., Speece, D. L., & Cooper, D. H. (2002). A longitudinal analysis of the connection between oral language and early reading. The Journal of Educational Research, 95(5), 259–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sebastián, E., & Slobin, D.I. (1994). Development of linguistic forms: Spanish. In Berman, R.A. & Slobin, D.I. (eds.), Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study (pp. 239–284). Hillsdale, NJ: LEA.Google Scholar
Sorace, A., & Filiaci, F. (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research, 22(3), 339–368.Google Scholar
Stein, N. L., & Glenn, C. G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children. In Freedle, R. (Ed.), Discourse processing: Multidisciplinary perspectives (pp. 53–120). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Tolchinsky, L. (2014). El desarrollo de la narración más allá de la infancia. In Barriga, R. (ed.), Las narrativas y su impacto en el desarrollo lingüístico infantil. México: Colegio de México.Google Scholar
To, C., & Stokes, S., Cheung, H., & T'sou, B. (2010). Narrative Assessment for Cantonese-Speaking Children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 53. 648–69. 10.1044/1092-4388(2009/08-0039).Google ScholarPubMed
Trabasso, T., & Stein, N. L. (1994). Using goal-plan knowledge to merge the past with the present and the future in narrating events on line. In Haith, M. M. & Benson, J. B. (Eds.) The development of future-oriented processes, (pp. 323–349). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Verhoeven, L., Aparici, M., Cahana-Amitay, D., van Hell, J., Kriz, S., & Viguié, A. (2002). Clause packaging in writing and speech: A cross-linguistic developmental study. Written Language and Literacy 5, 135–162.Google Scholar
Westby, C. E. (2012). Assessing and remediating text comprehension problems. In Kamhi, A. G. & Catts, H. W. (Eds.), Language and reading disabilities (3rd ed., pp. 163–225). Boston, MA: Pearson.Google Scholar