Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-l4dxg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-12T23:50:39.576Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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 

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

Berman, R. A. (1996). Form and function in developing narrative abilities: the case of ‘and’. In Slobin, D. I., Gerhardt, J., Kyratzis, A., & Guo, J. (Eds.), Social interaction, context, and language: essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp (pp. 243–68). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A., & Nir-Sagiv, B. (2009). Clause packaging in narratives: a crosslinguistic developmental study. In Guo, J., Lieven, E., Budwig, N., Ervin-Tripp, S., Nakamura, K., & Ozcaliskan, S. (Eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin (pp. 149–62). New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A., & Slobin, D. I. (1994a). Relating events in narrative: a crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A., & Slobin, D. I. (1994b). Filtering and packaging in narrative. In Berman, R. A. & Slobin, D. I. (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: a crosslinguistic developmental study (pp. 515–54). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Berman, R. A., & Verhoeven, L. (2002). Cross-linguistic perspectives on the development of text-production abilities: speech and writing. Written Language and Literacy, 5(1), 1–43.Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M. (2003). The Test for Reception of Grammar – TROG 2. London: Pearson.Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M. (2004). Expression, Reception and Recall of Narrative Instrument. London: Pearson.Google Scholar
Bishop, D., & Donlan, C. (2005). The role of syntax in encoding and recall of pictorial narrative: evidence for specific language impairment. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23, 25–48.Google Scholar
Blake, J., Quartaro, G., & Onorati, S. (1993). Evaluating quantitative measures of grammatical complexity in spontaneous speech samples. Journal of Child Language, 20, 139–52.Google Scholar
Blything, L. P., Davies, R., & Cain, K. (2015). Young children's comprehension of temporal relations in complex sentences: the influence of memory on performance. Child Development, 86(6), 1922–34.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: the early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Burton Roberts, N. (1986). Analysing sentences: an introduction to English syntax. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Byrnes, J. P. (2008) Cognitive development during adolescence. In Adams, G. R. & Berzonsky, M. (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of adolescence (Wiley Blackwell Handbooks of Developmental Psychology) (pp. 227–46). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. (1984). How people use adverbial clauses. Berkeley Linguistics Society. 10, 437–49.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.Google Scholar
Coelho, C. A. (2002). Story narrative of adults with closed head injury and non-brain-injured adults: influence of socioeconomic status, elicitation task, and executive functioning. Journal Speech, Language, & Hearing Research, 45(6), 1232–48.Google Scholar
Crain, S., & Pietroski, P. (2001). Nature, nurture and universal grammar. Linguistics and Philosophy, 24(2), 139–86.Google Scholar
Diessel, H. (2001). The ordering distribution of main and adverbial clauses: a typological study. Language, 77, 343–65.Google Scholar
Diessel, H. (2004). The acquisition of complex sentences. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Diessel, H. (2005). Competing motivations for the ordering of main and adverbial clauses. Linguistics, 43, 449–70.Google Scholar
Draper, N. R., & Smith, H. (1998). Applied regression analysis, 3rd ed. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Ford, C. E. (1993). Grammar in interaction: adverbial clauses in American English conversations. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
French, L. A., & Brown, A. L. (1977). Comprehension of before and after in logical and arbitrary sequences. Journal of Child Language, 4, 247–56.Google Scholar
Givón, T. (1990) Syntax: a functional-typological introduction, Vol. II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Givón, T. (2009). The genesis of syntactic complexity: diachrony, ontogeny, neuro-cognition, evolution. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gutierrez-Clellen, V. F., & Hofstetter, R. (1994). Syntactic complexity in Spanish narratives: a developmental study. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 37, 645–54.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1994). A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hesketh, A. (2004). Grammatical performance of children with language disorder on structured elicitation and narrative tasks. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 18(3), 161–82.Google Scholar
Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. K., & Bauer, L. (2002). The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, K. (1965). Grammatical structures written at three grade levels: NCTE Research Report No. 3. Champaign, IL: NCTE.Google Scholar
Klecan-Aker, J. S., & Hedrick, D. L. (1985). A study of the syntactic language skills of normal school-age children. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 16(3), 187–98.Google Scholar
Klee, T., & Fitzgerald, M. D. (1985). The relation between grammatical development and mean length of utterance in morphemes. Journal of Child Language, 12(2), 251–69.Google Scholar
Klee, T., Schaffer, M., May, S., Membrino, I., & Mougey, K. (1989). A comparison of the age-MLU relation in normal and specifically language-impaired preschool children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 54, 226–33.Google Scholar
Leadholm, B. J., & Miller, J. F. (1992). Language sample analysis: the Wisconsin guide. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.Google Scholar
Liles, B. Z., Coelho, C. A., & Zalagens, M. R. (1989). Effects of elicitation procedures on the narratives of normal and closed head-injured adults. Journal Speech Hearing Disorders, 54(3), 356–66.Google Scholar
Loban, W. (1976). Language development: kindergarten through grade twelve. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (1966). The creation of language by children. In Lyons, J. & Wales, R. J. (Eds.), Psycholinguistics papers (pp. 99–115). Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, J. F., & Chapman, R. S. (1981). The relation between age and mean length of utterance in morphemes. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 24(2), 154–61.Google Scholar
Nippold, M. A. (2009). School-age children talk about chess: Does knowledge drive syntactic complexity? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52, 856–71.Google Scholar
Nippold, M. A., Cramond, P. M., & Hayward-Mayhew, C. (2013). Spoken language production in adults: examining age-related differences in syntactic complexity. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 28(3), 195–207.Google Scholar
Nippold, M. A., Hesketh, L. J., Duthie, J. K., & Mansfield, T. C. (2005). Conversational versus expository discourse: a study of syntactic development in children, adolescents, and adults. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48, 1048–64.Google Scholar
Nippold, M. A., Frantz-Kaspar, M. W., Cramond, P. M., Kirk, C., Hayward-Mayhew, C., & MacKinnon, M. (2014). Conversational and narrative speaking in adolescents: examining the use of complex syntax. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 57, 876–86.Google Scholar
Nippold, M. A., Frantz-Kaspar, M. W., Cramond, P. M., Kirk, C., Hayward-Mayhew, C., & MacKinnon, M. (2015). Critical thinking about fables: examining language production and comprehension in adolescents. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 58(2), 325–35.Google Scholar
Nippold, M. A., Mansfield, T. C., & Billow, J. L. (2007). Peer conflict explanations in children, adolescents, and adults: examining the development of complex syntax. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 16, 179–88.Google Scholar
Phillips, N. (2016). A companion to the e-book ‘YaRrr!: the pirate's guide to R’. R package version 0.1.2. Retrieved from: <https://CRAN.Rproject.org/package=yarrr>..>Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
R Core Team (2013). R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from: <http://www.R-project.org/>..>Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. (1991). The Bus Story, 2nd ed. Oxford: Speechmark Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar
Rondal, J. A., Ghiotto, M., Bredart, S., & Bachelet, J. F. (1987). Age-relation, reliability and grammatical validity of measures of utterance length. Journal of Child Language, 14, 433–46.Google Scholar
Schneider, P., Dubé, R. V., & Hayward, D. (2005). The Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument. University of Alberta Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine. Retrieved from<www.rehabresearch.ualberta.ca/enni>..>Google Scholar
Scott, C. M. (1988). Producing complex sentences. Topics in Language Disorders, 8(2), 44–62.Google Scholar
Scott, C. M., & Balthazar, C. H. (2010). The grammar of information: challenges for older students with language impairments. Topics in Language Disorders, 30(4), 288–307.Google Scholar
Scott, C. M., & Stokes, S. L. (1995). Measures of syntax in school-age children and adolescents. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 26(4), 309–19.Google Scholar
Southwood, F., & Russell, A. F. (2004). Comparison of conversation, freeplay, and story generation as methods of language sample elicitation. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(2), 366–76.Google Scholar
Thordardottir, E. T., & Ellis Weismer, S. (2002). Verb argument structure weakness in specific language impairment in relation to age and utterance length. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 16(4), 233–50.Google Scholar
Trosborg, A. (1982). Children's comprehension of ‘before’ and ‘after’ reinvestigated. Journal of Child Language, 9, 381–402.Google Scholar
Tyack, D., & Gottsleben, R. (1986). Acquisition of complex sentences. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 7, 160–74.Google Scholar
Verhoeven, L., Aparici, M., Cahana-Amitay, D., van Hell, J., Kriz, S., & Viguie-Simon, A. (2002). Clause packaging in writing and speech: a cross-linguistic developmental analysis. Written Language and Literacy, 5(2), 135–62.Google Scholar
Wagner, C. R., Nettelbladt, U., Sahlén, B., & Nilholm, C. (2000). Conversation versus narration in pre-school children with language impairment. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 35(1), 83–93.Google Scholar
Westerveld, M. F., Gillon, G. T., & Miller, J. F. (2004). Spoken language samples of New Zealand children in conversation and narration. Advances in Speech Language Pathology, 6(4), 195–208.Google Scholar
Westerveld, M. F., & Vidler, K. (2016). Spoken language samples of Australian children in conversation, narration and exposition. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 18(3), 288–98.Google Scholar
Wong, A. M. Y., Au, C. W. S., & Stokes, S. F. (2004). Three measures of language production for Cantonese-speaking school-age children in a story-retelling task. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(5), 1164–78.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Frizelle et al. supplementary material

Frizelle et al. supplementary material 1

Download Frizelle et al. supplementary material(File)
File 86.1 KB
Supplementary material: File

Frizelle et al. supplementary material

Frizelle et al. supplementary material 2

Download Frizelle et al. supplementary material(File)
File 111.5 KB