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Growth in syntactic complexity between four years and adulthood: evidence from a narrative task

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2018

Pauline FRIZELLE Open the ORCID record for Pauline FRIZELLE [Opens in a new window] ,
Paul A. THOMPSON ,
David MCDONALD  and
Dorothy V. M. BISHOP
Pauline FRIZELLE*
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxon, UK Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University College Cork, Republic of Ireland
Paul A. THOMPSON
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxon, UK
David MCDONALD
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxon, UK Nottinghamshire Children and Families Partnership Speech and Language Therapy, Nottinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust, UK
Dorothy V. M. BISHOP
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxon, UK
*
*Corresponding author: E-mail: p.frizelle@ucc.ie
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Abstract

Studies examining productive syntax have used varying elicitation methods and have tended to focus on either young children or adolescents/adults, so we lack an account of syntactic development throughout middle childhood. We describe here the results of an analysis of clause complexity in narratives produced by 354 speakers aged from four years to adulthood using the Expressive, Receptive, and Recall of Narrative Instrument (ERRNI). We show that the number of clauses per utterance increased steadily through this age range. However, the distribution of clause types depended on which of two stories was narrated, even though both stories were designed to have a similar story structure. In addition, clausal complexity was remarkably similar regardless of whether the speaker described a narrative from pictures, or whether the same narrative was recalled from memory. Finally, our findings with the youngest children showed that the task of generating a narrative from pictures may underestimate syntactic competence in those aged below five years.

Keywords

syntaxclauselanguagedevelopmentnarrative
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 45 , Issue 5 , September 2018 , pp. 1174 - 1197
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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