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Development and use of English evaluative expressions in narratives of Chinese–English bilinguals*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2010

LIANG CHEN  and
RUIXIA YAN
LIANG CHEN*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
RUIXIA YAN
Affiliation:
Misericordia University
*
Address for correspondence: Liang Chen, Communication Sciences and Special Education, University of Georgia, 542 Aderhold Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USAchen@uga.edu
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Abstract

This study compares the development and use of evaluative expressions in the English narratives elicited from 80 Chinese–English bilinguals and 80 American monolingual peers at four ages – five, eight, ten, and young adults – using the wordless picture book Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 1969). Results revealed both similarities and differences between monolingual and bilingual groups. On the one hand, regardless of bilingual status, there is a clear age-related growth in the development and use of evaluative expressions. On the other hand, bilingual children in our study differed from monolingual children in the quantity and quality of evaluative clauses used. The results are discussed with respect to linguistic and cultural differences between English and Chinese.

Keywords

evaluative expressionsnarrative developmentChinese–English bilinguals
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 570 - 578
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported, in part, by a Faculty Research Seed Grant from the University of Georgia Research Foundation (UGARF). We would like to thank Dr. John W. Oller, Jr., Dr. Ning Pan, and our research participants, particularly the children and their families, for their assistance in the conduct of this research. We also wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on previous versions of this paper.

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