Children's Language: Volume 10: Developing Narrative and Discourse Competence (Children's Language)

Citation preview

Children’s

Developing Narrative and Discourse Competence

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

Children

Developing Narrative and Discourse Competence

Edited by KEITHE.NELSON

Pennsylvania State University, University Park A Y H A N AKSU-KO$

BogaziGi University, Istanbul, Turkey CAROLYN E. JOHNSON

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS 2001

Mahwah, NewJersey

London

The final camera copy for this work was prepared by the editors and therefore the publisher takesno responsibility for consistency or correctness of typographical style. However, this arrangement helpsto make publicationof this kindof scholarship possible. Copyright 0 zoo 1 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced form, in anyby photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue Mahwah, New Jersey 0743 o Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN: ISSN:

0-8058-3292-0 0163-2809

Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-free paper,and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Contributors VI I

Preface IX

Introduction AYHAN AKSU-KO$, KEITH E. NELSON, AND CAROLYN E. JOHNSON

XI

1.

Setting the NarrativeScene: How Children Begin to Tell a Story RUTH A. BERMAN

1

2.

Representation of Movement in European Protugese: A Studyof Children’s Narratives H A N N A J A K U B O W I C Z B A T O R ~ OA N D I S A B E L H U B F A R I A

3’

3. Why Young American English-Speaking Children Confuse Angerand Sadness: A Study of Grammar in Practice MICHAEL BAMBERC

55

4. A Crosscultural Investigationof Australian and Israeli Parents’ Narrative Interactions With Their Children ClLLlAN WICCLESWORTH AND ANAT STAVANS

73

5.

The Acquisition of Polite Language by Japanese Children KEIKO NAKAMURA

93

6.

Interactional Processes in the Origins of the Explaining Capacity EDY VENEZIANO

113

7. Children’s Attributionsof Pragmatic Intentions andEarly Literacy K E N N E T HR E E D E R 143

Author Index 165

Subject Index 171

Contributors

AYHAN AKSU-KOG

Bogaziqi University, Istanbul, Turkey RUTH A. BERMAN

Tel Aviv University, Israel MICHAEL BAMBERC

Clark University, Worcester, Massachussetts HANNA JAKUBOWICZ BATOR~O

Open University, Lisbon, Portugal ISABEL HUB FARIA

University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal CAROLYN E. JOHNSON

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada KEIKO NAKAMURA

Keio University, Tokyo,Japan KEITHE.NELSON

Pennsylvania State University, University Park KENNETHREEDER

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada ANAT STAVANS

Hebrew University and BjeitBerl College, Israel EDY VENEZIANO

Universite' Nancy andUniversite' ParisV-CNRS ClLLlAN WICCLESWORTH

Macquarie University and University of Melbourne, Australia

vi i

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

Preface

The chapters inthis volume deal with discourse development, with an emphasis on narrative, from ages 1 1/2 to 10,and ranging over sevenlanguages. Theywere developed from 7 of the 276 presentations at the Seventh International Congress of the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL) in Istanbul, Turkey,in July 1996. That meeting was a broadly international assembly of 350 participants from 41 countries, representing more than 30 languages, who are contributing to the developmentof a scientific tradition in thefields of general linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and intercultural communication, as they pertain to children’s language acquisition. During theCongress, participants shared exciting research projects and exchanged a broad spectrum of viewpoints with honesty, depth, and respect. Our Turkish hostswere outstanding in their warmth and organization. IASCL continues to invite international applications fromall professionals who share an interest in enhancing the understandingof children’s acquisition and use oflanguages. KEITHE.NELSON AYHAN AKSU-KOG CAROLYN E. J O H N S O N

IX

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

Introduction

AYHAN AKSU-KOF

BogaziFi University K E I T HE .N E L S O N

Pennsylvania State University CAROLYN E. JOHNSON

University of British Columbia

The chapters in this volume reflect recent directions of thinkingin the area of children’s discourse development, with an emphasis on narratives. Each contribution shows that empirical workin the last decade has focusedon finer distinctions regarding the effects on development of discourse genres, different elicitation techniques and communicative contexts, literacy and schooling and, of course, age, language, and culture. Each chapter addressesissues concerning the interrelations between social, cognitive, and affective capacities and processes in discourse.Finally, each raises theoretically challenging questions regarding how and when new representations are constructed to supportnew complexities in narrative and discourse more generally. A comprehensive theoretical frame calls for a conceptualization of discourse as an interactional space that promotes the developmentof higher level metalinguistic, metarepresentational, and metapragmatic operations. The chaptersby Ruth Berman, HannaBatorko and Isabel Hub Faria, Gillian Wlgglesworth and Anat Stavans,and Ken Reeder focus on aspects of children’s narrative ability, their productions in differentgenres, in different modes of expression and in relation to the input theyget in different cultures. They all look at form:function relations, that is, the interface between specific devices within a language and narrative development. Chaptersby Edy Veneziano and Keiko Nakamura, on the other hand, deal with more specific discourse capacities such as justifications of oppositions anduse of politeness indicators as thesedevelopinthemoregeneralcontextofconversation.Michael Bamberg’s contribution cuts across the two groups, as it deals with children’s narrative accounts of emotion, but from a dynamic discursive perspective. From a methodological point of view, issuesrelating to task conditions, levels of assessment,cultural differences, and the like are brought under consideration, xi

xii

A K S U - K O ~ ,N E L S O N , A N D J O H N S O N

suggesting that someof the factors typically identified as methodological should perhaps be approached from different a perspective: They mightreveal underlying processesor themselves be determinantsof acquisition. INTERFACES BETWEEN LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC FORMS, NARRATIVE FUNCTIONS, GENRES, AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

With high appropriateness, the book begins with a chapter children’s on own beginnings. Berman (chap.1) analyzes and discusses how children start their oral narratives. She argues that such story beginnings depend heavily on general cognitive development, and provide insight not only into children’s knowledge of narrative structure, butalso on their story planning abilities and their representations of their listeners and task. The stories examined are told by children at ages 3, 5, and 9 and adults. Narrative structures, including the specific linguistic forms used to express scene-setting and motivational elements, are compared for narratives based on a wordless picture book(Frog, where are you?, Mayer, 1969) and fora story constructed about a personal experience (a fight) in two modes: speechand writing. These comparisonsare supplemented with results from an additional body of Hebrew and English data from variedstorytelling tasks. Berman observes age-related developments in setting the spatiotemporal framefor the story, the amount of background and motivational information about the characters, the demarcationof the setting from the storyline events, metatextual comments relating the narrated events to the storytelling situation, and the formal means used to serve these functions. For example, the proportion of setting clauses increased withage in thepersonalconflictnarratives,butnotinthepicturebooknarratives. Furthermore, use of specific linguistic forms varied with narrative genre and mode of elicitation, suggesting theeffects of schooling and literacy (Hicks, 1991; Kuntay, 1997; McCabe &Peterson, 199la). Berman addresses the intriguing theoretical question of whychildren require a long time after acquiring certain forms, including past tense verbs and temporal terms such as afterwards, before they usethem effectively and flexibly in their dynamically constructed on-line narratives. The findings overall show that speakersrely on the formal options made available to them by the typologicalstructure of their language, and that these are first effectively exercisedat the local clause level, then at the global discourselevel (Berman & Slobin, 1994; Hickmann, 1991,1995). Batoreo and Faria (chap. 2), whoalsoinvestigatedchildren’sstory openings, start with an interesting review of how narratives can be begun in ways that utilize the most available, most reliable features of a particular language, in thiscase, European Portuguese. In accord with the central themes of this volume, they examine theinterfaces between language-specificdevices, cognitive development, and the initiation and elaboration of narratives, using data from preschoolers, school-age children, and adults. Their methods employ

Introduction

xiii

open-ended, textless storybooks now familiar to narrative development researchers worldwide, the Cat and Horse stories (Hickmann, 1982). Their 5-year-olds provedto have available allthe lexical and morphosyntacticdevices used by skillful adult narrators. However, they did not sensitively deploy these devices for the spatiotemporal framingof the stories, introducing the characters, or providing new informationabout themas the narratives proceeded.By age IO, thechildren’s adaptation of lexical and morphosyntactic devices to narrative purposes was much closer to the adult model, revealing mature form:function relations. The authorsaffirm the importance of concomitant advances in the cognitive capacity to represent listener the in termsof his or her informational needs and the capacity to organize events in a goal-directed temporal-causal sequence (Berman& Slobin, 1994; Hickmann, 1995; McCabe & Peterson, 19 91a; Slobin, 1996). Open for future specification are how particular discourse-learning contexts and particular cognitive advances after age 5 contribute to advances in the flexibility and sophistication of narratives. Wigglesworth and Stavans (chap. 4) deal with the less studied question of the natureof narrative input children receive from their parents in two different languages andculturalbackgrounds-English-speakingAustralianand Hebrew-speaking Israeli-nicely complementing Berman’s chapter.Age- and language-related analysesof how the parents narratedFrog, where are you? (cf. Berman, this volume) to their children revealed differences in the use of a variety of interactive strategies and linguistic acts such as rhetorical questions, personal digressions, affective and evaluative comments and the like, in addition to actually advancing the actionof the story (McCabe& Peterson,lg91b; Ninio & Snow, 1996; Scollon & Scollon, 1981). For 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old children and their parents, there were clear cultural differences in interpreting the storytelling task. Althoughall of the story sessions were collaborativeto some degree, the Australian English-speaking parents had a more conversational, dynamic style, suggesting that they took thetask to be an interpersonal exchange activity as well as story construction, whereas the Israeli parents displayed a more strictly literacy-oriented approach in their storytelling. This difference is paralleled in the performance of the children; Israeli 7-year-olds contributed to the actual story line with a literary-oriented performance, whereas their English-speaking agemates conversed with the parents as well as actively adding to the plot line. Cultural styles, thus, have a bearing on the narratives children eventually produce, and inputis important not only in exposing children to language-specific form:function relations in narrative, but also to cultural expectations and specific modes ofexecuting the task. Wlgglesworth and Stavans also show that despite thesedifferences, universal patterns canbe identified in the behaviorof parents of 5-year-olds who,in both groups, distinctly emphasized story structure and story organization in telling their children stories. Noting the critical status of 5 years of age for developments in discourse-organizational capacities, as reflected in the shift

xiv

AKSU-KO$, NELSON, AND JOHNSON

from a fragile plot-structure to a hierarchically organized one (Berman & Slobin, 1994), the authors suggest that parents in both cultures are equally sensitive to the cognitive-linguistic readiness of their childrenand respond accordingly. What remains to be furtherspecified is the particular interplay between universaland culturally specific determinants of behavior. Reeder’s contribution (chap.7) also has children’s narrative competenceas a main focus, but in the written mode. Reeder investigated school children’s writing skills intwo genres (story retell and expository description) as a function of their ability to attribute pragmatic intentions to others. Attribution ability was determined by interviewing the children aboutspeaker’s intent after they viewed a puppet scenario. Reeder found that advances in understanding pragmatic intent supported advances in written narratives at around 7 to 8 years in both genres. The effects werestronger for personalized narrativesthan expository descriptions, whichhave less interpersonal and contextual support. Skill in identifying the intentionsof speakers requiresunderstanding therelation between the linguistic features of utterances andaspects of participants’ epistemic states (knowledge, attitudes, assumptions), that is, metapragmatic competence. As Reeder shows,the effects of a complex set of developmental advances such as increased differentiationsof the feelings, motives, intents, agreements, and conflicts of varied participantsis reflected in increased narrative sophistication inboth spoken and written modes.Taking the broaderview across allthe chapters in this volume, one theme is strongly evident. To wit, new cognitive, social, and language representationsare only graduallywoven into flexible, differentiated narrative skills fitted to many varied contexts and goals. SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL, AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES

IN RELATION TO DISCOURSE DEVELOPMENT

The studies summarized earlier, which explore various aspects of children’s developing narrative abilities, emphasize bidirectionalinfluences, particularly between linguistic and cognitive development. The focus of research reported in the following three chapters, on the other hand, requires, in addition, a consideration of the interrelations between social and emotional development, because advances in these domainsalso reciprocally feed into and bring about changes in languageand cognition. The inquiries into the expression of anger and sadness (chap.3),justification of opposition (chap.6 ) )and the learning of forms of politeness (chap.5) all placelanguage development within the broader context of social-communicative development whereby the child learns to take up different positions or roles. In chapter 3 Bamberg takes a discursive approach to the development of emotion, arguing thatlanguage use plays a dynamic, foundational role in the social construction of emotions such as anger and sadness. He defines emotions as meaningful positions takenup by a personto signify self-other relationships,

Introduction

xv

performed in the form of discourse actions. His analysis of the “grammars”of anger and sadness (i.e., the linguistic construction types that mark the discursive positions of being angry and being sad) highlights the interface between linguistic structures, discourse genres (personal involvement narrativevs. explanatory discourse) and social positions in the discourse of children between ages 4 and 11. The empirical data revealing these processes are children’s explanations, for example, “whatit means to be sad,” and narratives centered on personal experiences of anger and sadness. The context of creating a first-person sadness narrative proved problematic for 4- to 6 -year-olds, who did not clearly differentiate attributing blame andeliciting sympathy in their first-person sadness and anger narratives.However, in their explanations of anger and sadness, younger aswell as older (7 to 11 years) children clearly differentiated sadness and anger. Bamberg’s account of the contrasts between the developmental patternsin the first-person narratives and explanationsrests on the children’s developing ability to use construction types todifferentially mark discursive stances. Successful narratives requirethe complex coordination of suchlinguistic components with other personal, social, emotional, and contextual factors. Emotion talk functions both to inform the child about what emotions are, and how they are dealt with in the social-emotional realm (Eisenberg, 198 6 ; Miller, 198 6 ; Schieffelin & Ochs, 198 6). Thus, the language that unfolds in aclear and appropriate narrativereflects the child’s sense of how self should interplay with the current listener-participants, emotionalsocial context, and shared expectations of communicative goals. Veneziano (chap. 6), who utilizes longitudinal data from children between ages 1 1/2 and z 1/2 to explore early developmentalstages of children’s justification and persuasion, also presents a dynamic approach. Children first learn to be convinced by their mothers’justifications; soon after, they themselves becomeeffective at producing justifications and explanations to persuade their mothers give to in within a conflictual situation. Mappingrichly to the themes of this volume, Veneziano’s data and discussion show that children’s justifications of oppositions reflect their growing pragmatic, conversational, and social abilities (Peterson & McCabe, 1992; Reimann, 1998;Snow, 1989; Sorsby &Martlew, 1991; Watson, 1989). In managing oppositions children learn to take up positions vis-a-vis the other, making rightful demands or requesting concessions, thereby creating for the other a position to be filled. Insistingon their initial intention in contrast with responding to the other’s opposition, children move between self- and othercentered perspectivesand acquire competencein recognizing theother’s mental states very earlyon. Discourse actsand self positions thusdevelop ininteraction, viaprocessesverysimilar tothoseobserved byBamberginthecaseof emotion-talk. These observations are tied to an acquisition model in which communication advances rest on children’s concomitant developments in flexibility of cognitive-linguistic representations and in representations of their conversational partners. These twin developments feed into narrative

XVI

A K S U - K O S ,N E L S O N ,A N DJ O H N S O N

conversational sequences in which children have the intent to persuadethrough specific, explanatory, argumentativeexpressions-another person seen as holding adifferent, conflicting position. Dynamic negotiationis part of the discourse-making process.A s necessary, whentheir viewpoints have not been accommodated in prior conversationalmoves, children demonstratepersistence, redundancy, and/or reformulations. Partly because there is a delay between children’s increased responseto their mothers’ explanations and children’s the own entry intoeffective explanation-making,Veneziano argues for agradual process of complex abstractions. The children learn rich, interrelated patterns from maternalverbal justifications: narrative devices, their pragmatic impact,and the emotionaland cognitive states of the motherrelative to thoseof the child. The significance of parent-child interactionfor advances in conversational discourse and pragmatic knowledge is also exemplified chapter in 5. Politeness in Japanese children’s discourseis charted developmentally by Nakamura, who investigated the acquisition of the different registers by I- to 6 -year-olds. She uncovers thechild’s increasing sensitivity to the social-contextualvariables that underlie the pragmatics of polite linguistic forms (Andersen,198 6 ;Clancy, 198 6 ; Ervin-Tripp, 1 9 7 9 ) . In both spontaneous speech and role play in pretense contexts, Nakamura observes that Japanese children display a “know how” of polite language use as early as 1 year by using nonverbal means and verbal formulas in contextually appropriate ways. Between ages 2 and 5 Japanese children progressto produce forms whose use depends on awareness ofinloutgroup membership, power, age, sex, social setting, and the nature of the information communicated. Japanesechildren’s control of politeness forms and their understanding of the pragmaticrules that govern shifts in register develops gradually withage and with exposure to discourse demonstrating such use. A significant aspect ofthis process is againthe gradual unfolding of form:function relations, whereby different ways of showing deference are formally expressed with a rangeof linguistic forms and conversational strategies. Like emotions, politeness is a domain inwhich language functions toinform thechild about social-cognitive distinctions. Nakamura suggests that children gradually learn to comprehend psychological feelings such as consideration for others and discernment which underlie use the ofdifferent politeness forms in the process of socialization to theuse of registers.The complexityof socialunderstanding and cognition required to support the more advanced levels of politeness,relates closely to other discussions in this volume of how communicative development interfaces with related developmental changes inother domains. HOW AND WHEN NEW REPRESENTATIONS ARE CONSTRUCTED TO SUPPORT NEW COMPLEXITIES IN DISCOURSE

This overview shows that thequestions raised in the present volumeare multifaceted, leading to the exploration of the interfaces between the cognitive,

Introduction

xvii

social, and linguistic skills that feed into pragmatic competence. Without exception, all the contributions invoke the dynamic processesof discourse as the developmental context for the concomitant changes that occur in these domains. As argued across different chapters such as Veneziano’s, Bamberg’s, and Nakamura’s, early in development, theseprocesses result in a “know how” of the mind that entails a practical understanding of interpersonal relations. The next level of representations that emergelater in development involve an understanding of the “know that” type. These “know that” representations support new complexitiesof discourse, with narrativeas a case inpoint. Across thedifferentcontributionsand,inparticular,inBerman, Reeder, and Bamberg’s chapters, older children’s grasp of the pragmaticsof interpersonal communication are examined and further complex abstractionsare proposed as a foundation for success in narrative performance. Despite many similarities across the authors, however, it should also be recognized that theparticular kindsof representations children construct often are seen variously. For example, Bambergand Veneziano stress emergent dynamic processesthat comprise any conversational and narrative performance. In their respective frameworks, they present self- and cognitive-processes as deeply intertwined with pragmatic, social, intentional, and linguistic representations. In contrast, other authors examine children’s increasingly complex discourse and narrative skills after ages 5 to 6 in terms of intercoordinations between metarepresentational and metalinguistic operations, and between theseand social-cognitive knowledge at the “know that”level. The metarepresentational capacity to reflect on the other in terms of his or her beliefs and intentions, and the metalinguisticskill of relating aspects of the code to different interpersonal functions constitute the componentsof the higher metapragmaticcapacities that can perhaps best be accounted for within a general “theoryof mind” framework(Aksu-Kog & Alici, 19 g g ; Astington, 1990; Nelson, 1996; Perez-Leroux,2000). METHODOLOGICAL AND OTHER ISSUES

Finally, the chapters in the present volume point to someissues emerging from methodological considerations.For example, variations in performance due to differences in the nature of the task, such as method of elicitation (spontaneous narratives vs. those supported with pictures) or context of communication (role play in pretense activity vs. experimental situations), are now treated in their own right as sources of information about processesor determinantsof development.Berman,forexample,findsthatdevelopmentsinsetting information are first elaborated in make-believe narratives, then in personal experience accounts, and finally in narratives basedon picture books. Thus, genre and elicitation method interact and make a difference to the amount of information produced.

xviii

A K S U - K O $ ,N E L S O N ,

AND JOHNSON

The same observation, furthermore, brings to focus the importance of the pretend worldas an assimilatory zoneor a special operational space where new capacities related to story structuring are first tried out (Garvey, 1986; Nicolopoulou, 1995; Piaget, 1951; Vygotsky, 1967). Nakamura’s role-play procedure withtoys suggeststhat sophistication in politeness carriedby specific grammatical and pragmatic devices, emerges earlier than many experiments reveal. In experimental contexts role-play tasks often place cognitive and perspective-taking demands on children that result inless scphistication in language use than that observed in naturalisticdiscourse. What we obtain in experimental settings, which typically put the child in a reflective-interpretive mode, appears to be a different capacity, the “meta” version of the kind of competence that researchers aim to measure. If taken to represent “linguistic” instead of “metalinguistic” competence, such findings attenuate the ages of emergence. These methodological issues, which underscore the fact that different tasks may be tapping different cognitive-linguistic capacities at different levels, are likely to betaken up in future researchand discussions. The contextof play,opening up the possibility for deferred imitation of adult speech and behavior, is noted to be importantfor the operationof processes of acquisition. Research (Clancy, 1985; Day, 2 0 0 0 ) points again to the roleof imitation, albeit in the form of representing another’s utterance, in the development of pragmatic knowledge. Role-play speech often entails repetition of an utteranceby preserving its formal properties to large a extent. A s noted by Nakamura, repeating dialogues heard from adults in similar contexts, children grasp the underlyinglinguistic rules, deduce the relevant interpersonal factors, and generalize toother contexts with increasing productivity and appropriateness. These processes maylead toinsight into the distinctions that the linguistic forms embody and thus promote metapragmatic awareness. Lastly, as evident in most chaptersof the volume, crosscultural differences emerge as a fascinating sourceof diversity that needs to be taken into account in addition to crosslinguistic variation. The Berman and Wigglesworth and Stavans chapters,however, bytaking up culturaldifferences in their own right, shift a once methodological concern to status the of an interesting independent variable, in line with a whole body of research carriedout in the ethnographic tradition (Clancy, 1986; Heath, 1983; Hough-Eyami& Crago, 1998; Ochs & Schieffelin, 1995; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). REFERENCES

Aksu-KO$,A., & Alici, D. M. (199 9 , April). Marking of uncertainty and understanding beliefstates: Child’s theory ofevidentiality.Paper presented at the 30th Child Language Research Forum, Stanford University. Andersen, E.S. (1986). The acquisition of register variation by Anglo-American children. In B. Schieffelin & E. Ochs (Eds.), Language socialization across cultures (pp. 153-16 1). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Introduction

xix

Astington, J. W. (1990). Narrative and thechild’s theory of mind. In B. Britton &A. Pellegrini (Eds.), Narrative thought and narrative language(pp. 151-171). Hillsdale, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum Associates. Berman, R.A., & Slobin, D. I. (Eds.). (1994). Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Clancy, P. (1985). The acquisitionof Japanese. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, Vol. 1. Thedata(pp. 373-534). Hillsdale,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Clancy, P. (1986). The acquisition of communicative style in Japanese. In B. Schieffelin &E. Ochs (Eds.), Language socialization across cultures (pp. 213-250). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Day, C. ( 2 0 0 0 ) . A developmental perspective on modal verb use by French speaking children.In K. E. Nelson, A. Aksu-KO$,& C. E. Johnson (Eds.), Children’s language, Vol. 11: Interactional contributions to language development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Eisenberg, A. (1986). Teasing: Verbal play in two Mexican0 homes. In B. Schieffelin & E. Ochs (Eds.), Language socialization across cultures (pp. 182-198). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Ervin-Tripp, S. (1979).Children’sverbalturn-taking.In E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (Eds.), Developmentalpragmatics(pp. 391-414). NewYork Academic Press. Garvey, C. (1986). Peer relations and the growthof communication. InE. Mueller & C. Cooper (Eds.), Process and outcome in peer relationships (pp. 329-345). Orlando, F1:Academic Press. Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words:Language, life and work in communities and classroom. Cambridge, England: CambridgeUnversity Press. Hickmann, M. (1982).The development ofnarrative skills: Pragmatic and metapragmatic aspects of discourse cohesion. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,University of Chicago. Hickmann, M. (19 91). The development of discourse cohesion: Some functional andcrosslinguistic issues. In G. Pieraut-Le Bonniec & M. Dolitsky (Eds.), Language bases. ..discourse bases: Some aspects of contemporary French-language psycholinguistics research (pp. 157-185). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Hickmann, M. (1995). Discourse organizationand thedevelopment of reference to person,space, and time.In P. Fletcher &B. MacWhinney (Eds.),The handbook ofchild language(pp. 195-218). Oxford, England:Blackwell. Hicks, D.(1991). Kinds of narrative: Genreskills among first graders from twocommunities. InA. McCabe & C. Peterson (Eds.), Developing narrative structure (pp. 55-87). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hough-Eyami, W., & Crago, M. (1998). Three interactional portraits from Mohawk, Inuit and White Canadian cultures. In A. Aksu-Kog, E. Erguvanli-Taylan, A. S. ozsoy, & A. Kuntay (Eds.), Perspectives on language acquisition: Selectedpapers from the VIIth International Congressfor the Study of ChildLanguage (pp. 124-139). Istanbul: BokaziSi University Press. Kuntay, A. (19 97). Extended discourse skills of Turkish preschool children across shifting contexts. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. McCabe, A., & Peterson, C.(Eds.). (1991a). Developing narrative structure. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. McCabe, A., & Peterson, C. (19 9 1b). Getting the story:A longitudinal studyof parental styles in eliciting narratives and developing narrative skill. In A. McCabe & C. Peterson (Eds.), Developing narrative structure(pp. 217-255). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Miller, P. (1986). Teasing as language socialization and verbal play in a white working-class community. In B. Schieffelin & E. Ochs (Eds.), Language socialization across cultures (pp. 199-212). Cambridge, England Cambridge University Press. Mayer, M.(1969). Frog, where areyou!New York Dial Press. Nelson, K. (1996). Languagein cognitive development: The emergence of the mediated mind. Cambridge, England: CambridgeUniversity Press.

XX

AKSU-KOS, NELSON, A N D JOHNSON

Nicolopoulou, A. (1995). Narrative development in social context. In D. I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis, & J. Guo (Eds.), Social interaction, social context, and language:Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp(pp. 21-36). Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Ninio, A., & Snow, C. (1996).Pragmatic development. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Ochs, E.,& Schieffelin, B. (1995).Theimpactoflanguagesocializationongrammatical development. In P. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney (Eds.), The handbookofchild language (pp. 73-94). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Perez-Leroux, A. ( 2 0 0 0 ) . Subjunctive mood in Spanish child relatives: Atthe interface of linguistic and cognitive development. InK. E.Nelson,A. Aksu-Koc, &C. E. Johnson (Eds.), Children’s lunguage, Vol. 11: Interactional contributions tolanguage development. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Peterson, C.,& McCabe, A. (1992). Parental styles of narrative elicitation:Effect on children’s narrative structure and content.First language,^, 299-322. Piaget, J. (1951). The language and thought of the child. London: Routledge. (Original publishedin 1923) Reimann, B. (1998). Maternal questionresponses in early child-mother dialogue. In A. Aksu-Kog, E. Erguvanli-Taylan, A. S. ozsoy, & A. Kuntay (Eds.), Perspectives on language acquisition: Selected papers from the Vllth International Congress for the Study of Child Language (pp. 108-123). Istanbul: Bogaziqi University Press. Schieffelin, B., & Ochs, E. (1986). Language socialization across cultures. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (1981). Narrative, literacy andface in interethnic communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Slobin, D. I. (19 96). Two waysto travel: Verbsof motion in English and Spanish. In M. Shibatani & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Essays in semantics (pp.195--217). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Snow, C. E. (1989). Understanding social interaction and language acquisition: Sentences are not enough. In M. Bornstein& J. Bruner (Eds.), Interaction in human development(pp. 83-103). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sorsby, A.,& Martlew, M. (19 91). Representational demands in mothers’ talk to preschool children in two contexts: Picture book reading and a modeling task. Journal of Child Language~B, 373-396. Vygotsky, L. S. (1967). Play and its role in mental developmentof the child. In J. S. Bruner, A. Jolly, & K.Sylva (Eds.), Play: Its role in development and evolution (pp. 537-554). New York Basic Books. Watson, R. (1989). Literate discourse and cognitive organization: Somerelations between parents’ talk and 3 year olds’thought. Applied Psycholinguistics, IO, 221-236.

Setting the Narrative Scene: How Children Begin to Tell a Story

RUTH A. BERMAN

Tel Auiu University

This chapter deals with facet one of its ambiguous title. It concerns how children begin the stories that they produce, rather than how first theylearn or when they first begin to tell stories. The segmentof a narrativetext that constitutesits start or opening has been the subject of considerable interest in literary theory, and the exposition is generallyrecognized as a critical component of narrative fiction (e.g., Oz, 1996; Said, 1978; Sternberg, 1978).A s a psychological counterpart to this notion, thesetting constitutes an integral part of narrative structure in cognitively oriented “storygrammar” analyses (Rumelhart, 1975; Shen, 198 8). Discourse linguists, too, have paid attention to elements thatset the narrative scene, analyzedas orientation in Labov’s (1972) study of personal-experience narratives, or as initial background information in Reinhart’s (1984, 1995) discussions of literary and othertexts. In this line, Polanyi (1985) referredto contextualizing state clauses in her analysis of conversationally embedded narratives. Labov identified the orientationas belonging to the narrative rather than theevaluative elementsthat constitute story, a whereas Reinhart suggested that scene-setting elements constitute partof the narrative background,as distinguished from its foreground. In line withReinhart’s proposal, I have suggested that scene setting, or background orientation, may include both interpretive evaluative elements and informative descriptive elements as precursors to the third typeof narrative element, the sequentialor eventive elements that make up the storyplotline (Berman, 1997a). Researchersagree that the opening of a storytypically relates to thestate-ofaffairs existing prior to the onset of the plot. A s such, it provides a backdropto the ensuing chain of events by specifying the who, where, when, and why ofthe events to be reported. In the present context, story setting is defined as serving several functions, termed here presentative, informational, and motivating, respectively. The presentative function serves to introduce the characters that will be referred to subsequently as participants in events. Theinformational framingfunction provides aspatio-locative and/or temporal frameworkfor the events. The motivating function explains what sets the chain of events in motion andwhy an accountof these eventsis relevant to the hearerheader orof 1

2

BERMAN

interest to the narrator. These three functions have the shared aimof orienting the audience toward whatis to come. This analysis suggeststhat “how to start a story” constitutes an important feature of the development of both narrative knowledgeand storytelling performance among children (Berman, 1995;Reilly, 1992). The ability to provide adequate background setting informationis of considerable interest for research on narrative developmentfor a numberof reasons. First, understanding how the different functions of narrative setting develop should throw light on important cognitive abilitiesthat relate to how childrendevelop “a representation of the listener” (Berman & Slobin, 19 94, p. 6 o 4). This shows that theytake into account audience needsin the case in point, by providing adequate background information to the story they are about to tell (Menig-Peterson & McCabe, 1978). Giving a suitable setting to the story also means that the narrator can construct a text autonomously, by means of a self-sufficient monologic narrative rather than through interlocutor queries, prompts, and other scaffolding devices. Moreover, it requires preplanning of the text as a whole, which in the case of narrative discourse implies a hierarchical, globalview of the chainof events that are about tobe related. These are complex cognitive demands, whichtake a long time to evolve. Related to the development of these abilities is command of narrativespecific knowledge. Being ableto provide adequate setting information and motivation will depend on moreoverall narrative competence, in the senseof global plot-organization or “action-structure,”as defined by cognitive theories of narrative discourse (Giora& Shen, 1994; Rumelhart, 1975;VanDijk, 1976). That is, children must have recourse to a narrative schema, with an initiating event or problem, one or more episodes directedat solving that problem, and an eventual resolution. This suggests that in order to “begin a story” adequately, children need to beable to structure therest of the text appropriately. The present studywas undertaken on the assumption that, with age, the scene-setting elements provided to narrative texts will change along three interrelated dimensions: amount, content, and expression. Thus, young preschool children provide little or no such information (Peterson, 1990; UmikerSebeok, 1979). And while children from as young as age 4 provide some orienting background information to the stories they produce, younger children relate to fewer, and to different, types of setting functions than do older storytellers (Kernan, 1977; Peterson& McCabe, 1983). One aim of the present study, then, is to go beyond these relatively few studies that have analyzed children’s story beginningsby extending the analysis to a database consisting of picturebook based narratives as well as personal-experience accounts, comparing preschoolers with school-age children as well as adult storytellers. A second aim, one to thebest of my knowledge not addressed in prior studies of scene-setting, considers the linguistic forms used to express this component of narrative discourse.

1

Settingthe

Narrative Scene

3

The present studyis thus embedded in earlier work that has focusedon the relation between linguistic forms and narrative functions across development (Berman, 1996,1997~; Berman & Slobin, 1994; Slobin, lgg3).And itconsiders three interrelated developmental predictions. First, whatwe termed scenesetting elements (Berman & Slobin, 1994, p. 86) will change with age both in quality and quantity. Inquality, preschool childrenwill mention different types of setting elements than older speakers;for example, they may makeexplicit reference to participants but not to motivations (who vs. why) and they will mention place more than time(where vs. when). And in quantity, settings will constitute a larger proportionof texts produced by older speakers. Second, elicitation context or genre will affect the nature of setting elements provided, but this effect will be lessmarked with age. Third, with age the linguisticforms used for scene-settingwill become less formulaic, more explicit, and more varied, in meetingdifferent narrative functions. Findings are basedon monologic narrativetexts produced by children and adults in different elicitation settings. Narratives elicited with the pictured storybook, Frog, where are you? by Mercer Mayer (19 6 g ) , constitute the“frog stories” and accountsof a personal experience elicited by asking subjects, “Have you ever had a fight or quarreled with someone?Tell me about it,” constitute the “fight stories.” Supplementary data come from an additional set of oral and written “fight stories” elicited from older school children adults, and from other personal-experience accounts, where childrenwere asked to tell a story about something that had happened to them, and from texts based on pictures and picture-series. The bulk of theseanalyses are from texts produced by speakers of Israeli Hebrew, on the assumption that the language in which they are constructed has littleeffect on the quality and narrative functions of setting elements, when speakers share similar literate, western-type cultural backgrounds of the lundconsidered here. Our findings for Hebrew-specific linguistic forms used for the narrative functionsof marking story openings,the transition from scene-setting to narrativeevents, and the distinction between background setting elements and narrative events can and should, however, be extended for comparison with other languages. NATURE

OF S E T T I N G E L E M E N T S I N “ F R O G ” A N D “ F I G H T ” S T O R I E S

Earlier research has shownthat children favor some types of setting elements over others. Specifically,they tend to provide more “framing” information an at earlier age about theplace rather than the time at which events place, took and they give relatively little information about participants andeven less about background motivations or reasons for the events (Peterson,1990; Peterson & McCabe, 1983). Such studies have typically relatedto personal-experience narratives, whereas the present analysis starts by considering the different kinds of setting elements provided on the basis of a picturebook (the “frog story”).

4

BERMAN

T A B L E 1.1

Percentage of Subjects Mentioning Different Setting Elements in the Hebrew and English Frog Stories, by Age (N = 24 per agegroup) Setting Element

“who”[by noun]= boy 75 “where” = jar “when” = at night “why” = feeling

3 yrs

5 Y”

58 17

-

25

12

9 yrs 83

Adults

8

92 79 33

12

63

33

Distribution of Setting Elements in Englishand Hebrew-Language“Frog Stories”

The picturebook Frog, where ure you? (Mayer, 19 6 9) has been the basis for numerous studies of narrative development indifferent languages and from different perspectives over and above the database relied on here (Berman & Slobin, 1994). These includeboth published works(e.g., Bamberg & DamradFrye, 1991; Bazanella & Calleri, 199 1; Berman, 1993; Kail & Hickmann, 19 92) and doctoral dissertations (Herman,1996; Kern, 1997; Wlgglesworth, 1992). Yet to thebest of my knowledge, the natureof the background scene-setting to this story has not been the subject of separate studyapart from considerations of referent introduction(Kail & Sanchez-Lopez, 1997) anda brief note o n formulaic openers (Berman& Slobin, 1994, p. 86). The 24-picture booklet in question tells a story about a boy and his dog whogo out insearch of their pet frog, which escapesfrom its jar during the night, when the boy and dog are sleeping. The setting scene is provided by the first picture in the booklet, which stands alone, to the rightof the title page. It shows the boy and his dog at the foot of their bed, looking at the frog in itsglass jar. Table 1.1 gives the breakdown of setting elements mentioned in the frog storytexts produced by speakers of (American) Englishand (Israeli) Hebrew. The figures in Table1.1 show a markedincrease with age in elements counted as belonging tothe setting, together with a change in the typeof such elements mentioned by different age groups. Onlyhalf the youngestchildren, aged 3 to 4, introduce the main protagonist,boy, theby an appropriatelyexplicit noun phrase, not just as “he,”compared with nearly all the oldersubjects. Few children provide the relevantspatial setting for the frog, as being inside a jar from whichit subsequently escapes; even fewersubjects mention that the events took place at night (as shown by the moon shining in at the window). These findings seem to clearly confirm thefirst prediction, particularly because very few children provide evaluative or motivational elements toset the backgroundfor how theboy came to have afrog, and why he might want go to out looking for it. Examples of such motivational elementstaken from theEnglish-language textsare given in (I).

1

(1)

Settingthe

Narrative Scene

5

Motivational Elements in English Language Frog Story Texts

a. Well-there was a little boy, he liked his-pet frog and his his pet dogvery much [boy,aged 521 b. Um-once there was like-a dog-who liked a frog, but the frog didn’t like him, so he decided.. .[girl,aged 9;7] c. This is a story about a boy-a dog-and his frog. Right now, in the beginning of the story-he’s-the boy and his dog are just basically admiring his frog, looking at the frog in the jar. The frog looks kind of happy-obviously he’s not real satisfied with his existence, because when ...[female adult]

The figures in Table1.1indicate aclear age-related developmentin the ability to begin a story with scene-setting information. But these figures need to be evaluated qualitatively as well. First, in relation to character introduction, the task at hand, where both child and investigator have the picturebook open in front of them, may bias the cognitive issue of shared knowledge and required level of informativeness in referring tothe main protagonist. Indeed, this has been shownto be thecase in aseries of studies on children’s ability to introduce story characters usingthis same picturebook, but comparing our design with a situation where thereis no mutual knowledge shared between the subjectnarrator and theinvestigator-audience (Hickmann,Kail, & Roland, 1995;Kail & Hickmann, 1992; Kail & Sanchez-Lopez,1997). Second,over halfthe 9 -yearold and adult subjects do infact explicitly mention ‘at night, nighttime’ as the temporal setting for their narratives. However, they do so not only atthe outset in talkingabout thefirst picture butsubsequently, to introduce the event which initiates the plot, for example: “At night, when the boy and his dog were sleeping, the frogjumped outof the jar and escaped.”This is in marked contrast to the preschoolers, only one of whom started to describe the event by saying “Then one day at night [sic].” Moreover, the examples in (1) are not typical of the frog-story sample: Theirsettings are more elaborate than most, including the adults’texts. Again, this couldbe task related, inasmuch as both narrator and interlocutorhave the same pictures in frontof them. The figures in Table 1.1thus need to be somewhat hedged. Methodologically, picture-based elicitationscreate problems for character introduction and the need for providing detailed background information (see the Comparisons Across Elicitation Settings section). This analysis also suggests that, inprinciple, story-setting elements cannot bedefined by a prescribed list of categories such as who, where, when, and why. Rather, story settings need to be analyzed in relation to the particular story that will unfold. Inthe case of the frog story, this means taking into account the relationship between the boy and the frog, as motivating theevents to come. This was minimally achievedby subjects who started outby saying that theboy hasor keeps a frog, that he thinks the frog is cute, more elaborately by those who described how the frog came to be in the boy’s possession (he found it, gotit as a present). Again, almost none of the

6

BERMAN

3- to 4-year-oldsrefer to motivating circumstances, about one third at age 5 to 6 (37%), and twice as many 9-year-oldsand adults. Nature of Setting Elements in Hebrew-Language“Fight” Stories

The dataset for this analysis also includes 12 Hebrew-speaking childrenat ages 3,5,7, and 9, compared with a groupof 1 2 adults.’ To elicit a “fight” story, subjects were asked if they knew what a fight or quarrelwas, and to tell about one they had been involved in.’ Scene-setting elements were defined as all material that preceded the event that initated the quarrel or fight, that is, any verbalreference to when, where, why, or under what circumstances, as well as with whom, the altercation took place. These elements were analyzed into the following categories, ranging from least to most explicit, fromless to moreelaborated, fromjuvenile to mature,as in (2). (2)

Ranking of background-setting elements in personal-experience narratives: No background 1.1 Background element provided by adult input 1.2 InitialEvent 1.3 Initial Event plus formulaic opener, for example, pa’am ‘once’,yom exad ‘one day’ 2. Minimal informational or framing background 2.1 Name of antagonist plus specifying sex or relationship to narrator = protagonist 2.2 Mention of placeor time of initial event 3.Specificframinginformation 3.3 Specification of a particular time and/or place 3.4 Temporal distancing to specify circumstancessurrounding initial event 4. Motivational background, scene-setting orientation 4.1 Temporal distancingto set eventsoff in past time 4.2 Metacognitive orientationto the actof storytellingand/or the nature of quarreling

1.

1 The textsused in the Hebrew-language data-base were elicited from different groups of subjects in the various studies referredto in these sections.However, it seems legitimateto compare results across these populations, since the subjects all shared the following background they are children of educated, middle-class speakersof Hebrew as a first language (like the adultsubjects who serve as controls in each study); the preschoolers attend Hebrew nurseryschool or daycare fromthe age of z and enter kindergartenat age 5 to 6 ;and theschoolchildren are in gradeschool from 6 to 11 or 12years of age,they enter junior high in Grade 7 , and complete high school at the end of Grade 12. z Instructionswere worded as follows: utayodea ma z la-riv, rneriva? hayitapa’arn bi-rneriva?saperli alze,saperalpahrnfle ravt(a). ‘Doyou knowwhat it is to-quarrel, have a-quarrel?Have you ever been ina-quarrel?Tell me aboutit, tell about a time when you-quarreled’.If the subject hesitated, a prompt was provided saper li sipur alrivfle hayita bo. ‘Tell me a story about a quarrel/fight you were=took partin’.

1

Settingthe

Narrative Scene

7

This ranking, as suggested, corresponds to clear a developmental pattern in amount andtype of background setting information providedby respondents. Thus, as illustrated by the excerpts in (3),the youngest children in our sample, 3- to 4-year-old nurseryschoolers (meanage 3;6), typically gave no background at all, but plunged straight into a reportof the events. The only exceptionsto this were when children used a formulaic opener such as words meaning once, o n e day, as semantically nonspecific markers of discourse initiation(see the Story Openers section)or gave the name of the antagonist, without further identifying comment. Older preschoolers,in this sample 5-year-old kindergartners (mean age 5;4), in some cases did the same, but many of them also added a locative frame, specifying the place where the incident occurred, as illustrated in (4). (3) No background scene setting a. ravti i m El’ad ve baxiti ‘I-quarreled with Elad and I-cried’ [Adi, girl, 3;5] b. pa’am Orly hi natna li be’ita a1 ha-rosh i m sirgadol kaze ‘Once Orly she gave me a kickon the-head with (a) big kinda pot’ [Yafit, girl, 3;10] (4) Minimal background scene setting a. ba-gan yalda axat daxfa oti me-ha-nadneda ‘At kindergarten agirl pushed me off-the-swing’ [Efrat, girl, 5;4] b. etmol ba-gan ravti i m xavera sheli Roni ‘Yesterdayat-kindergarten I-quarreled with my (gir1)friend Roni’ [Meital, girl, 5;4] In contrast, some preschoolers,nearly all the 7-year-old (Grade 2) and all the 9-year-old (Grade 4) school children, provided additional framing information, often in the form of some surrounding circumstances or event, as in (sa), orby being highlyspecific about theexact placeor time as in(5b) and (5c), respectively. Older childrenalso quite oftengave two or more different types of framing information(5d, 5e). (5)

More specific framing by circumstances, time, and/or place a. y o m exad sixakti xevel ba-xacer ‘One day I-played[=was playing] jumprope in-the-yard’[Galit, girl, 5;1] b. pa’am hayinu ba-kantry ba-brexa, ve haya li mishkefet kazot. .. ‘Once we were at-the-sports-center in-the-pool, and I had kinda goggles’ [Liron, boy,5;6] c. hayom le yaradnu ba-ma’alit mi-safia... ‘Today when we took the-elevator down from Granny. ..’[Amit, boy,7 ; 6 ] d. pa’am haya li vikuax im imasheli, ze haya ba-telefon, le anicilcalti la’avoda shela. ..

8

BERMAN

‘Once I had (an) argument with my Mom, it was on-the-phone, when I called her at work‘ [Dafna, girl, 9;2] e. ani vexaversheliRonen halaxnula-xanut matanot liknot matana layomuledet she1 Dan. .. ‘Me and my friend Ronen wentto-the gift storeto buy (a) gift for Dan’sbirthday’ [Tal, boy,9 ; 5 ] Interestingly, these more elaborated settings illustrated in (5) were also quite generally set off explicitly from the onset element, or plot initiation, by anovert segmentation marker, typically in the formof expressions such as ve-az‘and then’ or pit’om ‘suddenly’(see the Transition Marker section). In addition,proficient narrators, mainly adults but also some g-year-olds as shown in(5d) and (5e), typicallyprovided some background motivation for the quarrel. They did this by talking about the relations between the antagonists beyond this specific incident, by distancing themselves from the events, by going back in time and setting the reported incident a more ingeneral frame of memories, and alsobyvolunteering“metacognitive” o r “metatextual” comments relatingto fight scriptsin general, or to the storytelling situation. These strategiesare illustrated in (6). (6) Maturely elaborated scene settings

nizkarti. ani ravti im baxur ie haya iti baxeder bakibuc, kie hayiti gar bakibuc. a1 ze ie huhaya maklit lo flirim a1 ha-kaseta ieli, hu haya (h)ores li et hakasetot ... ‘I remember quarrelling witha fellow that was my roommate on the kibbutz, when I was livingon the kibbutz, he usedto record songsoff my tape-cassettes, a.

ruining them’ [yuval, male, 221 b. be-bet sefer yesodi haya pa’am yeled i e hecik li. kar’u lo Zohar S. hu nahag laruc axaray ve lehatrid oti... ‘In grade school there once was a kid that gave me trouble. He was called Zohar S. He used to run after me and bother me’ [yair, male, 281 c. tov, anixoshevetle-saper a1mashehume-ha-gan.haytalixaveranoratova, Enav, b a - p . ve kol hazman hayinu ravot a1 miney shtuyot ... ‘Okay, I think I’ll tell you about something from kindergarten. I had a very close friend, Enav, in kindergarten. And all the we time usedto quarrel about all kinds of stupid things’ [Havatselet, female, 22.1 d. racitie ani asaper lax sipur a1 riv, aval loh ravti im af exad. ani loh ish ?e rav im axerim. ve afpahm loh ravti im af exad. Ka’asti P O ve sham, kabsu alaypo ve sham, betor yeled xatafti makot... ‘You wanted me to tell you (a) story about a quarrel, but I never quarreled with

anybody. I’mnot a person that quarrels with others. And I’ve never quarreled with anyone.I’ve gotten mad hereand there, people have gotten madat me here and there,as a kid, I got beaten up’ [Eran, male, 241

1

Settingthe

NarrativeScene

g

The picture that emerges from these excerpts, one is reinforced that by findings from other personal-experience accounts in Hebrew as in English (e.g., Peterson & McCabe, 198 3) is o f clearly age-related patterns in the ability to take the listener into account in providing adequate background information and scene-setting orientation. Thesecan be summed up in terms of four developmental phases: juvenile, transitional, structured, and proficient: (a) Immature, juvenile narrators provide no setting elements atall, or else only formulaic starters, as in the examplein (3).This is consistent with other studiesthat have noted that young preschool children tend to give little or no background setting, but instead start their stories with “immediate action,” whether they are making up fictive stories (Pradl, 1979), embedding them in conversational interaction (Minami, 1996), or basing them on familiar scripts (Seidman, Nelson, & Gruendel, 1986). This is followed by (b) a transitional phase, when minimal information is provided to identify the relevant participants (in the case of the “fightstory” sample, the antagonist)or the location o f the event. Next, older, school age children typically provide (c)structured scene-setting frames by specific identification of the place and/or time of the events, combined with some temporal distancing, and with sequential events being clearly set off by overt markingof the transition from background to foreground, plotinitiating events. Finally, (d) maturely proficient narrations are not onlyfully structured and temporally distanced by means of initiating elements that distinguish the events to be reported from theand time place of their reporting, they often contain personalized or other evaluative commentary concerning the relationship between the participants, the narrator’s attitude to the events reported and to others like them, and/or to the act of storytelling and reporting on these events.

COMPARISONS ACROSS ELICITATION SETTINGS

The two sets of analyses presented here,on the“frog stories” and “fight stories,” respectively,differ along a number of dimensions, although both deal with narrative texts produced by similar groups of subjects (see note 1). These differences suggest that analysis of scene-setting elements must take account of the particulark i n d o f story being told. In the present case, for example, the frog story is based on the script of an adventure story, and it is in the genre of children’s storybooks. The fight stories, in contrast, are basedon the script of a conflict situation and belong to the genre of personal-experience accounts. In fact, the type of task and the context of text-elicitation turns out to have an impact on the amount as well as the nature of the setting elements provided across different ages. This was revealed by analysis of the overall

1 0

BERMAN

amount of scene-setting, analyzed as the proportion of clauses serving this function across the two types texts.3 of A s shown in Table 1.2,the prediction of development with age in amount of scene setting was not confirmed for the frog story sample. The first line of Table 1.2 shows a consistently low proportion of clauses dedicated to scene setting (the first picture out of a total 24 pictures in the book), between 4% to 7% of all clauses across age-groups. In marked contrast, as shown in the second lineo f Table 1.2, the “fight story” reveals a clear and consistent rise in mean proportion of setting clauses with age, up to10% among preschoolers, around one quarter at school age, and over one third among adults. These findings are robust,as they tally with findings for similar typesof elicitation across other populations. Analyses of frog story texts in other languages from the Berman andSlobin (1994) study, together withFrench data elicited by the same methodology by Kern(1997), reveal similar trends.The first picture, providing the background antecedent to the plot-initiating event of the frog escaping from its jar, yields the samelow figures for adult narrators in English (mean of 5.5% of all clauses in the sample), Spanish(mean 7.6%), and French (mean 7.3%). In marked contrast to these low figures, analysis ofthe setting element in a rangeof other “fight stories”elicited from other Hebrew-speaking school children and adults reveal a closely parallel trend to the original “fight story” sample inTable 1.2. This additional database consisted other of Hebrewlanguage fight storieselicited in much the same way asthe originalset from eight second graders (aged 7to S), 12 fourth graders (aged 9 to lo), and12 students (aged 17 to 18) and adults,each of whom produced two narratives about two separate experiences with aquarrel orfight, one in speech and onein writing (balanced for order of modality). In these fight stories, similar to figures the in the second lineof Table 1.2, the secondand fourthgraders produced anaverage of 2 0 % to 25% background settingclauses out of the totalclauses in their narratives, whereas the adults devoted as many as one third(33%) to one half (49%) of their narratives to background setting clauses. Further evidence for these general trends for “personal experience” stories is that therewas no notable difference between the figures for the narratives produced in writing compared with speech.4 3 The clause, defined in Berman and Slobin (1994) as “any unit that contains a unified predicate ...that expresses a single situation (activity, event, state)” constitutes a unit of analysis highly relevant to the characterizatior. o f narrative texts in both form and content (p. 660). 4 Written narratives reveal another, unique feature marking background scene-setting which also has developmental consequences: More than half o f the adults but almost noneo f the children marked off their story-setting from the initial episode or enabling event graphically, by a separate paragraph. In fact, oneadult, a young computer scientist called Itay, set off his first paragraph by a heading in the margin with the word reka ‘background’and started his second paragraph (both indented, with a two-line space between them) with the one-word heading in the margin ha-ma’ase ‘the incident’. I am grateful to Nurit Assayag o f the Tel Aviv University project on developing literacy for bringing this subject tomy attention.

1

Settingthe

Narrative Scene

11

TABLE 1.2

Mean Percentage o f “Setting” Clauses out ofTotal Clausesin Hebrew Frog Stories Compared With Hebrew Fight Stories, by Age ( N = 12 per age group) Age Group type Story Frog story Fight story

3 yrs

5 YTS

7yrs

Adults 9 yrs

6.6

5.2 9.8

4.5 20.6

5.5

7.2

27.7

36.4

6.4

These figures appear, moreover, highly consistent withother findings for amount of background setting material compared with overall text length as defined by number of clauses across a range of other materials, inEnglish and in Hebrew. The analyses in the rest of this section derive fromless detailed but similarly motivated examinationsof background setting elementsin narrative texts producedby three distinct methodsof elicitation: narration of content of picture series, recapitulation of personal-experience accounts, and makebelieve, fictive stories. The database for picture series consists of Hebrewlanguage materials basedon three sets of four pictures each toldby preschool children aged 4 5 , and 6, comparedwith IO -year-olds and adults (Berman& Katzenberger, 19 9 8; Katzenberger, 19 9 4), on aHebrew replication of the “cat and horse” series used by Hickmann and her associates (Hickmann,19 91; Hickmann, Hendriks, Roland, & Liang, 1996), which elicitedtexts from 15 Hebrew speakersaged 5,7, and11 years compared with 10 adults (Kahanowitz, 19 9 5), and on oralstories basedon a series of pictures about avisit to the zoo by seven Hebrew-speaking preschoolers, and written versions from 14 adults (Berman, in press). The database for personal-experience accountsconsists of a range of Hebrew-language materials on various subjects elicited from children aged 3 to 12 and adults (described in Berman, 1995,1997a).These are supplemented by written andspoken versions of two different fight stories by 48 Hebrew-speaking grade-schooland high-school studentsand 16 adults, and combined with the English-languagetexts in the appendix to Peterson and McCabe (1983). And the materials surveyed for make-believe stories are based, again, on a range of Hebrew-language texts culled from various sources, combined with the largenumber of stories collectedby Pitcher and Prelinger (1963), as published in Sutton-Smith(1981). This surveyof a wide range of materials providesstrong support formy earlier claim regarding “intertask differences in children’s narratives” (Berman, 1995, pp. 295-302). There, the issue at handwas how the typeand context of elicitation affects children’s ability to give expression to principles of narrative discourse organization. In developmental terms, this ranges from immature expression of isolated events, via encoding of temporal sequence and local

BERMAN

l2

relations of causality, on to a global, hierarchically organized action structure. Comparison across different narrativegenres and varied methodsof elicitation (recounting of familiar script, of a personal experience, of the contents of a picture series, a pictured storybook, and film a without words) yielded the conclusion that “narrative abilities...do notdevelop along a uniformly linear curve. ..[since] divergent results emerge in different settings and across different tasks” (Berman, 1995, p. 298). In the present context, wish I to make an analogous claim for the development of children’s ability to start a story by providing relevant,and adequate, background, scene-setting information. That is, here as in other domains of development, task effect needs to be taken into account. Children proved ableto demarcate setting elements better and earlier in personal experience accounts than in narratives basedon a picturebook story. They didso as young as age 3 when they were free to tell about anything that had happened to them, but only from around age 5 when asked to tell specifically about afight theyhad experienced. In general, personal experience accounts appear to provide more authentic contexts for elaborating on scene setting than picture-based elicitations. The examples in(7) are based on aseries of six pictures depicting what happens to two children visiting zoo,a when the monkey snatches theice cream from the younger child (Berman, in press). They suggest that young childrenmay not bother to provide setting elements at all in picture-series narrations. (7)

Opening clausesof three children’s picture-series based “zoo stories” I.

pa’am hayu shney yeladim ve hem halxu im ima shelahem le-gan xayot

‘Once there weretwo kids and they went with their mom to thezoo ... ’ [Doron, boy,6;8] 2. PO ani role yeled ve yalda ve xayot ve az hem... ‘Here I see a boyand a girland animals and then they ...’[Tibi, boy,5;8] 3.

PO

hem be-gan xayot vepo hem mistaklima1 arye’im.

‘Here they’re at the zoo and here they are looking at lions ...’[Batya, girl,4;8] Although they all clearly recognized the “zoo” script situation in the pictures, only from school age werechildren able to provide any kind scene of setting as a frame for theirtexts, and only childrenaged 6 and older produced stories organizedaround an acceptable action structure. This finding is consistent with results for another set of picture seriesas analyzed in Katzenberger (1994). In contrast tothese picture-series elicitations, nonpicture-basedfictional accounts, where children are asked to create imaginary stories, appear to provide a particularly rich context for expressing early scene-setting abilities (as can be inferred from what kindergarten children do in a “pretend-reading” task, as in Segal, 19 9 6). After all, in prose literature,background exposition plays a crucialrole in constructionof narrative texts. Against this background,I suggest that sometypes of narrative-elicitation

1

Settingthe

Narrative Scene

13

tasks and certain communicative situations will promote earlier,and richer, expression of background settings than will others. Thesecan be ranked as in (8), from most toleast likely to elicit appropriate background material from relatively early on. (8)

Ranking of scene-setting evocation, by narrative genre, elicitationmethod, and communicative context Fictive

on own imagination b. basedon known filmor book 2. Veridical Personal-experienceaccounta.outsideinvestigator b. familiar interlocutor Picture-storybook based a. no mutual knowledge 3. Fictive b. mutual knowledge Picture-series based a. no mutual knowledge 4. Fictive b. mutual knowledge 1.

Make-believe fantasy based a.

We can thus explain the disparity Table in 1.2 between the amountof textual material given over to background setting elements in the “frog story” database (type 8.3b) compared with the“fight story”materia1s (type as8.2a) a functionof the differencesin narrative genreand in the elicitation context. I suggest that, in general, as indicated byits ranking in(8.1), make-believe fantasy will be the first type of narrative in which children will provide some scene-setting information. In fact, it is in the context offamiliar materials that young preschoolers have seen, heard,or hadread to them(as listedin 8.1b), that they will first acquire the conventional markingsof story openers suchas ‘once upon atime’ or its Biblical style classical Hebrew counterpart hayo huya pa’am ‘be was once = once therewas’(see Story Openers section). Because the interlocutor needs to be introduced to the fantasy world being created or recreated in the narrative text, adequate background informationis essential for orienting the audience to what is about tobe told.And this is more critical in the case ofa story that is unfamiliar toboth narrator and audience, as in (8.1a), than to one they have shared knowledge of (e.g., a favorite fairytale or well-known fable) as in (8.1b). Next in rank as “setting-evocative’’are personal experience accounts. Here, the factor of mutual knowledge is critical. A s shown by the excerpts from the 3-year-olds in (3) compared with those from the 5-year-olds shown (4), in young children often fail to provide the minimal referential information necessary for an unfamiliar investigator,as in (8.za), in situationsof “no mutualknowledge,” to identify the participants in the event. On the other hand, in fight stories elicited in Hebrewin a situationwhere school children recounted a personal experience to a friend or classmate, often one who had been present at the event, (e.g., situation 8.2b), even teenagers felt no need to specify details of the other participants’ identity, beyond their names, and they tended to provide minimal locative framing if the event took place at school.But these high-school students,

14

BERMAN

like the adultstelling a fight story to a friend, all gave overt expressionto other setting elements, by providing suitably detailed and distanced temporal framing. They also often gave extensive motivational background in termsof the general relationship between the narrator and the other participant(s) in the events, personal predilections of the narrator and/or other participants, and so on. In contrast to such rich setting-evocation in self-constructed narratives, whether fictive or veridical, picture-based elicitation procedures of pictured storybooks (8.3) or picture-series (8.4), appear less far accessible to explicit verbalization of setting elements. Thisis shown, as noted, for therelatively small amount of background information provided in awide range of frogstory texts in different languages, even among adults. And Katzenberger’s (1994) large sample of Hebrew-languagetexts elicited on thebasis of several different picture series from 4-,5-, and 6-year-olds compared with lo-yearolds and adults, reveal that from age 5, children often give some standard “opener” suchas the word for‘once’ (Story Openers section)plus a minimal referent introduction withoutany additional background information prior to the initiating event. Thesingle exception was one 1 0 -year-old, nearly halfof whose clausesabout a series of four pictures showing a woman in a hat store buying a newhat were given over to “distanced”and motivational background setting.5 True, situations of no mutual knowledge, thatis, (8.3a) and (8.4a), enrich the amount and formof referent introduction, as noted for frog storybased studies of this kind (Setting Elements section), and as such theyare better suited to meeting the “presentative” functionof establishing story background. But they, too, fail to stimulate much in the way of the other two functions of story settings: locative and particularly, temporal framing and evaluative motivation. Thisis noteworthy, because picture-basedelicitations have yielded particularly rich analyses of children’s narrative abilities across different languages. These findings highlight a general point of both principle and methodology: Different types of elicitation procedures and communicative contextspromote, or at least allow expressionto, some typesof abilities earlier or more than others (Berman, in press). True, in developmental terms, onceboth narrative competence and storytelling performance are well established, older and more proficient narrators will prove less susceptible to effects of task and context with respect to narrative story-setting as in other domains. Nonetheless, the ranking tentatively proposed in(8) is worth examining under suitably controlledconditions,usingcomparablematerials (e.g., based onthe same theme, topic, or script) across different types of tasks and different developmental phases,to furthertest the prediction thatsetting evocation will be strongest atlevel (%la),weakest at (8.4b). 5 I am grateful to Dr. Katzenberger for making her summary and illustrationsof these data available to me.

1

Setting the Narrative Scene

15

EXPRESSION O F LINGUISTIC FORM/FUNCTION RELATIONS

This final set of analyses focuseson the linguistic forms used for three related narrative functions: to mark narrative openings, to demarcate the transition from scene-settingto narrative events or episode inception, and todistinguish between backgroundsetting elements and narrative events. Story Openers

An early development in markinglinguistic form:function relations is use of a temporal term identifying the text as inthe narrative mode. Thus Pradl’s (1979) study based on thelarge Pitcher and Prelinger (1963) corpus of fictive stories children were asked to tell, noted that only20% of the 2-year-olds began their stories with a formal opening device, whereas this increased to nearly threequarters (73%) among the 5-year-olds. This is consistent with findings from the frog-story sample in Englishand Hebrew, in which nearly all the preschoolers plunged directly into picture description or narration,whereas 23 out of the 24 fourthgraders(9-tolo-year-olds)providedsomeintroduction,and two-thirds of them used whatwe termed “formulaic opening expressions” such as ‘once, once upon a time, oneday’ or their Hebrew equivalents,as described next (Berman& Slobin, 1994, pp. 74-75).6 A term suchas ‘once’ (Hebrew pa’am) specifies that something happened, and it happened in the past. A quarter of the 3-year-olds and nearly half the 5-year-olds opened theirfight stories with this word,or with a similar expression, ‘one time’ (Hebrew pa’am axat),‘one day’ @om exad), and an occasional ‘yesterday’(etmoZ). So did the7- and 9-year-old schoolchildren, but theiruse of these terms differed importantly from that of younger children. Among preschoolers, these temporal openers were invariablytext initial, whereas among older children they could betext internal. For example, 7-year-old David (7;6) started off with h a l a x t i b la-ken im Sa’ar ‘I went once to theclubhouse with Saar’, and 9-year-old Etti (9;7) started her story withani asaper lax riv e; h a p li im axoti ha-gdola. pa’am m a t . ..‘I’ll tell youabout a quarrel I had with my older sister. One time. ...’Moreover, occasionally among 5-year-oldsand invariably with older children, these openers were accompanied by additional setting information about time and/orplace, in line with the general developmental trends noted earlier. In contrast, early use of these narrative openerswas very restricted in function: The children startedoff a storyas having some generic 6 One of these fourth graders but only two of the Hebrew- and English-speaking adults started out with thehighly narratively oriented comment “It’s a story about. ..”This might reflect cultural conventions, since in Kern’s (1997) French sample, which used the same elicitation procedures as the Berman and Slobin (1994) study, overhalf the adults althoughonly one 11-year-old and none o f the younger children started their narratives witha comment along the linesof C’est

une histoire de . . .”

16

BERMAN

“prior-to-the-present” temporal location, but failed to anchor it withinany specific time frame.Use of these openers is thus essentially formulaic,rather than well motivated in terms of the semantics of temporality or the discourse function of temporal framing. But they do show that children are familiar with conventional narrativedevices marking story beginnings in their culture. In the picture-based frog-story corpus,as noted, use of similar expressions, such as English ‘once upon a time’, occurred at the beginningof many of the texts produced by 9-year-olds but in almost none of the younger children’s. The most typical such openerwas in the form pa’adpa’am axathaya yeled ‘once/one time (there)was a-boy’ (used by no fewer than 6 outof 12 Hebrewspeaking 9-year-olds and 3 out of 12 older children, aged 11 to 12). These expressions serve a rather different, though no less’stereotypic, culturally conventional function than the termspa’am/pa’am mat ‘oncelone time’ in the personal-experience fight stories of the younger, preschool children;mark they the startof a children’s fairytale or fictional storybook account.Moreover, four of the 11- to 12-year-old sixth-grader frog stories, but none among they-yearold fourth graders, used an archaically flavored literary type opener in Biblicalstyle Hebrew, in the form of hayo haya pa’am ‘be was once = there once was’. This is the classic opener for Hebrew children’s literature in fairytales and fables, so that this finding ties in with what was noted in the previous section about the importanteffect of genre on narrative settingor expositions. These conclusions are supportedby analysis of make-believe stories written by third-grade 8- to 9-year-olds compared with sixth-grade11- to 12-year-olds asked to make up a story about a child who meets a strange creature on a journey (Argeman, 199 6). Of the younger children,two started outwith yeled exad ‘a boy = child’, two with yom exad ‘one day’, most (7 out of 12) with pa’adpa’am mat ‘once/one time’, and one with the fable-marking hayo haya ‘there was once’. An almost identical breakdown marked the openers of the make-believe stories written by the older group of 11-year-olds,except that two of them started with theclassically flavoredhayo haya opener. This suggests that mode of elicitation (written versus spoken) and narrative genre (makebelievefableversus picturedadventurestory) willevokeearlier, more widespread use of strictly conventionalized story openers. That is, these children were manifesting knowlege not only of the narrative as a type of text, but of literacy-related awareness of subgenres of narrative as well. Moreover, the different linguistic and textual or situational contexts in which a singleterm such as pa’am ‘once’ is used as a story opener supports earlier findings with regard to form:function relations in language acquisition in general, and in the development of narrative abilities specifically (Berman, 1996,1998; Berman & Slobin, 1994; Slobin, 1993). Early uses of a given linguistic form will serve a restricted range of functions, whereas the same superficially identical forms may serve different functions across development. With age, the range of forms used to indicate that a story is about tobegin not

1

Settingthe

Narrative Scene

17

only becomesmore varied and more personalizedor less stereotypic, the forms also tend to be more explicitas markers of a particular narrative genreand/or function. Thus, for example, the young man referred to in as marking note 4 off the background section not onlyby a separate paragraph but also by explicit mention of the word reka ‘background’ in the margin of his written story introduced an oral narrative by means of this same word when telling a friend of his about a quarrelhe had been involved in at work. In the opposite direction, that of the same form servingdifferent functions with age, none of the adult narratives, whether frog-bookbased or personal-experience fight-story accounts, startedout with temporal markerslike pa’am (axat)‘once, one time’ or yom exad ‘one day’. As noted earlier, adults start out their stories with more specific temporal andlor locative framing, e.g.,1halaxti lemale delek ‘Yesterday I went to take gas’ [Hanan, man, 251, lifnev xamesh shanim horay, baali ve ani yacanu le-tiyul...‘Five years ago my-parents, husband, andI went on a trip ... ’[Sara, woman, 401, be-bet sefervesodi haya pa’am yeled‘At grade school there oncewas a boy’ [Yair, man, 281; or else they make some metacognitive comment on their recall or reconstruction of the event, for example,ani rotse le-saper al mikre riv ‘I want to tell about a quarrel incident’ [Shlomo, man, 321, tov, ani xoshevet le-sapera1 mashehu me ha-gan‘Okay, I think I’ll tell about something from kindergarten’ [Havatselet, woman, 223. Temporal adverbs such as yom exad, pa’am‘one day, once’ do occur in the adult narratives, but in a different place, not at the outset, and for a different purpose to markbackground setting off from plot initiation,as next discussed. Transition Markers Consider, next, how narrators mark off or otherwise indicate theboundary between scene setting and plot inception. In writing, this may begraphically marked by meansof paragraphing (see note 4), but in spoken texts,some overt linguistic form is needed to perform this kind of segmentation. Young preschool children use overt, conventional linguistic means to mark story openings even prior to thedevelopment of a well-structured narrative schema, but in contrast, the transition from setting to the events which start the story per se is often blurred and notclearly marked in their texts.Table 1.3shows the expressions used to mark the transition from introductory setting to the plotline chain of events in the Hebrew frog-story texts, where the frog is depicted escaping fromits jar while the boy and dogare asleep in the bed nearby. There is an almost complementary distributionbetween the younger and older speakers in marking the transition, shownby the different clustering of the figures in eachcolumn of Table 1.3,and by the figures in bold, which stand for the favored means at eachage group. Three-year-olds favor zero marking, 5-year-oldsprefer ‘and’, and g-year-olds rely on an explicitly temporal expression. The fact that young children generally provideno overt marker of

18

BERMAN

T A B L E 1.3 Markers of Transition to Plotline Chain of Events in Hebrew Frog Story Texts, by Age (N= 1 2 per agegroup)

Device Zero marking ve ‘and‘ (ve) hine ‘and here(on)’ az ‘then, so’ pit’om ‘suddenly’ axarkax ‘afterwards’ yam exad ‘oneday’ benatayim ‘meanwhile’ balayla ‘at night’ balaylakie ‘atnightwhen’ bizman ;e ‘while (that)’

3 Yrs

5 Yrs

9 yrs

6

1

5

6

-

2

-

1

-

2

1

-

2 1

2

7

-

Adults 2

1 1

1

2 2

3

narrative-event inception indicates failureto distinguish between background setting and foreground plotline.If 3-year-olds do mark subsequent events versus prior states, theyuse the vague, general connector ve ‘and’, in away as yet laclang in conventional syntaxor semantic content, and meetingno normative narrative function (Berman,1996; Peterson & McCabe, 1991). Older speakers almost always mark the boundaryexplicitly, either bythe general episode marker‘one day’, or by more specific terms for points in time (‘at night’) or duration(‘while the boy slept’). Adults use a wider range of forms than otherage groups, and they avoid sequential expressionslike ‘suddenly,and then, after that’, which are favored by school-age children. Besides, where the youngest and oldest groups share surface forms, theseserve quite distinct functions. Zero marking in the case of the 3-year-olds is indicative of their picture-by-picture description of isolated scenes and events. Adultswho fail to use an overt marker of plot inception rely on other devices to mark the transition from background setting to foreground plot-a switch in verb tenseor a shift from stative to dynamic predicates7 The transition markers used by the 5- and 9-year-olds, again, illustratemore general trends in the development of narrative form-linguistic function relations. Five-year-old children reveal 7 The locative hine ‘and here’ also functions differently in the younger and older texts: For the little children, it has a deictic spatial function, corresponding to theuse of the temporaldeictic now, like French voici; for adults, Hebrew hine is anaphoric, it marksoff a given point in thechain of events under discussion. A similar switch from a deictic to an anaphoric, discourse-motivated function occurs with the time word arshav, much likeits English counterpart ‘now’(e.g., The boyis in d a n g e r m that the owl has been disturbed).

1

Settingthe NarrativeScene

1g

command of narrative sequentiality through markers of linear clause-chaining: multifunctional ‘and’, along with sequential terms like ‘then, suddenly, afterwards’. Nine-year-olds are more like adults in segmenting background setting from plot initiation throughuse of specificallytemporal termslike ‘meanwhile, that night’. In the fight-story sample, too, 3-year-olds only occasionally marked off the initial chain of eventsby a sequential term suchas az ‘then, so’, axarkax ‘afierwards’, or pit’om ‘suddenly’. These expressions servethis transition-marking function in the bulk of the children’s fight stories from age 5 years up, for example, g hitxilu ca’akot ‘sohhen (there) started shouting’[Shay, boy, 5;0], pit’om yeled exad shovav kafats‘Suddenly a naughty kidjumped (out)’[Galit, girl, 5;1], az axarey ze hu omer ‘And so after that he said”[Tomer, boy, 7;5]. The adults rarely used the termpit’om, which serves as a typical marker of episode initiation in children’s storybooks. And if they did,it was the more literary, high-register equivalent Ie-feta ‘all-of a sudden’ (e.g., le-feta xash Avi be-ra ‘of-a-sudden, Avi was taken bad = ill’ [Sara, woman, 40]), in line with what was found for the Hebrew frog-story sample as well (Berman & Slobin, 1994, p. 301). In contrast tothe children, adults mainlyused the punctual term (az) yom exad ‘(then) oneday’ as transition markers; for example, an adultfight story of 38 clauses long about howin junior high theyused to throw things down on people in the street below started withIO background introductory clauses, then switchedto theinitial event as follows: azyom exad lakaxti tapuax Se heveti me ha-bayit‘So one day I-took an apple that I-brought from home ...’ [Udi, man, 231. In general, temporal markersof transition from background to plot onset used by older speakers are more specific, for example, boker exad ‘one morning’ [Sarit, woman,211, corresponding to the transition-marking ba-layla ‘at night’ of the frog story. They tend,also, to be more detailed, and often introduce an embedded temporalclause, for example, ba-yom bo hexel ha-kurs ‘on-the-day on-which started the-course’ [Idan, man, 221, yom exad Se tiyalti it0 ‘One daywhen I was out with-him= the dog’ [Shlomo, man, 311, yom exad, kje hu hecik li ‘One day, when he bothered me’ [Yair,man, 281. A similar preference for a particular form to mark the shift from scene setting to the startof the action among older Hebrew speakerswas even more marked in another narrative task. Three- and 4-year-old preschool children, 11-year-old sixth graders and adults were asked to make up a story based on a large picture showing an old man carrying asack of fish walking toward a house where a woman and children stand waiting on the porch (Ben-Haviv,19 9 6). More than half the younger children started theirtexts with the expressions pa’am ‘once’ or yom exad ‘one day’, showing that they knew they were supposed to “tell a story.” The school children and adults withonly one exception used similar expressions, for example,pa’am axat ‘one time’, yorn exad ‘one day’, boker exad ‘one morning’ at a point three to four clauses into their narrations. Thesetemporaladverbsservedtoindicateaswitchfromscene-setting

20

BERMAN

background description to reporting thenarrative chain of events. In marking this transition, too, the identical linguistic forms serve different narrative functions at different phases in the development of storytelling abilities. TenseIAspect Shifts

This heading concerns the abilityto encode rhetorical alternations between background setting and foreground plot elements. I examined use of tense/aspectshiftingto distinguish story introductions from the chain of plotline events, since grammatical aspectis recognized as a key means for distinguishing foreground and background elements in narrative (e.g., Berman & Slobin, 19g 4, pp. 6-9; Chvany, 1985; Hopper, 1982; Labov, 1972; Reinhart, 1984). Modern Hebrew, unlike theclassical Biblical language, does not mark aspectual distinctions grammaticallyby inflections on the verb, so that today’s Hebrew speakers need onlymark theinflectional distinction between finite verbs marked for past compared with presentand future forms (Berman & Dromi, 19 84; Ravid, 19g 5, pp. 42-45). Two relevant findings emerged from our large-scale crosslinguistic studyinthisrespect.First, we found almost no evidencefor linguistic compensation, defined as expressing by lexical means notions that are not morphologically grammaticized in the language. More specifically, we noted that “with regard to verbal aspect, we found onlyrare instances ofattempts in German and Hebrew to add distinctionsof punctuality or durativity that are notmarkedgrammaticallyinthelanguage”(Berman & Slobin, 1994, pp. 621-622). Second, in the Hebrew frog-story corpus, narrators “use tense shiftingas a means of global discourse organization,”ofone whose functionsis “to set offbackground settings...from the central body of the plot”(Berman & Slobin, 19 94, p. 29 5).But narratively motivated deploymentof tense shiftingis restricted in severalways. First, tense shifts are only from past to present or present to past, dependingon which tense the textwas anchored in in general. Second, onlysome outof the 16 adults in the Hebrew sample (Berman, 1988) shifted tenses to a noticeable extent; and only some of these didso for the purpose of distinguishing background settings from the main plotline. Third, developmental perspective, none of the Hebrew-speaking children used tense shifting as a device for global narrative organization in thefrog-story sample; for example, school-age children used it asa local device to express the temporal relations between complementclauses and their matrix predicates (Shen & Berman, 19g 7). Global text-level tense shiftingwas a peculiarly adultdevice, not employed even by g - to lo-year-old fourth graders with full command of complex syntaxand global narrative action structure. For purposes of the present study, I examined a range of other narrative texts produced by Hebrew-speaking children and adults see to whether tense shifting would serve to distinguishbackgroundsettingororientationfromthe foreground narrativeevents. My hypothesis was that in nonpicture-based narra-

1

SettingtheNarrativeScene

21

tives, present-tense benoni ‘intermediate’ participial forms would function to set off background situations from foregroundevents. And indeed, the findings for the Hebrew frog-story corpuswere strongly confirmedin these other samples, too: Only older speakers, and only someof them, used tense shifting to serve the narrative functionof marlung off story beginnings from their continuation. This confirms the prediction that, withage, the particular elicitation setting exerts less effect on narrative production than amongyounger subjects. Moreover, in one sample, in which texts were elicited from older, teenage children, they behaved more like the adults in this connection than did younger grade schoolers. The impact of increased exposure different to types of narrative and othertext types and well-establishedliteracy evidently makes 12-year-olds morefamiliar with a range of cultural conventionsand rhetorical options of the narrative genre. A second findingalso went beyond what emerged from the Hebrew frogstory sample. Narrators used a rangeof other formal options in addition to present/past-tense shifts to distinguishsetting from story, and they didthis similarly in quite different contexts. These included(a) an interview-type situation, in which Israeli adults were asked to tell about their experiencesin high school and the army; (b) elicitation an setting, in which childrenand adultswere asked to pretend theywere telling a story based on large a colored picture to their friends or their pupils at nursery school; and (c) personal-experience accounts as represented by the fight-story sample. Inall these settings, narrators whoare characterizable as “proficient” used a range of devices to distinguish between predications in the backgroundsettings and those describing narrativeplotline events.This distinction is achieved by shifting between the small repertoire of relevant tense/aspect marking forms in the language: present tensebenoni ‘intermediate’ forms, whichare also participial in function; past tense forms inflected for person as wellas number andgender, whichcover the whole range of English past-tense forms -progressive and perfect as wellas simple; and the complex form of haya + benoni ‘wadwere participle’, equivalent to English ‘would do, used to do’. The excerpts in (9) and (IO) illustrate tense/aspect switches used to distinguish setting from narrative-event predicates in our Hebrew narrative sample: from present-tense (participial) forms for background setting to the past tensein event recounting(9.1); shifting from past to present tense in a historical or narrative present (9.2); shifting between the complex form of habitual past followed by the unmarked simple past tense (10.1); and simple past followed by complex habitualpast, as in (10.2).

+

(g)

Switches between Present [Participial]and Past Tense 1.

-

Present Past Tense [Present = Participial] a. misphaxat Yisraeli & ornnarn misphaxa ktana. y& ba rak saba, savta, shney yeladim ve zug horim. azzo & mixphaxa rne’usheret ve smexa. hasaba ve ha-savta & ba-kfar ve le-yadam shoxenet brexat dagim. & exad ha-saba hexlit. ..

22

BERMAN

‘TheYisraelifamily h actuallyjustasmallfamily.Theyonly a grandpa, grandma, two kidsand parents. So this & one happy and contented family. The grandparents live in a village, with a fishpond that lies nearby. One day, the grandpa decided...’[Pnina, girl,n, 7th grade, picture-based fiction-continues all in past tense] b. tov. ani m t i e nog’im li ba-dvarim, j e mit’askim li im hadvarim baxeder. yom exadaxoti Yael hexlita . . . ‘Okay,itwhen(people) touch my things, mess around with the things in my room. One daymy sister Yael decided ...’[Hila, girl,13,7th grade, fight story] c. lifney be’erex shvuayim noda li, l e ani nosa’at le-xu/ be-ta’arixi e & & im mivxan be-anglitsheli, aznigashti la-rnora le-anglitsheli ., , ‘About two weeks agoI learned thatI g~ = am going abroadon a date that conflictswith myEnglish test, [= then] I-went-up to myEnglish teacher ...’[Merav, girl,16, nth grade] 2.

-

Past Present [Present = Historical, Narrative Present] etmol halaxti le-male delek ba-oto ha-tsahov ve k s e w lesham, bederex klal ani memaleki ha-ovdim be-taxanot ha-delekmit’aclim laasot et avooto betox datam. az vacati me ha’oto ve lakaxti et ekdax ha-delek ’ve hamexonit, hitxalti le-male delek ve hu mistake/ alay kaxa, amarti lo j e ani m e lemale shemen,azar li le-male shemen. axarev ze ani& le-shalem lo im ha-viza, kmo i e ani meshalem bederexklal, ve bederex klalani tamidSam lev, bekicur, hu-r li i e ha-mexir ha-kolelhu ... ‘YesterdayI went to fill up the yellow car with gas, and when I there, I

usually do it because the guys working there too lazy to do it properly. So I ofmycar and took the hose and inserted it, I started to fillup, and he looksat me in a weird kind of way, and I told him I oil as well, (he)helpedmewith that. After that, I to pay him,with my credit card, likeI always W ,I usually watch what he h, to cut a long story short, he me the price is ...’[Hanan, man, 25, fight story, continues in

present tense for rest of story, until last 8 clauses out of 80 = the coda, also introduced by “to cut a long story short’q

It is not by chance that there are three examples (9.1) in of shifting from present to past, from older school children, but only one example of shifting from pastto present, from an adult. general, In across our database, there were far more examplesof the first than ofthe latter shift between the two tense forms. This might seem surprising, because past tense (basically perfective though also possible with durative predications in Hebrew) might seem better suited to the anterior nature of background, scene-setting situations. However, as noted, in Hebrew present-tense forms also function as nontensed participials in complement andadverbial clauses expressing attendant circumstances. Thus, from lateschoolage, but notbefore then, narratorsshowed the impact of

1

Settingthe Narrative Scene

23

Biblical and other literary fiction for expressing narrative temporality and background-foreground distinctions by means of the participial-(generic or durative) present for setting versus use ofthe morecompletive, sequential pasttense forms fornarrative events. The reverse example in (9.2) is lesstypical and reflects a highly individual “DamonRunyonish” type ofstyle, which only afew adults and noneof the younger subjects adopted. As noted, shifting between present to past and past to present to mark off story scene-setting from story plotline is only onedevice used by proficient Hebrew-speaking narrators. Another is by contrasting the simple or perfective past with the complex habitual, durativepast form. This is overtly marked by combining the past-tense form of the verb huyu ‘be’ (or any of its alternants in 1st and 2nd person, singular vs. plural) as an auxiliary with the participial, present tense form of the main verb(which agrees with the subject in number and gender). This quite common verb form never once occurred in the Hebrew frog-story sample, and it is extremely rare in the conversational usage of preschool children through age 5 (Berman & Dromi, 1984). But it does serve proficient narrators as a rhetorical option for formally marking off background settings from the foreground narrative chainof events, or vice versa, as illustrated in (10). (10)

Shifting between Simple (Perfective) and Complex (Habitual) Past Tense: 1.

-

Habitual Past [=haya ‘waslwere+ Benoni Participle’] Simple Past a. zelifneyshana,veyeladimba-kitasheli h a p osimshtuyot, mitkashrim habaytave ze. Gyeled e x a d d v ie anihitkasharti elav ... ‘It was last year,and the kids in my class were doing crazy-things, & people at home and so on. [=then] one kid thought that I (had) called him.. .’[Tal, boy, 12;5,7th grade] b. li xavera axatie hi hayta mexatetet ba’af ve ani haviti koseset cipornayim, hayinuvoshvot axatleyad ha-shniya, ve haviti rava ita, haviti omeret la, haviti tso’eket aleha, ve hi havta omeretli ....azpa’am halaxti ita makot bemizderon bet ha-sefer ‘I had a friend in first grade, that was uicking [=used to pick] her nose, and

I was biting my nails, we were sitting next to each other,and I was arming with her, I was saying to her,I was shouting at her, and she was saving to me ....So once I simply got into a fight with her the in school corridor. [Shani, woman,23,continues all the rest in simple past tense] 2.

-

Simple Past Habitual Past

loh & lahemmusagex le-tape1 be-tinok,azhemotale-imuts,aval ze sipur axerlegamrey, ex ve lama hi e a kax. ha-sabasheli axarey kama shanim nisa le-baxura tse’ira bat 17, ve & lahem od shney yeladim beyaxad. ha-aba sheli &l be-mosdot, & lo aba ve ima aval hu kmo ba-sipurim im ima xoregetrasha’itie hayta me’ira otam be-arba ba-boker ve

24

BERMAN

otam me ha-mita, kulam h a p kamim be-arba ba-boker lenakot et ha-bayit, hayta rneshuga’at le-nikayon.be-shlavmesuvam ha-aba s h e l i m r le-kibuts, hu& sham shanim, Dapash sham et ha-ima sheli ... ‘They didn’t have a clue how to take care of a baby, so they g a ~ eher up for adoption, but that is a whole other story, how and why it hapened that they did so. My grandfather after a few years married a young girl17, of and they had another two kids together. My father up in institutions, h e had a mother and father but he like in the storybooks with a wicked stepmother who was waking[=used to wake] them up at four in the morning and (m) throwing them out of bed, all of them were getting up at four a.m. to clean the house, she was compulsive about cleanliness .. met my ..At some uoint my dad moved to a kibbutz, he years there, mother there’ [Chaya, woman,33, telling lifestory to a friend]

Along with useof tense/aspectshiftingtodistinguishbackground circumstances from foregroundedevents, more mature orproficient Hebrew narrators alternate predicatesin two additionalways. First,they rely heavilyon the verb h a y to indicate both copula‘be’ and possessive ‘have’in background clauses, in contrast to the lexically specific verbs that they prefer in the sequential part of the narrative. Second, narratorsuse stative-durative verbsas background predicates, and activity or event verbselsewhere; that is, they make use of inherent aspector Aktionsarten distinctions toset off background from foregrounded events. These findingsfor how Hebrew speakers alternate across predicate types in order to markoff different components of their stories illustrate several more general themes. In crosslinguistic terms, speakers will rely on the formal options made available to them by the typological structure of their native language, rather than seeking to use “compensatory” periphrastic means for marking distinctions not made in their grammar. On the other hand, proficient speakers, and they alone, resort to full a range of textual devices for marking relevant distinctions, across a range of forms whichis not immediately obvious from grammatical oreven lexical analysis at the level of the single sentence. Furthermore, proficient narrators deploy thesedevices in a way that is not accessible to younger, less proficient speakers in constructing narrativetexts. Besides, even among fully proficient narrators, use of these devices is optional rather thanobligatory. Narrative texts in Hebrew sound perfectly well formed if they are constructed entirely in past or in present tense, or without any surface marking of habitual past aspect contrasting with simple past tense. However, the ability to exploit such rhetorical options gives the narratives constructed by skilled narrators a textual flavor, a richnessand variety whichare the hallmark of “good” storytellers and storytelling.

1

Setting the NarrativeScene

25

CONCLUSIONS

This study has confirmedfindings of prior research on narrative development to theeffect that youngpreschool children do notappear to recognize the need to provide their audience with relevant background information.Subsequently, at a more structured,middle-level phase of development, narrators provide at least the minimal background informationneeded to frame events in place and time, and they occasionally add motivation for theevents that will ensue. However, metacognitive comments on the taskitself and/or onits thematic content or on the script itself (say, of an adventure storyor a personal experience with a conflict situation) are given only by mature narrators,reflecting a quite different type and level of communicative competence.Moreover, as I have noted elsewhere (Berman, 1988,1995), thegreatest individual variationis found at the two extremes, among theyoungest children and the adults.Some adults tell stories as straightforwardlyinformative and well structured as school children’s, while other adultsdevote as much as 5 0 % of their texts to background before proceeding to the onset of the action. The question of what children’s narrative abilities can tellus about their knowledge of language is not a simple one, because narrative construction is a domain in which linguistic structure interacts in complex ways with general cognitive faculties (Berman & Katzenberger, 1998; Shatz, 1984). These include the ability to give expression to aninternalized narrative schema in the formof an action structure organized arounda goal or problem, attempts tomeet this goal, and a resolution. Also dependent oncognitive underpinnings is the ability to provide adequate and appropriatebackground information to set the scene for the story thatis about to unfold. Nonetheless, certain common themes emerge to illuminate how children develop the ability touse linguistic forms for meeting such narrative functions. These themes are shared by the findings of the large-scale crosslinguistic “frog-story” study of Dan Slobin and ourcollaborators (Berman& Slobin, 1994); by the analysis of the expression of temporality and connectivityin five different contexts used for narrative elicitation among Hebrew-speaking subjects (Berman, 19 9 5); and by the morespecialized study of story-beginnings presented here. First, from the pointof view of form:function relations, the same surface forms (e.g., the Hebrew counterparts of ‘once, one day’) fulfil different narrative functions with age. Moreover, some forms initially serve in only restricted contexts, but with time come to meet a wider range of narrative functions. Thus, young childrenuse stereotypic lexical items to introduce their stories, whereas mature narratorsrely on less conventional rhetorical devices to set off background orienting elements from the mainstoryline. Among the youngest narrators, the distinctionbetween background and foregroundedelements is often unmarked orinitially blurred, whereas subsequently it is marked by relatively nonexplicit additive or temporalexpressions like those meaning ‘and

26

BERMAN

(then), after that’. Only later in development is the transition from scene setting to plot onsetclearly marked by explicit lexical as wellas grammatical devices, including tense/aspectshifting in some cases. Second, and relatedly, most of the relevant linguistic forms areavailable from early on, for example use ofpast tense markingof verbs or lexical markers of temporal sequencelike one time, afterwards. Yet even where childrendo have command of the relevantlinguistic forms at thelevel of the simple clauseand, later on, for relating adjacent clauses, it takes them a long time to learn how to deploy these formsboth flexibly and appropriately in the context of extended discourse. In the present context, they need to know which linguistic forms to use in order to distinguish background scene-setting elements from the foreground chainof narrative events. And they mustdo so by using appropriate lexical markers of the transition andby flexible shifting between predicate semantics, tense, and aspect in background versus foreground elements. Furthermore, some forms do not appear to be used atall until quite late. Examples includeuse of the past perfect in Englishand Spanish (Kupersmidt, 199 6 ; SebastiPn & Slobin, 1994), use of syntactic passives in Hebrew (Berman, 1997b) and,as shown here, use of Hebrew habitual past aspect marking. These findings provide strong motivation for further examination of the more general issue of “late acquisitions” and the need to accountfor the delay in emergence of some forms compared with others (Berman, 1998; Ravid & Avidor, 1998). These findingspoint to the importance of including adultsubjects as a basis for comparison and for evaluating the range of options used by proficient speakers in different types of narratives. The present study shows that we should include teenage narrators,too, as was done tosuch fine effect by Labov (1972). Adolescents in general, and high school students in particular, can illuminate in importantways how developing narrativeabilities and linguistic form:narrative function relations are affected by school-based literacy and increased exposure toand awareness of different types of narrative genres and the rhetorical options suited to each one. It seems to through take to adulthood until this knowledgeis further incorporated into a personalstyle and the narrative stance that each individualselects to deploy in anygiven context. Next, as in other domainsof development, taskeffect is relevant here, too. Children proved able mark to off setting elements betterand earlier in personal experience accountsthan in narratives basedon a picturebookstory. And they did so as young as age 3 when they were free to tell about anything that had happened to them, but only from around age 5 when asked to tell specifically about a fight they had experienced. In general, personal experience accounts appear to provide more authentic contexts for elaborating on scene setting than do picture-based tasks. These preliminary findings indicate that, as noted, the methodological and developmental issue of task effect could be illuminated by in-depth, suitably controlled studies of how andwhen each setting elementis expressed acrossdifferent narrative genresand indifferent elicitation settings.

1

SettingtheNarrativeScene

27

Additional avenuesfor further research that emerge from this study are indepth examination of crosslinguistic and crosscultural differences that might affect how scene-setting circumstancesas distinguished from plotline events are expressed across development, for example, in languages withrich tense/aspect distinctions or in cultures with highly conventionalized formats for this purpose. Finally, as a possible sourceof new insights in the domain of general as well asdevelopmentally motivated narrative research, it would seemof interest to compare suchanalyses of scene-setting elements withthe extent and way in which children and adults give expression to the coda in different types and contexts of narrative production. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Research on which this studyis based was funded by grants from the US.-Israel Binational Science Foundation to R.A. Berman and D. I. Slobin of the University of California, Berkeley, from theLinguistics Program of the National Science Foundation to D. I. Slobin, and from the Israel Science Foundation to R. A. Berman and D. D. Ravid of Tel Aviv University. The authoris indebted to students who participated in her seminar on narrative development Tel Aviv at University in theyears 199 5-19 9 7 for their assistance in providingdata, toDr. Irit Katzenbergerfor her invaluable help in data collection and analysis, and to Iris Levin and Yeshayahu Shen of Tel Aviv University as well as to the editorsof this volumefor their valuable commentson earlier drafts. Responsibility for remaining inadequaciesrests with the authoralone. REFERENCES

Argeman, K.(1996). Sipurey bdaya shel talmidim be-alpe U bixtav [Schoolchildrens’ make-believe stories in speech and writing]. Tel AvivUniversity seminar paper. Bamberg, M,, & Damrad-Frye, R.(19 91).O n the ability to provide evaluative comments. Journal of Child Language, 18,689-710. Bazanella, C., & Calleri ,D. (19 9 1). Tense coherence and grounding inchildren’s narratives. Text, 11, 175-187. Ben-Haviv, 0. (1996). Hashva’a beyn rexiv ha-”reka” be-sipureyhem she1 yeladim bney 3,7, ve 12 shanim ve shel mevugarim [A comparison of the “setting” component in thenarratives of children aged 3,7, and12 years and adults]. Tel Aviv University seminar paper. Berman, R.A. (1988). On theability to relate events in narrative.DiscourseProcesses, 11, 469-497. Berman, R.A. (1993). The developmentof language use: Expressing perspectives on a scene. InE. Dromi (Ed.), Language and cognition: A developmentalperspective(pp. 172-201). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Berman, R.A. (1995). Narrativecompetence andstorytelling performance: how children tell stories in different contexts. Journal ofNarrative andLife History, 5,285-314. Berman, R.A. (1996). Form and function indeveloping narrativeskills. In D. I. Slobin, J.Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis, & J. Gu (Eds.), Social interaction, social context, and language (pp. 243-268). Malwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Berman, R.A. (1997a). Narrativetheory andnarrative development:The Labovian impact. Journal ofNarrative and LifeHistory, 7,235-244.

28

BERMAN

Berman, R. A. (1997b). Preliterate knowledgeof language. In C. Portecovo (Ed.), Writing development:An interdisciplinary view(pp. 61-76). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Berman, R. A. (1997~).Developing form/function relations in narrative text production. Lenguas Modernas, 24, 45-60. Berman, R. A. (1998, January). Emergence and mastery in language development. Talk presented to Linguistics Colloqium, Tel Aviv University. Berman, R. A., (199 9). Bilingual proficiencylproficient bilingualism: Insights from Hebrew-English narratives. InG. Extra &L. Verhoeven (Eds.), Bilingualism and migration (pp. 187-208). Berlin: Mouton de-Gruyter. Berman, R. A. (in press). The role of context in developing narrative abilities: The frogstory findings in lightof other narrative genresand elicitation settings. In S. Stromqvist & L. Verhoeven (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: Variation acrosslanguages, cultures, and genres. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Berman, R. A., & Dromi, E. (1984). O n marking time withoutaspect in child language. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 23,21-32. Berman, R. A., & Katzenberger, I. (1998). Cognitive and linguistic factors indevelopment of picture-series narration. In A. G. Ramat& M. Chini (Eds.), Organization of learners’texts, Studia italiani i linguistica theoratica e applicata(special issue), 27,21-47. Berman, R. A., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Chvany, C. V. (1985). Backgrounded properties and plotline imperfectives: Towards a theory of grounding. In M.S. Flier & A. Timberlake (Eds.), The scope of Slavic aspect (pp. 247-273). Columbus, Ohio:Slavica. Giora, R.,& Shen,Y. (19 94). Degrees of narrativity and strategies of semantic reduction.Poetics, 22, 447-458. Herman, J. (1996). “Grenouille, whereare you?” Cross-linguistic transfer in bilingualkindergartners learning toread. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Hickmann, M. (1991). The development of discoursecohesion: Some functional and crosslinguistic issues. In G. Piiraut-Le-Bonniec & M. Dolitsky (Eds.), Language bases ...discourse bases: some aspects of contemporary French language psycholinguistic research (pp. 157-185). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hickmann, M , , Hendriks, H.,Roland, F., & Liang, J. (1996). The marking of new information in children’s narratives: A comparison of English, French, German, Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Child Language, 23, 59 1-6 2 0 . Hickmann, M,,Kail, M,, &Roland, F. (1995). Cohesive and anaphoricrelations inFrench children’s narratives as a function of mutual knowledge. First Language, 15,277-300. Hopper, P. S. (1982). Aspect and foregrounding indiscourse. In T.Giv6n (Ed.), Discourse and syntux: Syntax and semantics, Vol. 12 (pp. 213--241). New York Academic Press. Kahanowitz, S. (1995). Darxey ha-rifrur be-sipurey yeladim U mevugarim ]Expression of reference in the stories of childrenand adults]. Tel AvivUniversity seminar paper. Kail, M,, & Hickmann, M. (1992). French children’s ability to introducereferents in narratives as a function of mutual knowledge. First Language, 12,73-94. Kail, M,, & Sanchez-Lopez, I. (1997). Referent introductions inSpanish narrativesas a function of contextual constraints:A crosslinguistic perspective. First Language, 17,103-130. Katzenberger, I. (1994). Hayexolet lesaper sipur al piy sidrat tmunot:hebetimkognitiviyim, leshoniyim, ve hitpatxutiyim [Cognitive, linguistic, and developmental factors in the narration of picture series]. TelAviv University unpublished doctoral dissertation. Kern, S. (1997). Comment les enfrantsjonglent avec les contraintes communicationnelles, discursives et linguistiques dans la production d’une narration [How children juggle communication, discourse, and linguistic constraints in the productionof a narrative]. Unpublished doctoral dis-

1

SettingtheNarrativeScene

29

sertation, Universite Lumikre-Lyon 2. Kernan, K. T.(1977). Semantic and expressive elaboration in children’s narratives. In S. Ervin-Tripp &C. Mitchell-Kernan (Eds.), Child discourse(pp. 91-104). New York: AcademicPress. Kupersmitd, J. (1996). Tense-aspect marking in Spanish-Hebrew bilingual narratives. Tel Aviv University seminar paper Labov, W. (1972). The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. In W. Labov (Ed.), Language in the inner city(pp.355-3516), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, whereareyou!NewYork Dial Press. Menig-Peterson, P,, & McCabe,A. (1978). Children’s orientation of a listener to thecontext oftheir narratives. DevelopmentalPsychology, 14, 9 2 - 9 2 , Minami, M. (1996). Japanese preschool children’s narrative development. First Language, 16, 339-364. Oz, A. (1996). Matxilim sipur[The storybegins]. Jerusalem: Keter Publishers. Peterson, C. (1990). The who, when, and where of early narratives. Journal ofchild Language, 17, 433-456. Peterson, C.,& McCabe, A. (1983). Developmentalpsycholinguistics:Three ways oflookingat a child’s narrative. New York:Plenum. Peterson, C.,& McCabe, A. (1991). Linking connective use to connective macrostructure. In A. McCabe & C. Peterson (Eds.), Developing narrative structure (pp. 29-54). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pitcher, E. G., & Prelinger, E. (1963). Children tell stories: A n analysis offantasy. New York: International Universities Press. Pradl, G.M. (1979). Learning howto begin and enda story. Language Arts, 56,21-25. Polanyi, L.(1985). Telling the Americanstory. Norwood, NJ:Ablex. Ravid, D. (1995). Language change in child and adult Hebrew:Psycholinguisticperspectives.Oxford, England: OxfordUniversity Press. Ravid, D., & Avidor, S. (1998). Acquisition of derived nominals in Hebrew: Developmental and linguistic principles. Journal ofchildLanguage, 25, 229-266. Reilly, J. S. (1992). How totell a good story: The intersection of language and affect in children’s narratives. Journal ofNarrative andLife History, 2,355-377. Reinhart, T. (1984). Principles of gestalt perception in the temporalorganization of narrative texts. Linguistics, 22,779-809. Reinhart, T. (1995). Mi-tekst le-mashmaut: Emca’ey ha’araxa [From text to meaning: Strategies of evaluation]. In Y. Shen (Ed.), Cognitive aspects of narrative structure (pp. 4-37). Tel Aviv University: The Porter Institute [inHebrew]. Rumelhart, D. E. (1975). Notes on a schema for stories. In D. G. Bobrow & A. Collins (Eds.), Representation and understanding: Studies in cognitive science (pp. 211-236). New York: Academic Press. Said, E. A. (1978). Beginnings: Intention and method.Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press. Sebastian, E., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Development of linguistic forms: Spanish.In R. A. Berman & D. I. Slobin (Eds.), Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study (pp. 239-284). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Segal, R. (1996). Kri’at sefer “keilu” bekerev yaldeygan bi-tna’ey divuv shonim[Kindergartners, “pretend-reading” intwo different conditions]. Tel AvivUniversity seminar paper. Seidman, S., Nelson, K., & Gruendel, J. (1986). Make believe scripts: The transformationof ERS in fantasy. In K. Nelson (Ed.), Event knowledge: Structure and function in development (pp. 161-188). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Shatz, M. (1984). A song without music and other stories: How cognitive process constraintsaffect children’s oral and writtennarratives. In D. Schiffrin (Ed.), Meaning,form, and use in context: Linguistic applications (pp. 313-324). Washington, DC: GeorgetownUniversity Press. Shen,Y. (1988). The X-Bar grammar for stories: Story grammar revisited. Text, 9,415-467.

70

BERMAN

Shen, Y., & Berman, R.(1997). From isolated event to global action-structure. InJShimron (Ed.), Psycholinguistic studies in Israel: Language acquisition, reading and writing (pp.119-145). Jerusalem: The Magnes Press,the Hebrew University [in Hebrew]. Slobin, D. l. (1993). Passives and alternatives in children’s narratives in English, Spanish, German, and Turkish. In B. Fox & P. J. Hopper (Eds.), Voice: Form and function (pp. 341-364). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Sternberg, M.(1978). Expositional modes and temporal ordering infiction. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Sutton-Smith, B. (1981). Thefolk stories ofchildren. Philadelphia: Universityof Pennsylvania Press. Umiker-Sebeok, D. J. (1979). Preschool children’s intraconversational narratives.Journal o f c h i l d Language, 6,91-109. Van Dijk,T. (1976). Philosophyof action and theoryof narratives. Poetics, 5,287-338. Wlgglesworth,G. (19 92). Investigating children’s cognitive and linguistic development through narrative. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,La Trobe University, Australia.

Representation of Movement in European Portuguese: A Study of Children’s Narratives

HANNA JAKUBOWICZ B A T O R ~ O

Open University, Lisbon, Portugal ISABEL HUB FARIA

University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

A significant part of recent language acquisition research has focusedon the organization of information in discourse, with special reference to person, space, and time (Berman & Slobin, 1994; Hendriks, 1993; Hickmann, 1995; Smoczynska, 19 92; see also Berman, chap. 1, this volume). The acquisition of spatial terminology that differs markedly between typologically different languages has beenof particular interest (Bowerman, 1985,198 9,1996; Choi & Bowerman, 19 9 1).At the same time,a new wave of research on language and space has uncovered enormous variation in the linguistic coding of spatial relationships (Goddard, 1998). The emphasis has been, on the one hand, on crosslinguistic variation in spatial semantics and,on the other, on the semantic primes of spaceproposedwithinAnna Wierzbicka’s “natural semantic metalanguage”(Goddard, 1998;Wlerzbicka, 1996,1998; see also our discussions inBatorko, 1998b; Batorko & Duarte, 1998). Acquisition research on the organizationof information in discourse has particularly focused on two importantissues: the marking of information status and the groundingof information in discourse. In both domains, three recurrent observationsthat mustbe taken into account in any modelof mother tongue acquisition are reported. These are “arelatively late developmental progress in discourse organization, interrelations among the utterance and discourse levels of analysis, and a combinationof general cognitive developmental patterns with language-specific ones” (Hickmann, 19 95, p. 215). Taking into consideration both cognitively and linguistically oriented studies it can be postulatedthat early acquisition is based not only on universal sensorimotor concepts but also on the particular language being acquired. Earlierresearchacross a number oflanguagesrevealed that children’s production of locative expressions is determined by cognitive complexityand 3’

32

B A T O R E O 6: F A R l A

follows a similar sequence that can be summed up in three stages: (a) in, on, under, beside; (b) between, back, front, with featured objects; (c) back, andfront with nonfeatured objects (e.g., Johnston& Slobin, 1977; Slobin, 1973). Since the 1 9 8 0 s however, in contrast to the findings mentionedearlier, and in line with the language typology developedby Talmy (1983,1985) andfollowed in Bowerman’s research (Bowerman,1989; ChoihBowerman, 1991),it has been shown that from veryearly ages children are highly sensitive to thespecificities of their language. They acquire different kinds of linguistic devices in order to mark locative states versus dynamicactions, expressingboth motionin general, as in jump or fry around and change of location, as in jump into X or fly out of Y. These devices may beboth global andlocal in character (Hickmann,199 5). Local devices include lexical and morphological markers of motion such as posture mrbs, prepositions, adjectives, adverbials, particles, deictics, case markings, andso forth, whereas global devices include wordorder and event conflation mechanisms correlated with other language-specific factors. Some examples of language-specific local devices of lexical and morphological character are the morphologically complexand transparent Portuguese motion verb atravessar‘go overlacross’ = a travls + ar (spatial preposition across + infinitive marker), the English particle over (Example I),the Polish preposition do ‘into’ and genitive case marker - U indicating direction (Example 2). Conflation of Motion andPath in Portuguese atravessar (‘go + over/across’) or conflation of Motion and Mannerin English drive‘go by car’(Example l), on the other hand, instantiate global devices. Note that in the case of the Portuguese motion verbatruvessar ‘go over/across’ we observe both a global device of event conflation (Motion and Path) and a complex combination of local devices such as a preposition, an adverbial and aninfinitive marker in a morphologically transparent verb form.

+

+

+

(1)

(2)

Portuguese:

Atravessdmos a deponte go across 1st pl.past the bridge

English:

‘We drove over the bridge’

Polish:

Wejsc

English:

do

by

carro car

domu

dom + -U go into house/home Gen ‘To enter the house’

It is considered to be easier for children to interpret sentences when their language has a richand transparent morphology(e.g., Italian or Polish) than when it depends moreon word order toexpress grammatical relations(e.g., English; Hickmann,199 5). Comprehension studies in different languages have also shown that, regardless of their age, native speakersuse the cuesthat are the most available and reliable intheir language,for example, word order in English and lexical or morphological cues in Polish, suggesting a model in which

z

RepresentingMovement inPortuguese

33

children learn how functions completeand fuse in relation to available forms (Hickmann, 1995; Smoczynska, 1992). In view ofthe foregoing claimsand thefact that Portuguese is a morphologically rich Romance language,we hypothesize that in theprocess of acquiring their native tongue, Portuguese speakerswill behave according to the Polish rather than the English model. This means that Portuguese learners will follow lexical and morphological cues thatare the most available and reliable in their language ratherthan some global cues such as word orderas inlanguages of the SVO type. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND SOME CHARACTERISTICS O F EUROPEAN PORTUGUESE

Our research (Batorko, in press) focusing on the expression of space in EuropeanPortuguese follows Talmy’s (1975, 1983,1985)workonthe structuring of space in language.Talmy defined a motion situationas one in which one object (Figure) is moving or located with respectto another object (Ground), whereas the respect in which the objectis located or moving to another object functionsas the Path (Talmy, 1975). Hefurther postulated that event conflation in the clause is the object of linguistic variation. Some languages, suchas those in the Germanicfamily, combine Motion with Manner in the verb (as in English drive in Example 1). Others such as Romance languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French, etc.) combine Motion with Path (as in Portuguese atravessar ‘go across’ in Example I), expressing Mannerby other means suchas relativeand infinitive (or gerundive) clauses (seeExamples 4 and 7 ) .Thus, it follows that, whereas English speakers elaborate the trajectories that protagonists follow in their displacement through space, Portuguese, Spanish, or French speakers provide simpler descriptions of displacements withless elaborate paths and morestative information situating the protagonists. This means that in English stative locations must be inferred from paths as in Example (3) from the storyFrog, where are you? (Mayer, 196 9; see Berman & Slobin, 1994), in which the frog’s inferior positionis presented as a result of the boy’s movement on the path directed down. (3)

The boy put the frog down into a jar

In Portuguese or Spanish paths mustbe inferred from path verbs(e.g., meter = ‘put inside’) and static locations(e.g., haver em baixdhaber abajo = ‘there be (located) down’). Example (4) presents the equivalents in Portuguese and Spanish of Example (3).

+

(4)

Portuguese: 0 meninometeu o sapono frasco que havia la em baixo the boy put the frog inlon the jar that there was there below ‘The boy put the frog down into a jar’

34

B A T O R ~ O& F A R I A

Spanish:

El nifio metid rana en la

elfrasco que

habia abajo

theboyputthefrogin/onthejarthatthere ‘The boyput thefrog down intoa jar’

wasbelow

Our research (Batorko, 1gg5,1996,1998a, 19g8b, in press) shows, however, that it issometimes dangerousto overgeneralize the basic characteristics one of language group to all the others classified as its members. Although Romance languages are considered to be more stative than Germanic (Slobin,1989), the degree of stativity may vary from one language to another.For example, in Portuguese strongly marked stativity is not really acceptable in case of some verbs such as subir ‘move up’, whereas it is in their Spanish formal cognates (Example 5). English: He (=theboy)climbedatree arvore Portuguese: uma a 0 subiu menino

(5)

the

boy

movedup (PERF)

to

arriba subido Esta Spanish:

located/moved is

tree a de

up (IMPERF) to the top

Portuguese: “0 menino arvore da cima subido em estd the boyislocated/moved

of

un arbol

tree a

up (IMPERF)thetopofthetree

0 menino estdarvore da cima em the boy located is (IMPERF) the

top

0 menino empoleirou-se ver para boy the perched himself

to

see

of the tree nos

buracos

idinto

holes the

The difference shown by the Romanceexamples in (5) is not only transparent between the dynamicand thestatic perspectives but also on the level of aspectual marking. Thus, in Spanish, the predicateestu subido- ‘is located moved up’ is both stative and resultative, that is, imperfective in character (present tense), whereas the Portuguese correspondent predicate is either resultative and perfective (simple past tense), as in subiu ‘moved up’ or empoleirou-se ‘perched up’, or stative, that is, imperfective (present tense),as in esta em cima ‘is located + on thetop’. It is important to bear in mind that whenwe refer to language-specific factors what is taken into consideration is not a supranational linguistic system-such as a Portuguese language-but a given linguistic variety usedin a given community, for example, European Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese. Being a transcontinental language officially spoken in different countries, Portuguese is subject to great linguistic variation. Furthermore, the distinction between standard varieties of European versus Brazilian Portuguese has been maintained due tospecificity not only of lexical choice but also of morphosyntactic structure (Faria & Duarte, 1989). As for the study of spatial

+

RepresentingMovementinPortuguese

2

35

expressions, significant differences can be observed between the two basic varieties of Portuguese, as illustrated in Example (6). (6) European

Hd cavalo urn

a galopar

Portuguese: horse there ais(prep.) cavalo Brazilian Portuguese: have

to gallop [infinitive clause]

Tern

galopando (0galloping horse det.) [gerundive]

As the example shows, the difference between the two main varieties

of Portuguese lies in the selection of the determiner,in the choice of the existential introductory verb-haver ‘there be/have’ or ter ‘have’-and on the morphosyntactic level. The infinitive clause is preferred in the European variety (though thegerundive constructionis still possible both in the standard variety and, especially, in some dialects), whereas in Brazil the gerundive is used (Batorio, 1998b, Batorio& Duarte, 1998). The beginningof a narrative contains a lot of new information given in the first or the first few utterances. Such information packing presents aheavy processing load, which can be dealt with in different ways, as illustrated in Example (7). (7)

Data from Batorko (in press)-adult narrators urn Hd que a.cavalo there horse ais that walks in the meadow

passei pelosprados

cavalo urn Havia

a galopar

there was Era urna

ahorse(prep.)

vez urn cavalo

to gallop[infinitiveclause] que

estava a galopar no campo estava galopando [infinitive or gerundive]

there was horse a that was galloping in once upon a time Era urna

vez urn cavalo

the fields

que

estava preso nurna cerca

there was horse a that was imprisoned in the corral once upon a time ‘There was a horse that galloped inthe fieldslin the meadowlin the corral’

b. cavalo Andava urn horseaused

correrpelos aprados

to

cavalo urn Andava

run across the meadows

pelosprados

used to golwalkahorseacross the meadows ‘There was a horsethat used to run across the meadows’ c.

Urn cavalo andava

a

correr pelosprados

horse aused to run across the meadows ‘There was a horse that used to run across the meadows’

B A T O R ~ O6: F A R I A

36 (8)

Brazilian Portuguese a.

Data from Horse and Cat Stories in Guimarzes (1994): Aqui tern urn correndo cavalo (5 years) here have a horse running [gerundive] ‘There is a horse running here’ Tern urn cachorro passarinho e drvore na (5 years) have a dog and o det birdie in the tree ‘There area dog anda bird in the tree’ e tinha o cachorro que puxou o gat0 pelo rabo. (7 years) and have thedogthatpulledhe cat by the tail ‘There wasa dog that pulled thecat by histail’ Aqui tern urna drvore nessa e drvore tern urn ninhode(1o years) here have a treeandinthistreehave a nest of passarinho pousar.

birdie to sit ‘There is a tree and in the tree therea nest is for a bird to sit’ b. Data from Chavegatto, Souza, Silveira, Silva, and Cassano (in press): Ld em Buzios, praia naFerradura, da tern uns (Adult) ThereinBuzios, at thebeach of Ferradurahavesome bares ern cima.

barsin/ontop ‘In Buzios in the upper part of the Ferradura beach there are some bars’ Portuguese,thus, offers a number of ways forthecombinationof new animate and inanimatereferents in differentroles in the same utterance, focusing on their existential introduction (‘once upon a time therewas an NP’) as well as some extra information,packed in an additionalclause (relative and/or infinitive/gerundive) of either locative (‘that was on the top of’, ‘in the fields’, etc.) or active character (‘that liked walking/running/jumping’, etc.). Note that all this information-existential and locative, of stative or dynamic character-can be recurrent, thatis, it is quite common toindicate more than one location(e.g., ‘there was a bird in thenest in the tree’). This particular language characteristic, common for instance to Portuguese and Spanish, contrasts with direct one-clause-packing typical of the Germanic languages (e.g., ‘There was an NP running in the meadow’; Hendriks, 1993,pp. 85-86). METHOD

Our research (Batoreo, 1996) set in the theoretical parameters referred to earlier, examines spatial reference in narratives produced by childand adult speakers of European Portuguese in a context where the interlocutors lack mutual situationalknowledge. Narrative productions were elicited with two

z

RepresentingMovementinPortuguese

37

T A B L E 2.1

Characteristics ofthe Samples

Group

Age

Subjects

Mean

range

4;4

-5;11 -7;11

age 5;7

GI (5 years) G2 (7 years)

10 10

10;1- 10;10

10;7

G 4 (Adults)

30

18 -47

24;3

G3 (10years)

10

7;6

7;3

Note. From Batorko (1996).

picture stories: the Horse Story and the Cat Story (Hickmann, 198 z).1 Each story is based on a sequence of pictures2 in which different animals are depicted in interactive roles that determine the status of the characterin the protagonistcategory. In the Horse Story there are a horse,a cow, and a bird, and inCat theStory a mother bird with her little ones, acat, and adog. Although the general frame is very similarin both cases, the stories differ in the role various protagonists can assume in the storyin relation to the other animals. In first the story the horse is the main protagonist; it runs in thefields, falls down and gets help from his friends, a cow and a bird. In the second story, we really do not know who the main character is. The title is Cat Story, but there is no cat inthe first picture, in which we can only spot amother bird andsome little birds in a nest in tree. a The cat appears onlyin the second picture when the mother bird flies away.The cat tries to grab the baby birds thein nest but cannotreach them because a dog comes and pulls him down from the tree. Finally, the birdsare safe when the cat runs away, chased by the dog,and the mother bird comes back to take care ofher little ones. The data consistof the Batorko corpus (in press), composed of 120 narratives produced by 6 o monolingual European Portuguesesubjects: 30 adults and 30 children (half males and half females) of 5,7, and 10 years of age, with 10 children in each group (Table2.1). The children were tested in a kindergarten and a primary school in the center of Lisbon. All data used inthe present study were recorded, transcribed, and coded according toCHILDES the system (Faria & Batorko, 199 4; MacWhinney, 199 4). 1 The materialswereoriginallydesignedforHickmann(1982).Theyaredescribedin Hickmann’sstudies(e.g.,Hickmann,1991,1g95)anddevelopedby,amongothers,Hendrlks(1993), Hendriks and Hickmann (1998) and Smoczynska (1992). See Bokus (1996) andalso our discussioninBatorko1995,1996,and1998a. * Picture-by-picturesynopsis ofthe Horse Story: (I) A horse is running in the field near afence;( 2 ) The horselooksacross thefence at acow; (3) The horse jumps fence the with thecow in the background and a bird on fence; the (4) The horse stumbles on fence the and falls. The cow and bird watch; (5) The cow bandages up thehorse’s leg while the bird holds a firstaid kit. Picture-by-picture synopsis of the Cat Story: (1) A bud is sitting in a nest which is on a branch of a tree;(2)A bird flies awayand acat comes up to the tree;(3) The catsits watching the empty nest; (4) The cat climbs the as tree a dogwatches; (5)The dog pulls the cat’s tail, as the birdflies back;(6)The dog chases the cat away, as the birdhovers at the nest.

38

B A T O R ~ O6: F A R I A

-

100 P 90

--9

80 70 -F-. 60

Percentage of 50 occurrences

40 30 20 10

---

I .

cow + Bull + BulllOx

-. -. " "

..."".*

---

......Bird

"

"

- 0 5Yrs

7yrs

IOyrs

Adults

Age Groups F I G . 2.1.

Horse Story: Introducing the protagonist category. R E S U LTS

The study of the representation of movement in languageinvolves, on the one hand, ananalysis of nominal reference to determine the linguistic realizations of Figure and Ground. On the other hand, focuses it on verbal reference to define relations between Figure and Ground,yielding different semantic-syntacticclasses of verbs, such as appear-in-the-stage verbs (appear, come, go, turn up,etc.), action verbs (walk, run, jump, moveup, etc.), and perceptionverbs (watch, see, spot, etc.). In the present study three variables, (i) story, (ii) language, and (iii) age, were taken into consideration.By (i) the story variable we mean the storystructure and reference to the protagonistswith explicit variation in their hierarchical differentiation. By (ii) the language variablewe mean specific semantic and syntactic characteristicsof European Portuguese,typologically and contrastively exemplified earlier. The three variables were taken into considerationin trying to answer the following qutstions: When and how do Portuguese children provide a spatial anchoring for thestory, on one hand, and set a spatial frame in their narratives, on the other?In linguistic terms this involves determining (i) the semantic roles assigned to Figures and Grounds; (ii) the kinds of nominal and verbal reference; (iii) thespecific lexical and morphological meansused to establish new spatial information;(iv) the kinds of syntactic constructions selected.To answer these questionswe shall discuss the form:function relationswe investigated in our narratives(Batorko, in press) in relation to these three relevant variables. The Story Variable

In this sectionwe discuss the story structure andreference to the protagonists, stressing the distinction between spatial anchoring and settingof the spatial frame. Spatial information given throughout the narrative provides a spatial

IO0 -p

80

"

70 Percentage of OCcurT-

"-

90

--

RepresentingMovementinPortuguese

2

39

,."

*-. *. S .

.-." ...

60"

40 30 20

Mother Bird

--

" " "

"

"

10 0 5YE

"

.

'lYE

i IOyrs

Adults

Age Groups FIG. 2.2.

Cat Story: Introducingthe protagonist category.

anchoring for the story, whereas the spatial frameis established with information given at the beginningof the story for the setting, to provide background information in theabsence of mutual knowledge. This distinction has to do with therole different protagonistsplay in the story. Setting the spatial frame at the beginning of the narrative involves introducing the main protagonist, whereas spatial anchoring has todo with all the categories, protagonistas well as instrumental, not onlyin the introduction butacross the whole narrative. The datareveal that narrators are more likely to introduce the main protagonist (or more than one in the Cat Story), thatis, to set a spatial frame, thanto introduce the otherprotagonists at the beginning. Itis observed from Fig. 2.1 for the Horse Story andFig. 2.2 for the Cat Story that story structurehas no effect on spatial framing.All narrators, at all ages, in both stories mention the main protagonists 9 o YOto 10 o % of the time. No matter what their age is, narrators, without failure,refer to the horse as well as to the bovineanimallexicalized as a vaca 'cow', a boi 'bull', or a touro 'odbull' in the Horse Story and to the cat and the dog in the Story. Cat Protagonists lower on thehierarchy are mentioned with less frequency as compared to the main protagonists. This difference is more clearly observable in the Horse Story (Fig. 2.1), in which the roles protagonists play are clear cut, as compared to theCat Story (Fig.2.2), which has two main protagonists and a third one situated very close to themin the protagonist hierarchy. In the Horse Story the bird with the firstaid kit is mentioned less frequently (70% to 80% by 5-year-olds and adultsand 50% to 6 0 % by 7- and lo-year-olds;Fig. 2.1),whereas the mother bird in the Cat Story is referred to by8 0 % to 9 0 % of the subjects, suggestingthat this character is situated very close to the major characters on the protagonist hierarchy (Fig. 2.2). There are some small but interesting age differences: For the younger children (5- and 7-year-olds)all the animals areof equal importance ( 9 0 % t o l o o %of reference), whereas lo-year-olds and adults distinguishbetween

40

B A T O R ~ O& F A R I A

100

-

90“

Percentage of

occurrences

20

10 Descriptive

”

”

Existential

Others Types of constructions

different types of structures used for the introductionof the horse category in the Horse Storyby different age groups.

FIG.2.3. Percentage of

refermce to thefirst two characters, the cat and dog (10 o %) and the next one, the mother bird ( 8 0 % to 90%; Fig. 2.2).Thus children as well as adults differentiate between main and secondary or tertiary characters, that is, between spatial framing and spatial anchoring. Comparing Figs 2.1 and 2.2,it can be observedthat thepercentage of the introductory constructionsis lower for the characters lower in status on the Protagonist hierarchy: The lower the role, the later in the process of acquisition the spatial anchoring takes place. A s discussed in the Theoretical Frameworksection, in order to introduce a protagonist, syntactically complex constructionsof existential and/or locative character (both static and dynamic) are required in European Portuguese. When there is a clear-cut protagonist division as in the Horse Story, the main character is introduced at thevery beginning withexistential verbs huver‘there be’ and ser ‘be’, as in the pragmatic constructionera umu vez ‘once upon a time there was’; with stative constructions withestar ‘to be located’ (estar + a Infinitive, estar + Gerundive); or with a descriptive motion verb suchas gallop, run, jump, as shown in Example (7). Figure 2.3 represents the proportion of different types o f structures usedby different age groups to introduce the main protagonist in the HorseStory. When there is not a clear-cut protagonistdivision, as in the Cat Story, the main protagonists-both the cat and the dog-are introduced by adults with the appear-in-the-stage verbs of the unaccusative type, such as aparecer ‘appear’, surgir‘turn up’, vir‘come, get in’, chegar‘come’, aproximar-se‘getcloser’, as illustrated in Example(g).

+

2

(9)

RepresentingMovementinPortuguese

41

Data from Batoreo (in press)-adults Chegou urn gato

‘came a cat’ Apareceu urn cdo

‘appeared a dog’ Aproxirna-se urn gat0

‘comes up a cat’ A s Examples (7) and (9) show, constructions used in the adult grammar for

spatial anchoring (i.e., introducing a protagonist in the middle of the narrative) focus on new information (the new protagonist) andsyntactically locate it to the right of the verb as a postverbalindefinite subject: a V+ Subject construction. Let us compare the examplesin (IO): (10)

V + Subject V Era urna vez

urn passarinho . .

‘once upon a time there was

a birdie...’

Havia

urn cavalinho q u e . . .

‘there was

a horsiethat.. .’

Estava

urn passarinho ern cirna de

‘was located

a birdieon the top of.. .’

Chegou

urn gat0

‘came

a cat’

If in the adult grammar the predominant introductory construction is of V

+ (Indefinite) Subject type,it clearly stands out as a marked one in anSVO pro-drop language suchas European Portuguese. Thisfact is significant for the process of acquisition because achild learning the language has to acquire this construction as different from the canonical orderand master it properly if he or she wants to be a successful storyteller in his or her mother tongue. Thisis observed to be a long and complex process; definite SVO constructions constitute approximately 40% of all the introductory constructions produced by 5year-olds, whereas they makeup less than 10% of the adult introductions.At 5 years we find four different types of constructions, some of which stop being functional in narrative introductions in lateryears. These are thefollowing: Definite Subject+ Verb, Indefinite Subject + Verb, Verb+ Definite Subject, and Verb + Indefinite Subject, illustrated in Example (11). (11)

Data from Batoreo (in press)-5-year-olds a.DefiniteSubject+Verb

0 caval0 estava a galopar sernpre, sernpre, sernpre

‘the horse was galloping always, always, always’

42

B A T O R ~ O6: F A R I A

b.IndefiniteSubject+Verb Urn passarinho estava no ninho

‘a horsie was located in the nest’ c.Verb

+ DefiniteSubject

Chegou o ciio

‘appeared the dog’ d. Verb

+ Indefinite Subject (standard adult)

Encontrou urn gat0

‘(he) found/met a cat’ This rich pattern of introductory constructions observed atage 5 does not develop in a linear way into the target adult grammar. Having all the morphological and lexical markers the adultsuse, European Portuguese children deploy them in syntactic constructions that adultspeakers very seldom produce or even never use. As a matterof fact, all the constructionsexemplified in (11) can be found in the adult data, but constructions (lla, b, and c) are extremely infrequent (approximately 5% of all the setting constructions in general), whereas children use them quite productively. The really standard construction (lid) is oftype V + Indefinite Subject.However, and in contrast to theexamples in (II), there are also child constructions that never appear in the adult narratives: At different stages of their development children “test” different syntactic possibilities and then drop themwhen they happen not to suit the input received. Notice that this is precisely what happens with some uses ofthe verb ser‘tobe’ in European Portuguese(Fig. 2.4). As Fig. 2.4 shows, both adults and children telling the Horse Story frequently use a partially frozen pragmatic construction, erauma vez ‘once upon a time there was’, with a ser ‘to be’ form in Past Imperfective, era ‘was’(approximately 50% of all the introductory constructions). The use of this construction is, however, the only similarity between the two groups because the children, in general, prefer other constructions with the verbser ‘tobe’, whereas adults choose another ‘to be’ verb, haver, used in a clearly existentialconstruction. Children of different ages prefer differentser constructions, some of which are only observed for ashort period (e.g., at one age level in our study). Thus only in the data of 5-year-oldswedohave a descriptive, strictly deictic construction, aqui t‘here is’, which is totally absent from the more developed discourse where lack of mutual knowledge (and, therefore, lack ofdeictic indication)is expected (Example 12). (12)

Data from Batorko (in press)-5-year-olds Aqui L urnpassarinho cornfilhotes

‘here is a birdie with little one’ Aqui L urn gat0

‘here isa cat’

2

Representing Movement

Era uma vez... (once... )

in Portuguese

Ser

(B)

43

Haver

(There be)

Types of introductory expressions

F I G . 2.4. Percentage of existential relative constructions used for the introduction of the horse category in the Horse Story.

Although the construction itself is well formed with an indefinite subjectin postposition, children make incorrectuse of it in the narrative context.At ages 7 and 10 we observe some examples of ser ‘to be’ in its Imperfective form, era ‘was’ (and atage 7, even in Present--t ‘is’), that can possibly be seen as the first part of the ‘once upon a time’ construction era uma vez (Example 13). In these constructions, unusual from the target grammar point of view, the syntactic constructionitself is wellformed, again with the postverbal Indefinite Subject. (13)

Data from Batorko (in press) Era urn caval0 que ia U correr (7- and lo-year-olds) ‘was (IMPERF) a horse that was running’

e urn cuvulo que estd a correr (7-year-olds) ‘is (PRESENT) a horse that is running’

As for the verb haver‘tobe’ existential constructions, noneof the lo-year-olds use it, though younger childrendo so occasionally (approximatelylo%), and adults use it in half of all the introductory constructions they produce (Fig. 2.4). A s for the CatStory, the data show that, with age, the appearance ofone of the main protagonists, the cat or thedog, comes to be expressed not as a target of a perceptual (or physical) encounter of another protagonist but as one who shows up independentlyof other protagonists, requiring an appear-in-thestage verb (Fig. 2.5). In other words, older children are morelikely to introduce the dogin a sentence like ‘a dog came up’ than ‘the cat saw a dog’, which is characteristic of younger ones. This trend suggests that with age the children become less

44

B A T O R ~ O6c F A R I A

100 90

T

; :

1 " " .

60

(Cat) Perceptual verbs

-"Appear" type verbs (Cat)

IzzYrl verbs (Dog)

Byrs

7yrs

1Oyrs

Adults

Age Groups F I G . 2.5. Percentage of "Appear" type and perceptual verbs used in introducing thecat and dog categories in the CatStory by age.

dependent on making reference to their perceptual world-even from the protagonist's point of view when one animal spots another-in describing the existential phenomena of appearance and disappearance.It may be that with age children become less dependent on tracingevents from the intranarrative standpoint suchas the protagonist perspective, trying to establish a narrativeindependent perspective. However, this is not the case in the Horse Story, in which the second protagonist, thecow, is always introduced as a result of a perceptual or physical encounter with the main protagonist by all the age groups, and is introduced either by a perceptual verb (ver'see', olhar'look', avistar 'spot', etc.) or a physical encounter one (encontrar ' m e e t h d ' ) , as exemplified in(14). (14)

Data from Batoreo (1gg6)"adults

a.

Do outro lado da cerca viu urna on theother side ofthe fence saw a 'on the other side of the fence he saw a cow'

urna vaca b. Encontrou met ina cow 'he met a cow in the corral'

dentro de

vaca. cow

urna sebe. a

hedge

The LanguageVariable

SomelanguagesystemicspecificitieswerediscussedintheTheoretical framework section, from the typological point of view designating European Portuguese as aPathandMotion-conflatinglanguage,andfromthe contrastive point of view opposing it to the Portuguese variety fromBrazil. In

2

RepresentingMovement

in Portuguese

45

the present sectionwe focus our attention on the discourse level, discussing (1) the semantic roles the referents play, and (2) the syntactic constructions they appear in. The Language Variable: SemanticRoles Assigned to Figures and Grounds. Regardless of age,the narrators of our corpusshow a functional motivationin choosing different linguistic forms to introduce the Figures, that is, the mainor secondary protagonists. The difference is marked not only syntactically, as shown in the examples in thelast section, but also at the semantic level. The well-defined protagonist in the Horse Story is clearly introduced as agentive, whereas the second and the third charactersgain their agentivity only at the end of the story. In the CatStory, in which three animals compete for the status of main protagonist in the narrative, the semantic roles are also less stable. These animals are introduced either dynamically, in sentence frames requiring Agents (AGT) and Patients (PAT; e.g., the cat is trying to grasp them, the dog is chasing the cat) or statively, in frames requiring Experiencers (EXP; e.g., the mother birdis in thenest with thechicks, the cat is sitting by the tree), as illustrated in Example (15). (15)

Data from Batorko (in press)-adults urnpassaro nurn ninho corn osfilhotes que vai d procura da cornida. ‘there is a bird in a nest with the childreno that is goingto find the food’ EXP(bird) Ha

0 gat0 olha para a drvore, v&o ninho, v& os passarinhos, p8e-se a observar

‘the cat looks at the tree, 0 sees the nest,0 sees the birdies, 0 becomes to observe’ T(cat) EXP(cat) EXP(cat) AGT(cat) corneqa a trepar a drvore e tenta chegar a0 ninho onde estiio ospassarinhos.

starts to climb the tree 0and tries to get to the nest where are located the birdies’ AGT(cat) ‘0

Entretanto chega o passaro rnde corn a cornida para osfilhotes e

‘in meanwhile comes the mother-bird with the food for the children and’ AGT(bird) ha urn ciio que ao ver o gat0 lhepuxa o rabopara o tirar do ninho.

‘there isa dog who0 see (in0 the cat0 him pulls the tail 0tohim takeoff the nest’ EXP(dog)EXP(dog)PAT(cat)AGT(dog)PAT(cat)AGT(dog)PAT(cat)

0 gat0 foge e o ciio corre atras dele eo pdssaro-rniie

pousa junto aosfilhos

‘the cat flees and the dog runs after him and the mother-bird sits by the children’ ird) PAT(cat) AGT(dog) AGT(cat) corn a cornida para osfilhos.

‘with the foodfor the children’ In the Cat Story presented in Example (IS), the roles keepchanging throughout the narration. Thus the cat comes up to the tree (Agent), then is hesitting

A

46

B A T O R ~ O6: F A R I A

(Experiencer) by it and watching (Agent) the birds,and after that he is climbing (Agent) the tree, being finally pulled down (Patient) and chased (Patient) by the dog. The dog, being the counterpart in this situation, turns up (Agent) in the second part of the story to protect (Agent) the nest from the cat and make (Agent) him (Patient) flee. In the HorseStory, in which the protagonist is well defined (Example 16), the roles alternate only at the end of the story, where Agents turn into Patients and vice versa: For instance, the running horse (Agent) falls down (Experiencer) and is helped (Patient) by his friends, while the cow spotted (Patient)in the meadow bandagesup (Agent) his leg. Note that no significant systematic changes have been observedby age. (16)

Data from Batoreo (in press)-adults Hd um cavalinho que vai correrpelosprados

‘there is a horsie that 0 is goingto run across the meadows’ EXP(horse) AGT(horse) Chegaaumacerca ‘0 comes up

EXP(horse)

e dooutroladodacerca

v& urn touro

to a fenceand on the other sideof the fence 0 sees a bull/ox’

AGT(horse) Em cima cerca daestd

umpasarinho. Ele salta cerca cai ae

‘on the top of the fence is located a birdie’ ‘he jumps the fence and AGT(horse) EXP(bird) EXP(horse) E depois o touro ajudd-lo vai e opassarinho tambtm. ‘andafterthebull/ox is going to helphimandthebirdiealso’ AGT(bird) PAT(horse) AGT(cow)

0

falls’

The same Ground can be assigned different roles in relation to different protagonists: While it i s an entity for one it can beplace a for another. For instance, thefence in the Horse Storycan play a different role for the horse and for the bird (Example 16). For the first itis an obstacle to bejumped over and thus functionsas an entity, whereas for the second is it a location.Similarly, different conceptualizations can be observed in the case of the tree in the Cat Story (Example 15). Some narrators perspectivize it as an independententity, introducing the tree at the very beginningof the story(e.g., ‘Therewas a tree, and there was a nest with little birdies it’). in The majority, though, conceptualize it as a place to locate the mother birdwith her babies.The strategies of the assignment of semantic roles to Figures and Groundsmay be evaluated from the point of viewof the perspective that narrator the is adopting in different parts of the story.Finally, asExamples (7), (g), (U), and(14) show, only the verbs moof tion, but not theverbs of location, allow the omission of the Ground. Location verbs require the specification of a place, whereas some typesof motion like the one triggeredby the appearance-in-the-stageverbs (Example g ) do not. It is not easy to trace a clear-cut dependencebetween the semantic roles assigned to Figures and Grounds and spatial framing and anchoring on the

T

z

RepresentingMovement

in Portuguese

47

narrative level. Experiencer protagonistsin existential constructions andAgents with verbs of movement seem tobe characteristic of spatial framing, whereas Agents, Patients, and Experiencers turn up inspatial anchoring throughout the story. The Language Variable: Morphosyntactic Marking. Typical syntactic structures used in narrativeshave already been discussed in previous sections (e.g., see Example.10). Inthe present section we focus on morphosyntactic marking by discussing some aspectual distinctions transcategorically related to the expression of space in discourse. As was discussed earlier, overload of information can be avoided by distributing it indifferent positions of initial utterances, using variousstrategies to introduce a new referent. European Portuguese adult storytellers distribute equally their predilection between existential/locative constructions, on the one hand, and descriptive ones withmotion verbs, on the other (Fig. 2.3). As the examples in this chapter show, a new referent is introduced with the constructionV + Indefinite Subject rather than with the canonical SVO word order that occurs in lessthan 6 % of allthe adultnarratives. A newreferent can also be introducedin a construction with a motion verb such as andar ‘go’ (general verbof movement) or correr ‘run’, or passear ‘walk‘ (see Examples 7b and c and descriptive constructions in Fig. 2.3). Existential, locative, and action verbs are either in past imperfective (havia‘there was’, era ‘was’, estava ‘waslocated’, andava ‘was going’)or in present (imperfective in existential and locative verbs: h6 ‘there is’, estu ‘is located’). The two storiesin Examples (15) and (16) are coincidentally both told in present (imperfective only) and startwith an existential construction with hu‘thereis’. The imperfective past and present canalso be frequently interchangedin the same story. The same European Portuguese speaker can start his narration in one tense, continue in another, and then come back tofirst theone (Example 17). (17) Data from Batorio (in press)-adults

umaEra

IMPERF.

vez do seu ninho

umpassarinho que estava

‘therewasonceuponatimeabirdie of its nest’

PAST Entretanto chega

that waslocated

urn gato e o passarinho quando v& ‘inthemeanwhilecomesacatandthebirdiewhenseesthecatflees’ PRESENT OgatoFcaparado a olharpara o ninho

‘the cat stays still looking the at nest’ PRESENT

[...](all intervening text in Present Tense)

em cirna on thetop

o gat0 foge

48

BATOR~O

FARIA

Opassarinho que vinha corn a minhoca na boca chega ao ninho ... ‘thebirdiewho came/was coming withthe worm in themouth arrived is arriving at the nest’ PAST IMPERF. PRESENT

The use of the imperfective serves for the description of the background of the story against which the main episodes, expressed in perfective, are going to take place. In the Cat Story, the introduction of the mother bird in the nest is generally in the imperfective, setting the background, whereas the main protagonists, the cat and the dog, are introduced inperfective forms (presentor past) of unaccusative verbsthat express change of state and do notrequire any specification of place (as, e.g., in ‘came cat’). a The use of a generalmotion.verb such as andar‘go’ in the imperfectivesettings (Examples 7band c) shows some peculiarities, as the past imperfective form here is always iterative, being translated as ‘used to go’. Thus, if we have the first sentence of Example (7b; andava urn cavalo a correr pelos prados) we understand that thehorse used to run. But in the case of the second sentenceof the same example (andavaurn cavalopelos prados) the andava form is polisemic: It communicates the iterativeness of the general movement (‘go’) and can be translatedliterally as ‘used to go’ or ‘used to move’ (general movement), which in English probably corresponds rather to‘used to run’. Its complex nature results in relatively late acquisition and is most typical of adult discourse. Typically the imperfective is used in spatial framing, giving informationon background, whereasin spatial anchoring both imperfective and perfective are used. As Example (14) shows, the specification of the place (with an adverbial or prepositional phrase) can be sentence initial or sentence final. This is a strategy to deal withthe excess ofpacked information on the sentence level and is not rare among languages. As has already been stated, the target adult grammar described in this section is not acquired in a linearly progressive way, in which linguistically and cognitively simpler constructions arealways acquired before more complex ones. The acquisitionof the adult grammaris discussed in the nextsection. The AgeVariable

A first globallook at the importance of ageseems to suggest that 6 to 7years is significant for changes at both thecognitive and the linguisticlevels. At this age children start to reorganize their discourseand begin to use adultlike cognitive and linguistic structuring strategies. This is reflected in the use of existential/locative structures (Figs. 2.3 and 2.4). It takes children quite some time to use adultlike realizations such as the haver‘there be’constructions, as children aged 7 to10still show avery clear preferencefor strategies other than those used byadults.

2

RepresentingMovement

in Portuguese

49

Our studyshows that children have difficulties establishing and maintaining spatial frames according to the rules of the target grammar, represented here by the adult sample, until late, approximately age 10. The interesting thingis that children atage 5 actually have all the basic morphosyntactic andlexical information at their disposal. Even the marked constructions that violate the canonicalsyntactic order of an SVO language-and marked strongly for the introduction of information-are largely mastered at thisage. That is, children can construct meaningful sentences built with the correct lexico-morphological material (Examples 11-13); however, they have problems in using them in appropriate discourse contexts,as our sample of narratives produced in the absence of mutual knowledge shows. In other words, only some of these syntactically correct and well-built utterances are used adequately at the discourse level. The strategies childrenuse to verify the contextual adequacyof their utterances arecontinuous and start to used be when they can really construct a successful narrative, which in our sample, is not before the age of 5;6. With the morphosyntactical devices at their disposal, children “test” different uses in different contexts and stick to those that the input shows as contextually adequate andsuccessful. All the others (as Examples 11,1z, and 13 show) are dropped out orretested in different contexts until they prove successful in one. This processof testing and retesting competing structures does not happen at a particular age but continues throughout acquisition after the age of5. DISCUSSION

The results of the present research show the relevance ofthe three variables proposed previously and provide someanswers to theinitially posed hypotheses and questions, leading to the following conclusions. In acquiring their native language European Portuguese children accomplish the following cognitiveand linguistic tasks: (a) They discoverthe discourse strategy of spatial anchoring, and especially setting of the spatial frame; @I)they learn to situate expressions of spatial anchoring inall the sentence positionsused by adults, especially at the very beginning of the utterance; (c) they learnto syntactically postpose subjects, especially indefinite ones. These conclusions only partially confirm our initial hypothesis, accordingto which Portuguese speakers acquiring their native language would behave line in with the lexical and morphological cues model. In fact we have evidence supporting both models-the one based on lexical and morphological cuesin morphologically rich languages (suchas Polish or Italian, see Hickmann, 1995; Smoczynska, 1992) and the onebased on word order (such as English)integrated in the process of language acquisition. These observations us make reformulate our initial hypothesis. Portuguese children select lexical items according to thetype of event conflation their language represents, that is, fusing Motion and Path, and they choose all types of cues-lexical, morphological,

50

BATOR~O

FARIA

and syntactic-that are available, reliable,and obligatory in this process.This process is basically stable at age 5. What is really acquired after thisage is the contextual appropriatenessof the linguistic structures,whereby context we mean the discourse situation, characterizableby psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic parameters. At the linguisticlevel our discourse analysis shows that European Portuguese should not be classified as the same type as morphologically rich languages, predicted to be acquired by morpho-lexical cues. European Portuguese children showthat at an early period of development around theage of 5, they can use syntactically marked constructions such as postpositioned indefinite subjects for introducing new information in discourse, revealing the importance of syntactic cues as much as the initially hypothesised lexical and morphological ones. However, they do not use the marked constructions skillfully in appropriate contexts for certain discourse purposes in the same way as adults beforeage of 9 or IO.Thus, our results confirmour hypothesis at the discourse level, showing that structures acquiredin accordance with the syntactic word-order model becomefully functional later than structures acquired in accordance with the lexical-morphological modelthat is claimed to be more valid for European Portuguese. Our results corroborate findings from recent crosslinguistic research concerning linguistic marking on local and global levels for talkingabout space. Recent research examines children’suse of spatial devices in discourse across languages, showing that “typologicaldifferences such as those suggested by Talmy affect what spatial information is focused upon and how theflow of information in discourse is organised both onthe local and on the global level” (Hickmann, 1995,p. 210). We propose that further research should be devoted to a thorough understanding of theinterrelationsbetweenaspectsof children’scognitive development and developments in discourse strategies, as well as acquisition of specific linguistic phenomena, especially those typologically determined. By general cognitive aspects,we mean spatial and temporal conceptualization as well as scripts and narrative schemata. Developments of discourse strategies include the acquisition of global and local principles guiding discourse organization. Acquisitionof specific language phenomena concern, in particular, the interdependence among different linguistic expressionsof space in relation to categories suchas tense, aspect, possession, existence, and nonexistence. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research is part of project PRAXIS =I/BD/5260/95, financed by Junta Nacional de InvestigaqHo Cientifica e Tecnologica.The authorswould like to acknowledge Professor Maya Hickmann and CambridgeUniversity Pressfor authorization topublish the Horseand Cat Story pictures.

2

RepresentingMovementinPortuguese

51

REFERENCES

Batorio, H. J. (1995). Spatial expression in children’s narratives: A study in European Portuguese. In I. H. Faria & M. J. Freitas (Eds.), Studies on the acquisition ofPortuguese (pp.191-206). APL: Edipes Colibri. Batorio, H. J. (1996). Spatial relations in European Portuguese children’s narratives. In S. Contento (Ed.), Psycholinguistics as a multidisciplinary connected science, Vol. I1 (pp.zz5--230). Proceedings o f the Fourth ISAPL International Congress, Societl Editrice“I1 Ponte Vecchio,” Bologna, Italy. Batorio, H. J. (1998a). Acquisition o f spatial expression in European Portuguese children’s narratives. Polish PsychologicalBulletin, z(I), 47-57. Batoreo, H. J. (1998b, May). Language typology and semantic primitive of space: Evidencefrom European Portuguese. Paper presented at Primeiro Encontro de Linguistica Cognitiva. Porto, Portugal. Batoreo, H. J. (in press). Contribuipio para a caracterizapio da interface expressdo linguisticaCognipo espacial no Portuguts Europeu. Abordagem Psicolinguistica da Expressdo do Espa~o em Narrativas Provocadas [Toward the characterization o f the interface between linguistic expression and spatial cognition in European Portuguese: A psycholinguistic approach to the expression o f space in elicited narrative discourse]. Fundapo Calouste Gulbenkian. Batorio, H. J., & Duarte, I. (1998, September). Aberturas de narrativas e primitivos semtlnticos de posse [Narrative setting constructions and semantic prime o f possession]. Paper presented at Encontro Nacional da Associapio Portuguesa de Linguistica, Aveiro, Portugal. Berman, R., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Different ways ofrelating events in narrative: A crosslinguisticdevelopmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bokus, B. (1996). Narrative space structuring at the preschool age: Findings on monologic and dialogic discourse. In C. E. Johnson & J. H. V. Gilbert (Eds.), Children’s Language, Vol. g (pp. 197-20 8). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bowerman, M. (1985). What shapes children’s grammars? In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study oflanguage acquisition, Vol.2: Theorethical issues (pp. 1257-1319). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bowerman, M. (1989). Learning a semantic system: What role do cognitive predispositions play? In M. L. Rice & R . L.Schiefelbusch (Eds.), The teachability oflanguage (pp. 329-363). Baltimore: Paul H. Brooks. Bowerman, M. (1996). Learning how to structure space for language: A crosslinguistic perspective. In P. Bloom, M. A. Peterson, L. Nadel, & M. F. Garret (Eds.), Language and space (pp. 385-436). London: MIT Press. Chavegatto, V. C., Souza, R. M. N., Silveira, M,, Silva, E., & Cassano, L. B. (in press). Figuraqties na representapo do espaGo e do tempo em descripes de cenirios em portuguCs [Representation o f space and time in scene description in Portuguese]. Actus do Encontros do GTDescripo do Portuguts, Rio de Janeiro. Choi, S., & Bowerman, M. (1991). Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence o f language-specific lexicahation patterns. Cognition, 41,83-121. Faria, I. H., & Batorio, H. J.(Eds.). (19 9 4). CHILDES: Uma Adaptqdo para o Portuguis Europeu (1f versdo) [Adaptation proposal of CHILDES to European Portuguese, 1st version]. Unpublished manuscript. Faria, I. H., & Duarte, I. (1989). 0 paradox0 davariapo: Aspectos do Portugues Europeu [Paradox o f variation: Aspects of European Portuguese]. Revista Internacional de Lingua Portuguesa,~,21-27. Goddard, C. (1998). Universal semantic primes of space-a lost cause? In R. Driven (Ed.), Humboldt and WhorfRevisited.Amsterdam: Benjamins. Guimarties, A. M. (1994). Desenvolvimento da linguagem da crianqa na fase de letramento art [Language development in children in the phase o f literacy]. Cadrnos de Estudos Lingiitsticos,26, 103-110.

52

B A T O R ~ O& F A R I A

Hendriks, H.(1993). Motion and location in children) narrative discourse: A developmental study of ChineseandDutch. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit of Leiden. The Netherlands. Hendriks, H.,& Hickmann, M. (1998). Reference spatiale et cohesion du discours: Acquisitionde la langue par I’enfant et par l’adulte [Spatial reference and discourse cohesion: Acqusitionof language by children and adults]. In M. Pujol-Berche, L. Nussbaum, & M. Llobera (Eds.), Adquisicidn de lenguas extranjeras: Perspectivus actuales en Europa (pp. 150-161). Spain: C. I. D. Linea Metodologica de Edelsa. Hickmann, M. (1982). The development ofnarrative skills: Pragmatic and metapragmatic aspects of discourse cohesion.Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Universityof Chicago. Hickmann, M. (1991). The developmentof discourse cohesion: Some functional and crosslinguistic issues.In G. Pieraut-Le Bonniec & M. Dolitsky (Eds.), Language bases, discourse bases (pp. 157-185). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Hickmann, M. (1995). Discourse organization and the development of reference to person, space and time. InP. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney(Eds.), The handbook ofchild language(pp. 194-218). Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Johnston, J., & Slobin, D. I. (1977) The development of locative expressions in English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian andTurkish.Journal ofchild Language, 6,529-545. MacWhinney,B. (199 4). The CHILDES Project: Toolsforanalysing talk.Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University. Mayer, M. (1969).Frog, whereareyou?NewYork Dial Press. Slobin, D. I. (1973). Cognitive prerequisitesfor the development of grammar. In C.Ferguson & D. I. Slobin (Eds.),Studies ofchild language developrnent(pp.175-zl1). New York Halt, Rinehart& Winston. Slobin, D. I. (1989). Factors of language typologyinthecrosslinguisticstudy of acquisition. Unpublished manuscript, Universityof California atBerkeley. Smoczynska, M. (1992). Developing narrative skills: Learningto introduce referents inPolish. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 23(2),103-120. Talmy, L. (1975). Semanticsand syntax of motion. In J. P. Kimball (Ed.), Syntax and semantics 4 (pp.181-238). New York AcademicPress. Pick & L.P. Acredolo (Eds.), Spatial orienTalmy, L. (1983). How language structures space. InL.H. tation: theory, researchand application (pp. 225-282). New York Plenum Press. Talmy, L. (1985). Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure inlexical forms. In T. Shopen, S. Anderson, T.Giv6n, E.Keenan, & S. Thompson (Eds.), Language typology and syntacticfield work, Vol. 3. (pp. 57-149). New York Cambridge University Press. Wlerzbicka,A.(1996). Semantics, primes and universals. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Wlerzbicka, A. (19 9 8). Anchoring linguistic typology in universal semantic primes. Unpublished manuscript, Australian National University at Canberra, Australia.

APPENDIX

The Cat and Horse Picture Stories (Hickmann,1982; published by permission of Cambridge University Press).

2

53

RepresentingMovementinPortuguese

L

2

1 3

I

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

Why Young American EnglishSpeaking Children Confuse

Anger and Sadness:

A Study o f Grammar in Practice

MICHAEL BAMBERC

Clark University

The findings in this chapterwere not anticipated when I began this line of research afew years ago.Originally, I did not intend toinvestigate and compare children’s accounts ofemotion situations,in particular their accountsof anger and sadness situations. Rather, I began with the aim of investigating how children orient themselves toward-so to speak-“the same situation,”but from different genre perspectives. Morespecifically, I was interested in children’s accounts of situations in which they usedthe personal pronounI (in order to refer to pastevents, or personal experiences)in contrast to accounts of events in which athird person (she or he) went through thesame experience. In addition, I compared those two genres to one in which a generalized person (one, or the generalized you) acted or was acted upon. In short,my original investigation aimed at a genre comparisonof (a) personal narrative, (b) third-person narrative, and (c) explanatory discourse. The idea to employ emotion situations such as “being angry”or “being sad” came up in the attempt to find a situation that was ecologically meaningful forboth younger and older children,and was “of the same kind,”so I could compare thelinguistic devices used accordingto the age ofthe childrenand according to the genre that was targeted by the children. This in mind we asked 8 o (American English-speaking) children ranging from preschool to third grade (ages 4-10) to tell u s about “ o n e time whenyou were angry/sad/scared/happy”-prompting for the account of a personal experience; in addition,we asked them to imagine little a boy or girl and togive us an account for “one time, when oshe r he was angry/sad/scared/happy,”and last, we simply asked them to explain, “whatit means to be angry/sad/scared/happy.”This resulted in 12 interview questions, whichwere randomly assigned, all revolving around different perspectives on thoseparticular emotional situations. In the course of interviewing the children,we stumbled across something that would reverse the way weconceptualized children’s abilities to use linguistic 55

56

BAMBERC

constructions for discourse purposes.We repeatedly heard some of the children maintaining that oneor the other question had already been answered, which initiallydid not surprise us, because the battery of questions couldeasily confuse interviewees, particulary if they did not fully concentrate. However, when scrutinizing the data more thoroughly, we realized thatthesekindsof confusions occurredsolely when we had asked to give anger or sadness accounts, but never with anyo f the others. Whenwe asked children in these situations to give us an answer anyway, their accounts were most often word-for-word repetitions. In addition, we noticed that these confusionswere more typical for the youngerthan for the olderchildren. This preliminary evidence seemed to hold some water, although it is not in agreement with what one would expect based on research reportsof children’s emotion knowledge(cf. Stein & Trabasso, 1992;Stein, Trabasso, & Liwag, 1992). According to those reports, childrenas young as age 3 are ableto perform at a high level of proficiency in figuringout thedifferent components thatlead to emotional states suchas angry and sad and whattypically follows from them. The only encouragement to probe deeper into this observation came from anthropological reportsabout a number ofAfrican languages, which, least at at the lexical level,do notseem to differentiate between what is divided accordingto the English lexicon into anger and sadness (cf. Davitz, 19 6 9 ; Heelas, 198 6 ; Leff, 1973; Matsumoto, 1994).Thus, this original accidental stumbling across some children’s confusions of angry andsad launchedus into acloser look athow the accounts of sadness and angerwere linguistically constructed by younger (and o1der)American English-speakingchildren, and what these accounts were actually used for when it came to a comparison between the different genres. To clarify how young childrenactually come toconfuse two so-called basic emotion concepts-at least in the genre of narrative accounts (although this genre is highly relevant forself accounts and identitypresentations)-I first discuss some generaltenets of the relationship between language,thought and emotion, and their relationship for developmental studies. Then, I show in more detail howmy study of emotion talk led to the differentiationof two different grammars, that of anger and that of sadness, and to how young children’s confusion between these two grammars can be accounted for. In my concluding section, I takeup the relationship between narrating and emotion talk with the somewhat “radical” argument thattalk is more foundational than traditionally credited, not only for the way we make sense of emotions, but also-at least to adegree-for how we actually feel. EMOTION CONCEPTS AND EMOTION WORDS VERSUS EMOTION TALK AS LANGUAGE PRACTICE

Generally speaking, talk about emotions, thatis, talk in which emotions are thematized, seems to imply that emotions are objects or entities thathave an

3

Grammar in Practice

57

existence outsideof talk and apart from language in general. In this, they are very similar to ourfolk notions of events that seemto have their existence outsideof talk, but can bereferred to-just like emotions-in and throughtalk. Events and emotions couldhave taken place inthe pastor they can beimagined; they can be of a personal nature, that is, the teller could be centrally (or peripherally) involved,or they canbe ofa completely detached, impersonal nature, where the teller is not simultaneously thematizing himself herself, or as in accounts of emotions ofothers, past or imagined, or as inexplanations, definitions, or other more detached situations such as incard sortingtasks (cf. Lutz,19SS). The question that immediatelycomes to mind, however, is how we know what emotions are and what they mean, and more specifically, how children learn the meanings? In order to answer this question, we may be thrown back onto language and emotiontalk as the sources and possibly even resources that tell us what we know about emotions and how theyare dealt with in the social, communicative realm. A way to avoid the issue ofdealing with language and emotiontalk as somewhat foundational to our understanding of emotion, would be by way of borrowing from a theory of “natural perception.” In this theory, emotions are not really learned. They are bodily experiences that are directly sensed and differentiated into alimited number of emotion categories. What is learned are the language-appropriatelabels for these categories. And although much of our everyday talk about emotions and feelings seems torely on this theory, anyone who has struggled with a foreign language knows that the emotioncategories we learned with our first language are not the sameas in any other language: Natural perception cannot automatically read off from bodily sensations the categories that are considered meaningful for the speakers of particular languages. Thus,we seem to be thrown back onto language as one of the sensegiving foundations whenit comes to emotioncategories. A second route to avoid takingtalk in any way as a foundational factor for the constitution of emotions as meaningful entities, although by far more sophisticated than the theoryof natural perception, relies on the intuition that all humans have emotions, and that the particular languagethat we learn as our first just carves up the “emotion spectrum” differently from anyother language, leaving us with the impressionthat our(first) language doesit somewhat more naturally, whereas other languages are somewhat derived. This theory is actually quite similar to the one developed for color categories, has been proposed in its most sophisticated version by Wlerzbicka (1992,1994,1995) and, morerecently, also Goddard (1997). The basic tenets on which thistheory rests are cognitive universals. In short, resting on the assumption that human cognition (the mind)can differentiate between the different emotion categories and translate emotion terms fromlanguage one into anotherby useof a limited set of (cognitive-semantic) universals, the foundational capacity for making sense is attributed to cognition, not to language.

58

BAMBERC

Asimilartheoreticaladvanceontherelationshipbetweenemotion, language, and cognition, although not from cognitive-semantically a universalist point of view, has been madeby Stein and her associates (Stein & Levine, 19 90; Stein & Trabasso, 19 92; Trabasso & Stein, 1993). In her approach, emotions areviewed as tied into relationsbetween people, although they are approached as a representational system of the goal-plan-outcome knowledge that is held to regulate and coordinate the relations between people. Thus, knowledge of goals and plans is assumed to form the core prerequisite for making sense of others, and it figures foundationally in explaining and accounting for one’s own actions, that is, inthe process in making sense of one’s own self. According to Stein and her associates, this type of knowledge is acquired relatively early,at aroundage 3. Atthis point,children are assumed to be apt tosuccessfully differentiate between the components of actions and goal plans that lead to (English) anger, sadness,fear, or happiness (Stein, Liwag, & Wade, 19 9 7). In contrast to Wierzbicka and her colleagues, who view emotions as a semantic domainthat governs the patternsof discourse, Stein uses narratives of real life emotion situations and subjects them to online questions for online reasoning. However, similar to Wierzbicka, Stein and her colleagues use discourse data to analyze language in its ideational, representative function, that is, asa moreor less transparent window into the conceptual underpinnings of what their talk is about. The aboutness of talk (or what is behind the talk) is taken as basic, irrespective whether the speaker wants to be understood as blaming someone else or saving face. That is, the directive force of language (the interpersonal function)is not considered to beof immediate relevance to the meaningof the emotion account, nor to the meaning of the situatedness of the emotion, nor to an emotiongeneral. in Thus, what the work Wierzbicka of and Stein share is a theoretical proceeding from the abstract to the concrete: The meaningof emotion is a foundational concern for its application in situated expressions or displays, and thoseare foundational for situated verbal accounts. Although there has beenan abundance of theorizing during the1990s on the relationship between language, cognition, and emotion, most itofnevertheless has centered on the more narrow relationship between (emotion) concepts and (emotion) words. And although ethnomethodological approaches to emotion talk in other cultures/languages(Basso, 1992; Lutz, 1988; Ochs, 1988,1996;Schieffelin, 1990; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) have repeatedly underscored the situatedness and cultural contextualization of emotion talk for theway emotions make sense and can enter as meaningful entities the interactionsof participants, their contributions neverthelesshave mostly gone unheardor they have been misconstruedas dealing predominantly with concepts and words. Developmental studies (with onlyfew exceptions) have predominantly targeted emotion concepts and, in this sense, are very much in line with mainstream developmental attempts to contribute to a

3

Grammar in Practice

59

debate regarding by what age children have emotion concepts (or atleast the basic ones), have a “theory of mind,” the basic narrative components,or other psychological“objects.” It is also interesting to note that not much of this debate has been incorporated into standard language acquisition volumes, ranging from general psycholinguistic introductions to the acquisitionof the lexicon (see, e.g., Clark, 1993; Fletcher & MacWhinney, 1995; Gleason& Ratner, 1993; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1997), which may be due to thefact that the groundsof what actually develops and what it is that facilitates development, are rather murky: Is it concepts that develop and at one point or anotherbecome mapped onto the appropriatelinguistic forms, or is it linguistic forms that develop, channeling thoughts and cognitions toward socially appropriate ways of making sense? And further,is making sense primarily a more reflective, conceptual activity, or can it be also described in morepractical, participatory terms? In this chapter, the attempt is made to break outof the cycle of describing language use as principally based oncognitive terms or conceptual entities. Starting from the assumption that emotion displaysare deeply embedded in our humanway of displaying ourselvesas situated selves in situations with others, we do notdeny that emotion displays havephysiological (bodily caused reactions) correlations, or that situationscan be conceptually structured and talked about. However, in order to determine how emotion displays gain their meaning as meaningful events, we cannot solely rely on physical reactions to stimuli or toconceptual structures in themind of private individuals as foundations. Rather, bodyand mind occupy (jointly) asocial space in unfolding episodes, communicating the (relational) positionof a self vis-&-vis others. This is where joy, anger, shame,surprise, and thelike “materialize”as meaningful positions taken up by a person purposely. Thus, these positions are displayed as actions that are purposely taken up to signal and signify a selfother relationship.’ In this way, wecan study the kinds of judgments, aesthetics, morality, and prudence that are expressed in emotion displays. We can determine what interactionally has led up to an emotiondisplay, and what the display has accomplished. In this sense then, emotions like are conversations (Hard & Gillett, 1994), andaccounts of emotion situations typically work up the aesthetics, judgments, and moralityinvolved in such situations. In sum, the present chapter does not take narrative accounts of emotion situations as windows into some (underlying) conceptual (mind)or physical (body) foundations of human meaning making, but as windows to the positionings that are being performed in the form of narrative actions. In these positionings narrators provide the audience with an orderso that they can convince, blame,or save face,that is, practically orient the audience to an order within which judgments,aesthetics, and morality are purposely arranged. And 1 And although wealso have emotions as private individuals, with no oneelse around, self and other remain theunit around which “selfhood” and “otherness” are constructed.

60

BAMBERC

since these narrativesare constructed for an audience, the window metaphor should have been replaced by the better imageof a signpost or pointer: The actual performanceof the narrating act orients the audience to attend to the order constructed. And because the researcher is participant in this construction processas interviewer, the construed ordermay also be considered as part of the research situation itself. It should be noted that this account of the relationship between language, emotion,self and other, and mind and body is centrally dialogical. Inasmuch as language is alwaysan embodiedact and always centrally dialogical, it orients selfhood and otherness to one another in a foundational way (see Bamberg, 1999, for further discussion on the centrality of language). It should also be noted that the approach presented in this chapter bears heavily on the notionof development: In contrast to mapping out changes over time of children’s uses of words (semantic structures) orchildren’s linguistic applications of conceptual structures, and claiming thatthis is what develops, we see the issue of development much moreclosely tied to the issue of participating in (linguistic) practices. And because these practices are no longer conceived of as structures that have their existence apart from the person (or within the person as internalized or matured mental structures), but rather as embodied discourse activities, the trajectoryof language development (here, emotion talk) is no longer constrained to a single domain, such as lexical development, but closely interwoven with the development of the personas a whole. We return tothis issue in theconcluding section. THE GRAMMARSO F ANGER AND SADNESS IN AMERICAN ENGLISH-SPEAKING CHILDREN

In what follows I will extrapolate the linguistic devices that are typically employed in the construction of two typesof situations, being angry and being sad. I do not detail thefindings for each single age group, but for contrasting purposes compare the older children (the thirdgraders, mean age g;1) with the younger age groups (preschoolers, mean age 5;2,collapsed with kindergartners, mean age 6;i). In addition, central to our discussion is the genre of lived experience (past-tense, first-person narratives), but we also briefly consider the explanatory genre for comparative purposes, neglecting here a more detailed discussion of the third-person genre (see Ozgaliqkan,1997, for a report of the genre findings forall four emotions). The term grammar for the characterization of form:function relationships has intentionally been chosen, on the one band to index an affinity toWlttgenstein’s use of the term grammar in his theory of language games (Wittgenstein, 1953), and on the other to take a critical position vis-&-visthe use of the term grammar as a system outsideand prior to the person and his or her use of forms for practical purposes (functions). Thelinguistic forms thatare taken to constitute a “grammar” for a

3

Grammar in Practice

61

particular population (here age group of children) are purely descriptive listings of formaldevices, that is, they arenot meant to be in any way exclusive nor exhaustive; rather, theyare taken as (formal) indicesof functional orientations to direct the hearer or audience to attend to a particular discursive position (see Bamberg, 1991,1997;Talbot & Bamberg, 1996). I first list the devices constituting thegrammars of “anger” and “sadness” for First-Person the two G e n r e and then briefly compare them with the grammars for the same emotions in the Explanatory Genre. The Grammar ofAngerin the First-Person Genre The linguistic devices employed by olderand younger children, that is,by all age groups, to construct angry situations in which they were (made) angry typically consist of: (i) a highly individuated agent (my sister-see Example I), and a highly individuated undergoer (me); (ii) a marking of the action as highly transitive; (iii) a positioningof the Ias the recipient and target of the action in the direct object slot; and (iv) a positioning of the other (the agent) in subject slot.

These four features apply consistently to all of the verbal accounts, and Examples (1) and (2) may serve to illustrate how angeris constructed in terms of these four linguistic construction types: I was in the room and my sister kicked me and it went right into the rib bone when

my sister slapped me across the face

just because she didn’t letme in her room and I wanted to play a game but she didn’t let me and slapped meacross the face

In terms of the discursive purposes for which these lexicosyntacticdevices are employed, we can tentatively draw up two general orientations: On the one hand, the constructionof a highly individuated targetof others’ actions may orient the audience toward empathy orsympathy, particularlyif the action is not sufficiently motivated or justified. On the other hand, introducing the other as the topical focus in the position of the syntactic subject opens her or him to become subjected to blame, again, particularly whenthe action was unmotivated or unjust. In the anger accountsof children across all age ranges, this topical focus on the perpetrator (for the purpose of attributing blame) overshadows, so to speak, the discursive purpose of elicitingempathy for the

62

BAMBERC

victim. Or, in other words, the constructionof anger in American English consists (developmentally from very early on) of two discursive purposes: blaming and eliciting empathy, with the latter subordinated to the former. The Grammar o f Sadness in the First-PersonGenre

Typical of the accounts of older American children (the third gradersin our study, who arevery much in agreement with theway adults construct sadness accounts) aretwo different construction types: (i) positioning the other in subject position, as in Example (3), o r (ii) positioning the I in subject slot, as in Example (4): ( 3 ) it was when I was about5 or 4 years old

my biggest sister got into acar accident

so she died because of a car accident and I was really sad for a few weeks (4) I was in Charlton and I moved to Worcester and I couldn’t see my neighbors and their dogs

Whereas construction type (i) holds up the possibility to make the other (here my sister) the potential topicalfocus, and as such orients the discourse activity in its purpose toward blaming, this option is ruled out by two additional linguistic devices: (a) the avoidance and downplay o f marking the other as agentive, and (b) the absence (bychoice o f predicate-type/Aktionsart)of a target of the activity referred to(dyingis atelic).

These two devices are similarly employedin construction type (ii) (see Example 4)) denying the I to achieve the status of a topical focus, which-in case the I really becomes the topic, withsome potential foragentivity-would open the door to apossible interpretation that the narratori s signaling that it had been his faultand thathe was intending toblame himself. Thus, it can be maintained that the grammar typically employed for the construction of sadness differs from the grammar of anger in degree of complexity: Whereas anger consistsof one (formal) construction type, but comprises the two discursive orientations empathy and blame as (and such requires a delicate balance between these two orientations), sadness is less complex in termsof discursive purposes, because itis geared toward onlyone discourse purpose, namely empathy, but more complex in terms of the existence of two constructive options. In addition, taking the prototypical English construction type of the transitive scene, theconstruction types employed to

3

Grammar in Practice

63

orient toward eliciting empathy also can be characterized as more complex, as they are deviations from the prototype, because they require an additional downplay of the topical focus. In other words, after the subject (whichtypically is the topical focus) has been established, this focus has to be “defocused” in subsequent clauses. The clause “because of a car accident” (in Example 3) illustrates this function, removing‘‘my sister” from potentially becoming the topical focus, implying that “she didn’t really do anything; thisis not really about her”as an agent inthe depicted event. Thus, although the construction of anger-in English-is more complex whenit comes toits discursive purposes, the construction of sadness is more complex in termsof its actual linguistic construction types. Turningnexttothedescription of howsadness was linguistically constructed in the first-person genre by the younger children(the preschoolers and kindergartners inour study), we find their accounts structurally equivalent with the anger accountsof the American English-speaking subjects ofall age groups (including their own). Examples (5) and (6) illustrate this point: ( 5 ) when Nikki hit me in the eye I was really really sad I cried for a whole halfan hour ( 6 ) my Mommy hit me she hit me in the eye and I was sad and cried

These accountstypically consist of two components: Thefirst part topicalizes the perpetrator by constructing ahighly transitiveevent, which is likely to be taken to orient the audience toward an attribution of blame to the agent. However, in the second part, the topicshifts from the other to the I, orienting the audience toward empathyas the discursive purposeof the twocomponents as a whole. However, the construction of the happening that can be held responsible for the emergence of sadnessis very much like that of an anger scenario for the youngerchildren. The Grammar ofAnger inthe ExplanatoryGenre

The constructionof anger in explanatory discourses is achieved by fivedifferent construction types that mostly run in concert: (i) an unspecified agent in subject slot, most often plural they (ii) the unspecified target of the activity described in direct object slot, most typicallyyou (where it remains unclear whether you refers to an unspecified hypothetical personor to the interviewer); (iii) an active verb which nevertheless is much less specific (and therefore less transitive) when compared with verbs used in the first-person genre (e.g.,

64

BAMBERC

doing something or hurting here in the explanatorygenre, versus hitting and kicking in thefirst person genre); (iv) the clause modus is most often marked by ifor when; in conjunction with (v) the present tense, taking the situation into the realm of the timeless and possible world.

Examples (7) and (8) illustrate these types: ( 7 ) ifsomeone hurts you and you getreally really really mad then you are angry ( 8 ) you are angry at someone because they did somethingto you and you didn’tlike it what they did

In more general terms, the construction types result in the overall construct of an anger scenario that is much less of a bounded event, less vivid, and presented from a much more detached perspective than anger was constructed in the first-personperspective. Seeking empathy from the audience or blaming the other for any transgression clearly do not matter. If there is a particular discursive orientation, it lies in “describing” or making “what usually occurs” explicit, though clearly from a detached vantage point. The audience is led out into a world of usual occurrences, distanced from the realmof the special occurrence of subjective experience that made Examples (1) through (6) tellable narratives. As already mentioned, the five construction types (i)-(v) employed for the depiction or explanationof anger situations in general are used in concert by the older children, that is, all of them “materialize” together. Younger children have difficulties in using all fivesimultaneously,and they also often slip after having given an account employing the markers typical for the explanatory genre intothe first-person genre, telling how this once happened to them (past tense, plus devicestypical for the grammar of being angry).However, across the board, they all are able to employ atleast a few of the earlier mentioned five construction types. In spite of these shortcomings in terms of particular formal devices typical forthe explanatory genre, youngerchildren’s general competence to give anger explanations neverthelessis relatively wellestablished. The Grammar of Sadness in the Explanatory Genre

Similar to the accounts given in the first-person genre, a sad situation is constructed by our oldersubjects as well as bythe younger childrenin terms of either “ s o m e t h i n g [bad] is h a p p e n i n g t o you” (as in Example g>, or in terms of “you want something, but you can’t have it’ (Example lo). Agentive others, who

3

Grammar in Practice

65

could be held responsible, veryrarely figure in these accounts,and if they do, they are always defocused as potential targets of blame. Example(9) illustrates the something bad is happening to you scenario by transforming in line4 the potential agents into an impotent it of a mere happening that leaves you helpless (most likely, because thereis no target for revenge): ( 9 ) when like someone calls you four-eyed

ifyou have glasses and you get not mad at them but ithurts your feelings and you’re sad (IO) like your favorite blanket was up high

where you couldn’tget it

The only difference between the younger and the older children in their construction of sad scenarios in the explanatory genre was that the younger children at times seemedto consider a descriptionof the behavioral displayof being sad asufficient explanation of “what it means tobe sad” as in crying, or if somebody cried. Thus, in spite of some difficulties in sorting out the linguistic complexities of the explanatory genre at an early age, children of all age groups clearly demarcated what it means to be angry from what it means to be sad. They construed the anger scenario as a bounded unit(with aclear beginning and an end, where the actionin the middle led to the end), which was generalized and presented from a detached discourse (purpose) orientation; and construing the latter as a nonagentive happening, entailing no telicity, and consequently no particular other as a target to be blamed. In both sadness and anger explanations, the discursive orientations of attributing blame or eliciting empathy were backgrounded, whereas the discursive orientation to describe general occurrences from a detached perspective became essential the interactive goal. SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

Why Do Young English-SpeakingChildren Confuse Anger andSadness?

Summariziig the insights gained from the earlier data, we are now better equipped for discussing the origins forchildren’s early confusions between angry andsad scenariosand for delineating someof the factors involved in the developmental process between preschool age and the time children reachthird grade, that is, between the ages of 5 and 9 years. First, the evidence assembled clearly points toward the early constructions of sadness accounts in the first person genre as theissue for what we called “confusion.” In the attempt to determine how these accounts differ from developmentally later sadness accounts, and also how they differ from accounts of anger experiences(across

66

BAMBERC

all age groups), we realized that anger accounts typically consist of the construction of a highly agentive other who is introduced as the discourse topic. This construction is in direct service of the discursive act of attributing blame. Because in English this discursive strategy is achieved by use ofthe prototypical sentence format that endorses “the transitivityscene” (Budwig, 1995; Hopper & Thompson, 1980), the construction of first-person anger scenarios is grammatically relatively easy. Sadness scenarios, however, require a deviation from this more prototypical syntactic format: If another person has been introduced in subjectslot, and therefore is likelyto be taken to be the topic of the account, the narratorhas to deemphasize this person’s agency in order to avoid the invocation of blame. He or she needs to reorient the listener to an empathetic stance towards the person who gives the account.It is exactly this problem of reorientation which younger English-speaking children face in their accounts oftheir ownsadness experiences. Considering that thegeneralized person perspective is linguistically more complex than thefirst person perspective, and that the younger of the children struggled considerably in coming to grips with the timeless as-if modality of this genre, it should comeas a surprise that anger and sadness accounts are relatively clearly differentiated in the explanatorydiscourse genre along the dimension of transitivity-agency. Thus, theconfusion in the younger children between being angryand being sadcannot be traced to the general unreadiness of linguistically presenting what has conceptually already been mapped out. Rather, the early underdifferentiation between the two types of accountslies clearly rooted in the pragmatics of emotion talk, more specifically, in the inability of not clearly differentiating between how to mark the respective discourse purposes of attributing blame versus eliciting empathy. And we would like to maintain that this early pragmatic inability is responsible for ouryounger subjects responding to the interview questions in a “confused” manner. With regard to what itis that developmentally pulls the child out of this state of underdifferentiation toward a higher level of differentiation (and as such also to a higher level of integration), we have no hardevidence to say for sure. However, the way we were able to map out the developmental route from a clear state of underdifferentiation toa higher level of making sense of sadness. That is, as a process of appropriating the toolsnecessary to talk meaningfully about the social relationships in which emotions are embedded, points up some highly important underpinnings. First, itshows that modeling emotional development in terms of an internalizationprocess of learning howto feel may not be sufficient. Further, we were ableto draw out the limitations of modeling emotional development in strictly cognitive terms. As shown by this study, grammar, if understood correctly-that is, not as abstract principlesof a universalist nature, butas social know-how relevant for the constructionof social meaning to participate in conversationalpractices-plays an integral role in coming to grips with what emotions do and what they are used for in social

3

Grammar in Practice

67

communicative practices.* As such, learning touse the linguistic construction procedures for socially appropriate purposesis part and parcel of our cultural practices. To view this process in terms of appropriation rather than internalization gives space for the dialectics involved in the developmental process in general: Ontheonehand,thegrammatical means-so-to-speak-are preformed. Theyhave their social existence before theyare put touse in social practices. It is for exactly this reason that children (or others) can cometo use these tools inappropriately suchas in their early sadness constructions in the first person genre. However, these so-calledtools are not predetermining and imposing theiruse apart and independent from their users. The child early on is practicing in a relatively autonomous way with these tools, assembling new construction parts with others that are already successfully in place. Thus, viewing this processof appropriating linguistic constructions in the determination of emotion meanings as an integral part of 1earning“the language” adds an extremely relevant component to emotional development, probably one that is much more central than we were able to imaginethus far. In addition, and here we admittedly enter more speculative territory, having documented that thedifferentiation between anger and sadness accountstook place developmentally prior in the generalized-person, explanatory genre, before it could be appropriated in the first-person, past-experience narrative genre, one mightexpect some learning effects spilling over from practices in doing talk for “being descriptive” to doing talk for more involved, interpersonal purposes suchas “blaming:’ “saving face:’ or “seeking empathy.” This, however, should not be misunderstoodas meaning to imply that those latter purposes are learned in more detached speech genresfirst. Not at all. But in caseswhere the linguistic procedures relevant for the construction processes of highly involved speech genres constitute a particular problem (suchas in the case of constructing complex sad scenariosas earlier), practices in more detached speech genres might enable speakers to sort out form:function relationships and reintegrate them at a higherlevel of integration in more involved speech genres. Taking up on thefindings by Stein and her associates that were discussed in the opening of this chapter, namely that children younger than the5- and 6-year-olds in our study were perfectly able to differentiate between the different components thatdistinguish (English)anger, sadness, fear, and happiness, we are nowin a better position to reconsider this seeming contradiction to our ownfindings, and tie it closer to theconcerns of methodology and language development. Although one of the important differences between the two z This is not meant to imply that emotions cannot occur outside of communicative settings, that is, so-to-speak privately. But the “private experience” of emotions is by no means their sole and primary aspect. As Wittgenstein (1953)was able to convincingly demonstrate,if that were the case, we could not only not “talk” about them, but we wouldn’t“know” about themeither.

68

BAMBERC

studies under consideration is the age of the children, another considerationis the way the datawere elicited. Apart from these two aspects, however, there is a third issue, which concerns the questionof which aspects of performance we take to represent relevant developmental strides. Note that the online interview technique, used by Stein and her associates, is traditionally employed as a cognitive procedureto test comprehension. For this purpose it is legitimate to interrupt the naturalconversational flow with questions that probechildren’s “real” understanding. The discourse mode thatis created in this type ofinterview resembles the way caregivers and children interact in a topic-elaborative style that is quite common in our culture, where the caregivers “build bridges” to test and teach “knowledge.” This type of knowledge, though not necessarily of an abstract nature,is nevertheless accessed in a much more detached, quasidescriptive, explanatory mode. In contrast tothis type of discoursemode, we found in our own investigation the early “confusion” of anger and sadness scenarios to be grounded in theinvolved discourse mode, where itwas the primary goal to grammaticize the discursive force of thetwodifferent emotions. Thus,we do not see the findings of Stein and her associates contradicting ours. Rather, they complement our own findings in the sense that a more detached discourse mode in both investigations was found to facilitate a clear differentiation of what is underdifferentiated only in the involved first person genre. Thus, it seems important to note thatwhile the marking of attributing blameand eliciting empathy does not seem to play a major role in the explanatory discourse, therebyfacilitating an early mastery of differentiating between anger and sadness, it is the complexity of the linguistic construction types necessary for the differentiation betweenattributing blame and eliciting empathy that ultimately is in the way of an (equally) early mastery in the more involved, first-person discourse genre. Further, that this “linguistic” inability also showsup in the typeof “confusion” between angerand sadness that led us originally to look deeperinto thedifferent types of accounts and how theywere made up in terms of linguistic construction types. However, I assume that the relevance of these findings is weighted quite differently in the two different frameworks. A more cognitively oriented approach is most likely to consider as relevant the point in time when the knowledge base for individual emotions (or other cognitive systems) first can successfully be tapped, because from thenon, all confusions can be(and need to be) explained in terms of situational performance constraints. In order to tap this basic knowledge developmentally as early as possible, an elicitation technique must be chosen that imposesas little as possible situational and contextualconstraints. Accordingly, withinthecognitiveframework of emotions, to ask children to construct emotion scenarios in the first person genre, might not count as the most efficient way, exactly for the reason that their personal involvement might interfere with their actual knowledge. In addition, these “distortions” all occur after the basic knowledge ofparticular

3

Grammar in Practice

69

emotions has already been firmlyestablished. Therefore, accordingto such a position, our findings and elaborate discussionsdo not contribute to howchildren establish their emotion knowledge. At best, they may contribute to how children apply their knowledge under difficult and adversarial circumstances. In contrast to the cognitive frameworkof emotions and its approach to knowledge acquisitionas the major developmental achievement, the discursive orientation views knowledge of the emotions rather as the result or the product of participation in cultural practices. The discursive approach to emotions is primarily interested in the processes through which cultural knowledge obtains its motivational force €or individuals, and for this reason, a confusion between emotions in particulardiscursive settings is of utmost interest,’ since it offers insight into the developmental process of how the cultural directives of emotions are sorted out. Consequently, comparisons between performances in different practices or discourse settings are of extreme interest for studies that focus on development as a form of cultural learning. And the findings and discussions presentan important starting point within this orientation. Emotions as Positions Taken in Practices by Use of Linguistic Construction Types One possibly puzzling concern lies hidden behind much of what has been discussed thusfar: Whydo people, whenasked to give emotion accounts (of how they or others oncefelt), construe elaborate circumstancesaround happenings and events, that is, seek refugein the “world of actions”? And why,when asked to construe events or happenings (in which they themselves or othersfigure as actors), do they deviate from the sequencing of actions and resort to references to feelings and emotions? This concern actually becomes more urgent when it concerns accounts in which the narrator seems to be implicated or is implicating someone else, that is, accounts that have been classified in this chapter as “involved.”Edwardsand Potter (19 9 2), inresponse tothis seeming contradiction, argue that in naturaldiscourse, talk about events and happenings i s designed in particular ways “to allow inferencesabout mental life and cognition” (p. 142) and- I would like to add-particularly inferences about emotions. Edwards and Potter also hold that theconverse is equally true. Assumptions about the world, what happened, andwhy it happened, are inferred from the way the speaker designed the emotions and motivations of theactors. Thus, event construal and 3 The potential argument that thereis no real confusion between the emotions, because “obviously” even younger children “know” whatsad is (feelslike) and what angeris (feels like), and that the above at best accounts for a confusion of emotion talk,“obviously”misses the point.To “know” what it meansto beangry, and to “know” what it meansto be sad arenot derived out ofbodily sensations, at least not solely and not directly (unmediated). The meanings of anger and sadness are imbedded in talk, talk that is situated and simultaneously situating the interactantewith regard to how they wantto be understood and how they position themselves as moral agents.

70

BAMBERC

the construalof characters’ “inner psychologies”are closely orchestrated with regard to one another. Accounting for one, to alarge degree, indexes the other. However, these worlds of actors and events within which references to emotions are embedded do not stand their on own. Theyare versions produced in discourse situationsfor discursive purposes. The particular purposes can be manifold, such as to attribute blame to others (in order tosave face or restore one’s dignity), or to elicit empathy (in order to pursue joint retaliation or revenge). How the speaker positions him- orherself vis-i-vis the audience results in the particular construction design that is given to the worldof actors and events. Thus, the world of the interactants (speaker-audience) regulates the way the psychological “reality” ofthe actors are construedas well as what is happening in the eventsin which the actors have a role. As such, the approach I have proposed in the foregoing attempts to turn around the traditional,realist picture of the relationship between emotions, cognitions, and language. Therealist picture starts from events and happenings as taking place in the world, to be re-presented in people’s thoughts and feelings, so that we can subsequently speak about these events as well as the thoughts, evaluative appraisals, andfeelings. I am suggesting an inversion of this relationship: In communication, which is the performative domain of social action, both events as well as stances toward them (evaluative or cognitive) are organized, not because theyare stored andavailable previous to and outsideof any discursive purpose,to be executed subsequentlyin communication. Rather, eventsand theway they arethought about andvalued by the speaker are constructs thatare borne outof the purposeof talk. Consequently, the way in which the purpose of talk manifests itself in theworld of interactants is not a by-product, but rather the starting point for a (discursive) analysis of what is manifested in the talk in terms of the characters, their activities, and the evaluative position with regard to them. A s a concluding remark, let me briefly touch on an additional dimension regarding the notion of positioning that I alluded to earlier. In addition to the orchestration of characters with regardto one another at the level of what is being talkedabout (positioninglevel l), and in addition to the orchestration of the speaker-audience relationship (positioninglevel 2), the same linguistic construction types index how the speaker positionsorhimherself with regard to the self(positioning level 3). Coordinating the content of talk with the discursive purposes for whichit is constructed forms the presupposition in what is commonly considered the constructionof self-identity. Whether the talk is actually about the self (the l ),or others(he or she), or about peoplein general (one or the generalized you, as in the explanatory genre), italways reveals aspects of a moral order in the way characters and audience are orchestrated. The moral identity question “What am I in relation to the Good?” (Sarbin, 1995, p. 219) turns into a positionwith regard to one’s own identity: “Who am I?” Thus, the constructionof characters in events at the level of

3

Grammar in Practice

71

content formation, the construction of the speaker-audience relationship, and the construction of one’s self-identity are closely interwoven. And although traditionally psychologists start from the assumptionof the unity of the self, and see narrative accounts and interactive relationships as orchestrated from and toward the purpose of maintaining this position, the approach that is schematically outlined in this chapterviews this unity of a self (at least to a degree) as consisting of local achievements that are based on grammatical constructions for discursive purposes (Bamberg,1997). In sum, what has been offered inthis contribution to this volume is an attempt to moreclearly delineate between cognitiveapproaches to emotions (and emotion development) andtheir discursive counterparts. What has come to forefront the in this attempt is the role of language, in particular of grammatical constructs (construction types for discourse purposes) which form important building blocks in the formationof the social constructs thatare achieved indevelopment and interaction (e.g., emotions, intentions, memory, self, and identity). The close look at some of these buildingblocks, as illustrated in the study presented here, has led to an illuminationof what is involved inthe interplayof language practices, emotions, conceptsof emotions, andin their respective developments. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to the students who participated in this project, including: Andrea Berger, Sunil Bhatia,Ayden Reynolds,and Michelle Sicard. In addition, I would like to thank Keith Nelson for his extremely helpful and clarifying comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. REFERENCES

Bamberg, M. (19 91). Narrative activity as perspective taking:The role ofemotionals, negations,and voice in the constructionof the storyrealm. Journal ofcognitive Psychotherapy, 5,275-29 0. Bamberg, M. (19 97). Positioning betweenstructure and performance. Journal ofNarrative and Life History, 7.335-342. Bamberg, M. (1999). Language and communication-What develops? Determining the role of languge practices for a theory of development. In N. Budwig, 1. Uzgiris, & J.Wertsch (Eds.), Communication:Arena ofdeveloprnent(pp.55-77). Stamford, C T Ablex. Basso, E. B. (19 92). Contextualization in Kalapo narratives. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking context (pp. 253-26 9). Cambridge, England: CambridgeUniversity Press. Budwig, N.(1995). A developmental-functionalist approach tochild language. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Clark, E. (1993). The lexicon in acquisition. Cambridge, England: CambridgeUniversity Press. Davitz, J. (196 9). The language ofemotions. London: Academic Press. Edwards, D., &Potter, J. (1992). Discursivepsychology. London, England:Sage. Fletcher, P., & MacWhinney, B. (Eds.). (1995). The handbook ofchild language. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Gleason, J. B., & Ratner, N.B. (I y 93).Psycholinguistics. Fort Worth,TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Goddard, C. (1997). Contrastive semantics and cultural psychology: ‘Surprise’ in Malay and English. Culture and Psychology, 3,153-18 I.

72

BAMBERC

Harrk, R., & Gillett, G. (1994). The discursive mind.Thousand Oaks, CA. Sage. Heelas, P. (1986). Emotion talk across cultures. InR. Harre (Ed.), The socialconstruction ofemotions. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1997). Language development. Pacific Grove,C A Brooks Cole. Hopper, P., &Thompson, S. (1980). Transitivity in grammar anddiscourse. Language, 56,251-299. Leff, J. (1973). Culture and thedifferentiation of emotionalstates. British Journal ofpsychiatry, 123, 299-306. Lutz, C. A. (1988). Unnatural emotions: Everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atoll and their challenges to western theory.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Matsamuto, D.(1994). People: Psychology from a cultural perspective. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks Cole. Ochs, E. (1988). Culture and language development. Cambridge, England: CambridgeUniversity Press. Ochs, E. (1996). Linguistic resources for socializing humanity. In J. J. Gumperz & S. C. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinkinglinguisticrelativity (pp. 406-437). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. OzgaliSkan, $.(1997). Genre construction in emotional discourse.Unpublished masters thesis. Clark University, Worcester, MA. Sarbin, T. R. (1995). Emotionallife, rhetorics, and roles. Journal ofNarrative and Lije History, 5, 213-220. Schieffelin, B. B. (1990). The give and take ofeveryday life, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Schieffelin, B. B.,& Ochs, E. (1986). Language socialization. Annual Review ofAnthropology, 15, 163-191. Stein, N.L., & Levine, L. J, (1990). Making sense out of emotional experience: The representation and use of goal-directed knowledge. In N. L.Stein, B.Leventhal, & T. Trabasso (Eds.), Psychologicaland biological approachesto emotion (pp. 45-73). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Stein, N. L., Liwag, M. D., & Wade, E. (1997). A goal-based approach to memory for emotional events: Implications for therries of understanding andsocialization. In R. D. Kavanaugh, B. Z. Glick, & S. Fein (Eds.), Emotions: The G. Stanley Hall Symposium. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Stein,N. L., & Trabasso, T. (1992). The organization of emotional experience: Creatinglinks among emotion, thinking and intentional action. In N.Stein & K. Oatley(Eds.), Cognition andEmotion (special issue), 6, 225-244. Stein, N.L.,Trabasso, T., & Liwag, M.(1992). The Rashomon phenomenon: Therole of framing and future-orientation in memories for emotionalevents. In M. M. Haith, J. B. Benson, R. J. Roberts, Jr., & B.F. Pennington (Eds.), The development offuture oriented processes (pp. 409-436). Hillsdale, NI: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Talbot, J., & Bamberg, M.(1996). Affirmation and resistance of dominant discourses: The rhetorical construction of pregnancy. Journal ofNarrativeand Life History, 6, 225--251. Trabasso, T., & Stein, N.L. (1993). How do we represent both emotionalexperience and meaning? A review of Richard S. Lazarus"Emotions and adaptation'. Psychological Inquiry, 4,326-333. Wlerzbicka, A. (1992). Defining emotion concepts. Cognitive Science, 16,539-581. Wlerzbicka,A.(1994). Emotion, language, and cultural scripts. In S. Kitayama & H. R. Markus (Eds.), Emotion and culture(pp. 133-19 6). Washington, DC: AmericanPsychological Association. Wlerzbicka, A. (1995). Emotion and facial expression: A semantic perspective. Culture and Psychology I, 227-258. Wlttgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. NewYork Macmillan.

A Crosscultural Investigation of Australian and Israeli Parents’ arrative Interactions With eir Children

GlLLlAN WICCLESWORTH

Macquarie University 4 University of Melbourne ANAT STAVANS

Hebrew University 4 Beit Berl College

We tell children stories, relate the day’s events, and recapitulate missed television episodes. These are examples of narrative, the overt discourse manifestation of the recounting of eventsthat occur in daily life. We expect that people will be able to understand our narratives and, in turn, produce appropriate narratives when required. We assume these narratives will be relevant to the situation, coherent, and linguistically cohesive, building on common contextual knowledge shared by narrator and listener. How d o children learn tobe competent narrators?Most research on narrative discourse has centered around either adults’ or children’s productions of narrative structures of different types, from more structured narratives such as storybook reading to more “open-ended” narratives such as personal experience narratives. In recent years, numerous studieshave focused on the development of children’s narrative ability, both in specific languages and crosslinguistically (e.g., Bamberg, 1987; Bamberg& Marchman, 1990;Berman & Slobin, 1994; Hickmann 1995; Karmiloff-Smith, 1979, 1981;McCabe & Peterson, 1991; Peterson & McCabe, 1983; Wigglesworth, 1997). Fewer studies have focused on the “environment” in which children are exposed to narrative discourse, reporting (a) cultural aspectsof narrative development (Brice Heath, 1983; Ochs, 1988; Polanyi, 1989; Scollon & Scollon, 1981; Schieffelin,1984); (b) the educational contributionof the narrative discourse environment toliteracy development (Snow 1977); and mostrecently, (c)crosslinguistic and crosscultural features of narrative discourse (Blum-Kulka, 1997; Minami& McCabe, 1995). 73

74

WICCLESWORTH & STAVANS

Research concerned with narrativesas parental input has tended to take either a sociocultural oran educational perspective. For example, Snowand Dickenson (1990) found that among low-incomefamilies, there is variable access to literacy and narratives, and they speculatedon whether being good a narrator related to social class differences. Brice Heath‘s (1983) famous study of Roadville and Trackton reported that African-American and Euro-American children in the southernUnited States are exposed todifferent forms andgenres of narratives from birth.Brice Heath claimedthat thesocialization processes to which the children in each community were exposed predicted schoolsuccess more strongly than single factors such as formal language instruction or the amount of parent-child interaction. To date, very few studies have dealt with the types of narratives parents produce when the addresseesare their own children. Harkins (1992) showed that mothers’ narratives told to their children varied according to both the mothers’ educational background and their perspective on goal the and style of the narrative. Peterson and McCabe (1996) undertook a longitudinal study in which they addressed the question of why children differ so much in the amount of orienting information they provide in their narratives. They found a relationship between theamount of temporal andspatial information children provided in their narratives at age 3 with the amount of prompting these children received from their parents 1 year to 18 months earlier. In another longitudinal study, Haden, Reese, and Fivush (19 9 6 ) investigated the typesof comments and questions mothers directed to their children during joint story-reading activities. The mothers read both a familiar and an unfamiliar storybook to their children atages 3;3 and 4;8. When the children were5 ~ 0 , their literacy skills were assessedwith a battery of tests. Haden et al. found that the mothers fell into one of three different types of storybook reading styles, which remained consistentover time although notover the typeof book. These authors also found a relationship between mother’sstyle and child’s print and story skills at 5;10. Minami and McCabe (1996)comparedinteractive personal-experiencenarrativesinJapaneseandAmericanmonolingual mother-child dyads, which revealed cultural and stylistic differences. Stavans (1996) analyzedparents’narrativesdirected to their own monolingual Hebrew-speaking children. Herresults led her to propose a 3-stage model to describe the age-relatedstrategies the parents deployedin their narrative interactions. These studieshave mainly regarded parents’ narrativesas one type of discourse input andchildren’s narratives as a specific type of discourse production. Although they have yielded information about children’s narrative development, we know very little about how parent narrators and child listeners co-construct naturalistic, interactive narratives. The study reported in this chapter deals with narrative development from the perspective of the kind of narrative input that children from middle-class literate families receive from their parents in two different languages and

4

A Crosscultural Investigation

75

cultural backgrounds: English-speaking Australian and Hebrew-speaking Israeli. The study was motivated by Berman and Slobin’s (1994) extensive crosscultural research on the developmentof narrative ability in childrenas they face the cognitively complex task of relating events as extended discourse. It is meant to complement Berman and Slobin’s account with a detailed examination of the kind of input children receive from their parents.Our aim is to contribute to the growing body of research that uses crosslinguistic and crosscultural comparisons to discover similaritiesand differences in parentchild discourse.We hypothesize that the discourseof narrative interactions may importantly influence how children learn torelate narratives. Although narrative development is partially driven by universal aspects of cognitive development, it must also be driven by language-specific structures and/or cultural traits of the community thatuses the language. Thespecific objective of the study is to delineate featuresof Australian and Hebrew parental storytelling practices that may be conducive to the children’s acquisition of the cultural andlinguistic knowledge appropriatefor narrative construction. In this chapter we report on the natureof parent-child narrative interactions produced in naturalistic conditions when parentstell the same story used to elicit the narratives in Berman and Slobin (1984; Mayer, 1969). In particular, we are interested in the means usedby parents toaddress their childrenat three different ages, in two different cultures, and in two typologically different languages. Rather than examining the storyitself, we consider the nature of age- and language-related differences apparent in monolingual AustralianEnglish and Israeli-Hebrew parent-child discourse,as shown byuse of: rhetorical questions; labeling as means to “teach” the child; personal digressions; affective and evaluative comments about the story; didactic or judgmental or moral comments; and a range of interactive strategies. METHOD

Subjects

The children and their parentswere monolingual Hebrew speakers inIsrael and monolingualEnglish speakers inAustralia. The children were aged3, 5, and 7, and onlya single child from any one family was included. Theage groups were specifically chosen to provide comparative data for Berman and Slobin’s (1994) crosscultural study. There were 10 parent-child dyads in each group. Materials

Parents were askedto relate a story from the wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You?to their child. This story depicts the adventures of a boy, a dog, and a frog. An outline of the story is provided in the Appendix. This story was chosen for the following reasons: It provides a solid basis for comparison with previous

76

W I C C L E S W O R T H 6: S T A V A N S

studies; the plot lineis sufficiently complex forall age groups; the narrative structure provides ample opportunities to expand and elaborate episodes or to compress and encapsulate them; it provides a thematic basis thatis flexible enough to suit thedifferent ages and culturalbackgrounds of the populations involved in thestudy. Procedure

Parents were provided witha copy of the book, an audio cassette, and a small cassette tape recorder (where needed) to enable them torecord the storytelling at a convenient time in their own homes. They were askedto familiarize themselves with the bookbefore telling the story to the child and to ensure thatno other children were present during the session. In addition, parents were asked to record the first attempt at the task, so that thesession would provide natural, unrehearsed data. It was stressed that the parentshould be the one to tell the story, while interacting with the child ashe or she normally did whentelling a story. Transcription and Coding

English-languagerecordings were transcribedinstandardorthography. Hebrew-language recordings were transcribed in a modified broad phonemic script. All utterances from both parent and child were included. Subsequent to this, each clause spoken by each parent and each child was classified into two different categories: story and conversational. We define each category as follows: Parent-story:

These were clauses in which the parent provided information about the story. More precisely, they were statements that referred directlyto activities depicted in or inferable fromthe pictures of the book, or provided contextual or descriptive information, anddescriptive statements. Included in this categoryas(but subcategories)were parents’ explicitly stated opinionsabout the events depicted (e.g., I think he’s going to fall down), as well as comments about the motivations, feelings, or desires of the characters involved in the story (e.g.,The little boy’s very happy now).

In theory, it was possible for a parent to do no more simply than relate the story in the session, so that all clauses would be categorized as parent-story. In fact, this occurred in only one case, with the parentof a Hebrew 5-year-old) and even so, there were a number of interjections from the child. Child-story:

Included in this category were any utterances by the child (including responses toadult questions) that contributed to the ongoing story line, description, or context depicted in or inferable from the pictures.

4

A Crosscultural Investigation

77

Parent-conversational: The parent conversational clauses were the focus of the analysis. Consequently, they were further categorized into oneof four types: Story-related conversational clauses were defined as attempts by the parent to involve the child in the storytelling activity. Thus, this category included the following types of questions, which were designed to elicit various types inof formation about the story represented in book the a. Wh-type questions requesting general or specific information, for example, What’s happening? What’s happening to the dog? What’s the boy doing there? b. Wh-type questions asking explicitly for the child’s interpretation of the events depictedor an opinion about what was depicted in the book, for example, What do youthink is happening? Whatdo youthink is happening to the dog? Whyis he doing that? What do you isthink going to happen to the dog? c. Questions about the internal states of characters, for example,How d o y o u think he’sfeeling? d.Labeling and y e s h o questions designed to focus the child on a some specific item depicted in the book, for example, What is that? Is that agopher? What do you thinkis? that 2. Focusing devices were clauses used by parents to draw the child’s attentionto the shared activity,or to focus the child’s attention on the task. Examples are look and listen clauses designed to draw the child’s attention to something in the book, for example, Look! Look at that!Look what’s happening now! 3 . Non-story-related conversational clauses consisted of interaction tokens that were related to something the child had previously said, but that did not elicit or state any new information related to the storytelling task. These were: a. Statements adding something to what the child had said; b. Clarification or repetition of a child’s utterance; c. Correction of child’s previous utterance; d. Confirmation of child’s utterance as correct. 4. Asides were defined as any interaction component that was unrelated to the actual storytelling or a clear diversion from the storytelling task. This category had two basic subcategories: a. Comments, for example, This book has pictures. b. Digressions involved discussion of events tangential to the storytelling task, for example, Do you remember when you were stung by Thea disbee? cussion was often quitelong and involved before the dyad returned to the story activity. 1.

Child-conversational: Child utterances that did not specifically relate to the story utterances (including responses to adult questions) were assigned to this category.

78

WICCLESWORTH & STAVANS

TABLE

4.1

Mean Numberof Clauses, Range,and sd for English-and Hebrew-SpeakingChildren at Ages3, 5, and 7 Years Age in Years Mean 187.3

3 5

207.7

7

184.9

English Range

sd

Mean

Range

sd

97-329

74.404

281.4

123-410

86.124

80-277

63.921

191.1

62-375

85.137

113-489

117.696

176.6

73-298

85.516

RESULTS

Overall Length of the DyadicSessions

The overall length of the storytelling sessions (measured as number of clauses produced by both parent and child) was computed. The mean number of clauses, range, and standard deviations foreach age and language group are given in Table 4.1.A two-factorANOVA revealed no significant effects for either language or age across the groups.However, there was a statistically significant difference forage (F = 4.401, df = 2 ~ 7p, = .ozzz) within the Hebrew dyads, with the 3-year-olds’ sessions being significantly longer that those of the 7-year-olds. Across languages, the Hebrew3-year-olds’ sessions weresignificantly longer than thoseof the English dyads (F = 6.93, df = 18, p = .0169). Substantial individual variation in length of sessionamong the dyads was noted across all groups. As a result, all the analyses that follow are represented proportionally in relation to overall length in order to neutralize this effect and to properly accountfor qualitative characteristics of the data. Narrative-InteractionClause Profiles for Each Language Croup

In order to compare the story-interaction styles of Israeli Hebrew-speaking dyads and Australian English-speaking dyads,it is first necessary to sketch the profile of clause distributionfor each groupseparately. The profile of the English-language narrative sessionsis shown in Fig. 4.1. The distributionof clausetypes suggests that: The threeage groups are heterogeneous; 5-year-old children were exposed to a greater proportion o f story clauses from their parents than 3-year-old children ( F = 3.552, p = 0.0427); sessions with the 3-year-oldswere characterized by more conversational input by the parents ( F = 5.424, p = .0105); and 7-year-old children made a greater contribution to the story than the 5-year-olds ( F = 4 . 4 2 7 , ~= 0.217). The profile of the Hebrew-language dyadic sessions showedno significant differences. This profile, shown inFig. 4.2, suggests that: theage groups are very

4 1 .oo 0.90

0.80

0.70

A Crosscultural Investigation

79

1 Chlld story

Child conversational

IParent converaatlonal Parent story

0.30

0.10

+

0.00 Three

4

Five

Seven

F I G . 4.1. Proportion of parent-story, parent-conversational, child-story, and child-conversational clauses used by English-language dyads.

1.00

0.90 0.80

"

.5 a

0.40

0.30

Parent conversational

"

0.70 --0.50 -0.50

H2

m

-

..

-I

0.20 -0.10 -............

0.00 Heb three

Heb five

Heb seven

4.2. Proportion of parent-story, parent-conversational, child-story, and child-conversational clauses used by Hebrew-language dyads.

FIG.

homogenous; both7-year-olds and their parents produced aslightly greater proportion of story clauses than those of the othertwo age groups;dyads with 3- and 5-year-olds produced more conversational clauses than those with 7-year-olds; and the proportionof parent-story clauses was approximately equivalent in all three age groups.

80

W I G C L E S W O R T H 6: S T A V A N S

0.70 1 0.60 0.50 c 0

‘ E 0.40

ba

2 0.30

a

0.20 0.10

0.00 English FIG.

4.3.

Hebrew

Proportion of parent-story clauses in English and Hebrew.

Comparisons of Australian-English and Israeli-HebrewNarrative Interactions by Clause Type

In order to provide a more detailed description of each language group and trace similarities and differences across the groups we examined each category in turn, comparing the two language groups and the three age groups. Statistical analyses are used to determine where differences were significant and where they were not. The resultingprofiles describe the storytelling practices of the two cultural groups. Story Clauses

Although the parents told the story, some contribution by the children occurred in all groups. We first determined the number of story clauses contributed by the parents, andthen those contributedby the children. A two-factor ANOVA showed that there was a significant difference in the percentage of story clauses usedby the Hebrew- and the English-speaking parents ( F = 11.304, df= 2,54, p = .0014). Compared to theEnglish-speaking parents of 3- and ~-year-olds, the Hebrew-speaking parents tended to focus more on the story ( F = 10.063, df= ~ 1 8p , = .0053 with 3-year-olds; and F = 6.81, df= 1,18, p = .0177 with 7-year-olds), but this was not the case with the 5-year-olds, where theEnglish-speaking parents exhibited a proportion similar to thatof the Hebrew-speaking parents (see Fig. 4.3). With respect to the children’s contributions to the story, there was a significant overall difference in the proportion of story clauses by children of

4

A Crosscultural Investigation

81

0.70 1 l

c 0

e

Oa60 0.50

1

H3 year olds

0.40

5 year olds

2 0.30

7 year olds

0

Q

a

0.20 0.1 0

0.00 English FIG.4.4.

Hebrew

Proportion of child-story clauses in English and Hebrew.

different ages (F = 4.292, df= 2,54, p = .0186) and in the different languages ( F = 6.858, d f = 2,54, p = .0114). Figure 4.4 depicts these differences by language and age. The English-speaking 7-year-old children contributed significantly more story clauses than the English 5-year-olds ( F = 4.427, df= 2,27, p = .0217). While both the English 3- and 7-year-olds contributed substantially more storyclauses than their Hebrew peers, only the difference between the 3-year-olds was significant (F= 6.294, df= 1 ~ 8p ,= .0219). Thisis because there was considerable intragroup variance in the English 7-year-old group, withthe proportionof story clauses contributed by the childrenranging from .056 to.461. Another comparison of the groups shows that, whereas the Hebrew-speaking children’s contribution of story clauses to the narratives increasedsteadilywithage,thecontributions of theEnglish-speaking 7- and 3-year-old children were greater than those of the English 5-year-olds. In fact, the English- and Hebrew-speaking 5-year-olds’ contributions were rather similar. Parents’ Conversational Clauses

Although parents were requested to relate the story to their children, all of the narratives were to some degree cooperative, as can be seen from the contributions made by the children to the narrative story line. In cases, most the contributions by the children were elicited by the parents through arange of techniques. In thissection, we attempt todelineate the degree to which parental attempts at co-constructing the narratives differed across age groups or cultures. To this end we first examine the parents’ conversational clauses and then examine each of the four subcategories defined in the Method section.

82

WICCLESWORTH & STAVANS

0.78

0.60 0.50

3 year olds

c 0

z

0.40

5 year olds

Q

2 0.30

7 year old6

a

0.20 0 . 10

0.00 English F I G . 4.5.

Hebrew

Proportion of parent-conversational clauses in English and Hebrew.

This is followed by a brief outline of the number of the children’s conversational clauses that did not specifically constitute part of the narrative. Figure 4.5 compares the proportionof conversational clauses used by the parents. For theEnglish-languagegroup,itshowsthattheparents of 3-year-olds used significantly more conversational clauses than parents of 5-year-olds (F = 5.426, d f = 2 ~ 7p, = .0105).In the Hebrew group, the differences were lesssalient overall, with a pattern ofsteady-though not statistically significant-decrease in the use of conversationalclauses as the children got older. Within age groups, there were significant differences for the 3- and 7-year-olds, with the English dyads incorporating more conversation than Hebrew dyads. The conversational clauseswere subdivided into four different subcategories: story-related conversational, focusing methods, non-story-related conversational, and asides. Story-RelatedConversationalClauses. Story-related conversational clauses were defined as a parent’s attempts tokeep the storytelling process dynamic by drawing thechild into it. There was a significant difference for language (F = 26.287, df= 2,54,p = .OOOI; see Table4.2); this was because the parents in the English-language dyads with children at ages 3 and 7 incorporated more story-related conversational clauses than theIsraeli parents withchildren at the sameages(F=17.796,df=2,27,p=.0005atage3andF=8.975,df=2,27,p= .0078 at age 7). One of the reasons for this is that theIsraeli parents primarily used story clauses to relate the eventsof the narrative, which diminishes the proportion of use of story-related conversational clauses. For example, the Hebrew-speaking parents used virtually no deictic type questions(e.g., What is

181

162

4 TABLE

A Crosscultural Investigation

83

4.2

Number (and Proportion ofTotal Clauses for Each Age) of Parent-Conversational Clauses Subcategorized as Story-related, Focusing Devices, Non-story-related, and Asides, and Child-ConversationalClauses, for English and Hebrew Dyads Age in

Years

Story-related Focusing

Non-story Asides Child-Conv.

English 3

5

7

Total

315 (.l7)

203 (.11)

260 ( ~ 3 ) 778 (.14)

131(.O7)

7 (.OO)

182

(.lo)

23 (.01)

7 (.OO) 134 (~37) 4 (.OO) 18 (.OO) 255 (.l?.) 571(.lo)

9 2 (.03)

79 (.03)

56 (.03)

210 (.04)

211(.11)

162 (.09)

244 (.12) 617 (.11)

Hebrew 3

5

7

Total

(.06) (.09)

75 (.04) 418 (.06)

66 (.04) 10(.01)

168 (.03)

20 (.01)

23 (.01)

122 (.oz)

174 (.06) 76 (.04)

125 (.07) 375 (.06)

413 (.15)

262 ( ~ 4 )

203 (.U) 878 (.14)

that?) with their children, whereas English-speaking parents used them extensively with theirchildren, with significant differences across all agegroups for this subcategory. Focusing Strategies. Focusing strategies were clauses used by the parent to keep the child’s attention focused on the task. In English, these were tokens such as ‘Look, Look at that: and in Hebrew, tireh, tistakelhistakli. A 2 x 3 ANOVA of focusing strategies revealed a significant difference acrossages ( F = 22.285, df= 2,54,p< .oool),andlanguages(F= 10.478, df= 2,54,p< .oool). Looking at the age differences, within the English group therewas a dramatic decrease in theuse of focusingclauses across theage groups, with asignificant difference betweenthe 3-year-olds and the othertwo groups ( F = 18.749, df= 2,27, p < .oool). The Israeli parents used this technique with the 3- and 5-year-olds (although not to the same extent as the parents of the English 3-year-olds)butverylittlewiththe7-year-olds(F= 6.466,df=2,27,p= .0051; see Table 4.2). Comparing across languages, there weresignificant differences between the 3-year-old groups, with the English-speaking children receiving significantly more focusingdevices than theHebrew speakers( F = 13.248, df= 1 ~ 8p,= .0019), although the dyads with 5-year-olds were fairly comparable. Non-Story-RelatedConversationalClauses. This category included comments by the parentin response to something thechild had said previously but which did not provide any new informationrelated to thestorytelling process.

84

WICCLESWORTH & STAVANS

There were generally veryfew instances of non-story-related conversational clauses, but despite the smallproportions, there was a significant effect for age ( F = 3.19, df= 2,54,p= 0.049) andlanguage(F= 15.692, df= 2.54,p= .0002), and there was an interaction effect ( F = 3.388, df= 2,54, p = .0411). These differences are manifest in the higher proportion used by parents of the Hebrew-speaking children atall age levels. Asides. This category included comments unrelated to the story and digressions that deviated completely from the topicof the story. Overall, there was a significant difference in the use of asides between the language groups ( F = 9.605, df = 2,54, p = .0028),withtheEnglishchildrenhearing significantly more asides than the Hebrew children.However, this effect was only manifest at the group level for each language, with no significant differences either within the language groups, or within theage groups (see Table 4.2). Children’s Conversational Clauses

Because the focus of the analysis for this chapter was on the parents’ interactions with their children, the children’s conversational clauses were not subcategorized. Children conversed with,or responded to, their parents either with a story-related statement (discussed earlier)or with some other typeof clause. When we examined the contributionsby the children to the overall conversation (excluding those contributions that specifically related to the story), we found a similar pattern acrossall groups, and with no significant effect for language or age. Parent-ChildSocialization and Linguistic Interface

When we compare the parents’ story-related conversational exchanges with the children’s contributions to the story(see Fig. 4.6), we find that at ages 3 and 5 there was a relatively even matching of parent-child exchanges; however, this was not the case for the 7-year-olds in either cultural group. At age 7, the children made substantially more contributions to the story than those solicited by their parents. Thus,it appears that,in this naturalistic collaborative task, there was great variability in individualstyle; the children could not resist contributing to the activity, particularly the 7-year-olds inboth cultural groups. Perhaps this need tocontribute andparticipate in the storytelling task at age 7 is naturalbecausechildrenatthis agein bothculturesare relatively independent readers and the storytelling task becomes a rather different activity (for both parent andchild) from what it is when the children are 3 and 5 years old. Seven-year-olds not only want to contributeto the story, but need to do so in order to maintaininterest in the activity, which theymay otherwise

4

A Crosscultural Investigation

85

0.18

-

English parent story conv.

0.16

--

English children story Hebrew parent story conv.

0.14 -0.12 E

.p 0.10

2 a

Hebrew children story

"

--

e 0.08 --

n

0.06

--

0.04 -0.02

0.00 Five

"

+

" Three

+ Seven

F I G . 4.6. Relationship between parent-conversational story clauses and child-story clauses in English and Hebrew,shown as proportion of total clauses.

perceive as childish and inappropriate. Itmay also be the case that the parents of the 7-year-olds allowed more of this active involvement because they perceived it to be the natural way oftelling a story to a child of that age. DISCUSSION

A comparison of the profiles (Figs. 4.1 and 4.2) of both language groups suggests that the collaborative narrative session of parent-child dyads inthe Hebrew speakers' group was more homogeneousacross the children's ages than that of the English speakers' group, where there were salient differences across the ages. A s the main purposeof this studywas to investigate crossculturally and crosslinguistically the parental narrative styles in Hebrew-speaking and English-speaking parent-childdyads, we conducted an in-depthanalysis of the parental speech. Singlingout the story clauses produced by the parent in the dyad, we found homogeneity across the age groups for the Hebrew speakers, with the pattern matching that of the parents of the English 5-year-olds. The English 3- and 7-year-olds heard proportionallyfewer story clauses from their parents, but contributed proportionallymore clauses to thestory, particularly the 7-year-olds. These results suggest thereis a crosscultural difference in the storytelling practices of Hebrew-and English-speaking parents.The storytelling practices

86

WICCLESWORTH & STAVANS

vary from cultureto culture in theway the task is interpreted and conducted. Storytelling appears to beperceived by Israeli Hebrew-speaking parents of children at ages 3 through 7 years to be a “reading-based activity.” Englishspeaking parents appearto approach the storytellingtask differently according to the age of their child, or the demands of the child, by making storytelling a more “interaction-basedactivity.” The conversational components of the Hebrewdyads’ talk decreased with age, in both parents and children, with a concomitant gradual increase age with in the proportion of story clauses. In other words, the older the child was, the longer the story becameand the fewer conversational exchangeswere needed between parent and child. Given that at 7 years the Israeli children made considerably greater contributions to the actual storytelling than simply those requested of them by their parents, we may assume thatthese children were becoming increasinglyinvolved in the storytellingactivity, a trend that perhaps reflects the development of literacy skills. Although the English groups were much more variable across the age groups, the 5-year-olds’ (both English and Hebrew) interactionswere more similar to each otherthan those of theother two age groups. Thismay suggest that, regardless of culture orlanguage, parents of 5-year-olds universally deploy a similar proportion of their storytelling activity in interactionas opposed to telling the story. This pattern may be typical of parents’ style in using the narrative task as preparation for the formal educational system (i.e., school) or, alternatively, parents may make adjustments in keeping with storytelling interaction practicesto which the childrenmay have been exposed in kindergarten, preschool, or day care. These resultssuggest a greater focuson the story for the Hebrew dyads, and for the English 5-year-olds. In both languages there were fewer asides (i.e., comments and digressions) to the 5-year-old children, and the g-year-old English-language children heardfewer conversational clauses than their3- and 7-year-old compatriots. This leaves us with a situation in which the Hebrew children and the English 5-year-oldswere involved in similar narrative interactions, while the English 3- and 7-year-olds’ sessions followed a different pattern. Around 5 years appears to be a criticalage for bothcognitive and linguistic development. Socially, at thisage children are just comingup toa major life change, as they are either in the year immediately before school or in their first year of the formal educationsystem in bothAustralia and Israel. Cognitively, this is also a critical age. In their extensive crosscultural examination of children’s narrative, Berman and Slobin (1994) argued that the 5-year-olds do not form a homogeneous group. There are anumber of reasons for this.First, some 5-year-olds “construct globally structured and thematically motivated narratives” (p.6 S), whereas othersin this grouprelate only one or two of the major plot elements. Second, considering linguistic level, some childrenat this

4

A Crosscultural Investigation

87

age demonstrate the use of elaborate syntax and a rich lexicon (cf. KarmiloffSmith, 1981, 1985), whereas others produce “juvenile-sounding text with impoverished linguistic devices”(Berman & Slobin, 1994, p. 42). Consequently, Berman and Slobin argued that the narratives of the 5-year-olds in their cross-sectionalstudysuggestedthatthesechildren were ata mixed or transitional stage. Thiswas demonstrated by the variation they showed in the types of narratives they told.The results of our study support these claims in terms of the 5-year-old children’s contributions to the story line in both English and Hebrew. The picture is slightly different when we look at what happened in the intradyadic interaction patterns beyond delivery of the story line. Parents are aware that their children need to become not only proficient storytellers,but also socially and cognitively adjusted to the environmentin which they are growing up. It maybe that parentsof 5-year-olds are particularlyattuned to this age as critical, so that the parents’ focusis on the story, howto tell it, and how to structure the story and its informational content. Parents from both languages inour studywere focused on the structural and functional aspects of the narratives theywere telling to their5-year-old childrenand less concerned with the conversational proceduresinvolved. It is important tostate that atage 5 in western cultures, most children are familiar withthe storytelling activity (both at home and outside) and, in fact, that activity is part of children’s entertainment repertoire(as opposed to other typesof discourse, suchas basic explanations or definitions, whichmay be more typical for younger children or, alternatively, discussion of debatable problems,which may be more typical for older children).Five-year-olds are an “authenticaudience” for narratives of this type; not only are theymore receptive to storytelling input, they are also more passive in interaction with the storyor theteller. We may hypothesize that the Australian parents are more concerned withthese issues when their children are 5, allowing greater flexibility and negotiation atages 3 and 7. The Israeli parents in our study, on the other hand, demonstrated a more focused approach to the task at hand acrossage thegroups. As a result, in contrast to the5-year-olds: the 3-and 7-year-olds’ parents from the two language backgrounds showed greater differences in their storytelling. At both 3 and 7, the English-speaking children made substantially greater contributions to the story than their Hebrew-speaking peers. Whereas the Hebrew-speaking parents and children across all three age groups engaged in similar storytelling interactions, the English speaking dyadsdid not. At age 3 the major difference was the conversational nature ofthe sessions determined by the parents of the Australian children, whereas the Israeli children participated in sessions that were less conversational and more story focused. Despite the difference in the proportions of narrative versus conversational input provided by Hebrew- and English-speaking parents, it may be that the greater elaboration and detail provided in the Hebrew narrativesserves the

88

WICCLESWORTH

& STAVANS

same interactional purposeas the parental conversational approaches apparent in the English narratives, namely, to retain youngchildren’s attention eitherby creating informative narrativesor by monitoring whether the child is following the story line. Berman and Slobin (1994)noted that one of the features that distinguishes 3-year-olds’ narratives from thoseof other age groups is the interactive nature of their accounts. Thus, the American 3-year-olds used exhortations such as “See!” “Look!” throughout their accounts and frequentlydigressed from the content of the pictures. Berman and Slobin found that their 3-year-olds (American-born middle-class children) provided interactive and personalized accounts and required much more confirmatory prompting and encouragement from the interviewer than the other age groups did. Renner(1988) noted that these same3 -year-olds engaged the listenerin such a way that it was very difficult to maintain silence throughout thenarrative. Combining this with the resultsfromthepresentstudy, we may postulatethatherAmerican English-speaking children mayhave learned their interaction style from their parents. A preliminary examinationof the Hebrew stories hassuggested that the narratives addressed to different age groups illustrate different styles; for example, the narratives addressed to the 7-year-olds were more “literatureoriented.” Such narratives often included literary opening and closing formulas, common in the literaryexperience of 7-year-old Hebrew-speaking children. The negotiative nature of the more interactional storytelling practice typical with 3- and 5-year-olds may be reduced or neutralized for 7-year-olds. That is to say, many things that parents of younger children may do in order to establish clarity, suchas negotiate the name of the main character with the child, are no longer done with the older group. Rather, the parent is aware that the naming of the main character with a common boy’s name, for instance, would not be contestedby the child. Hence, the older the child is, the more the parent takes for granted a common literary experienceand the moreemphasis the parent places on developing and elaborating the plot line(Stavans, 1996). The case for English is slightly different. The English-speaking children heard significantlymore conversational clauses. The parents of the Australian 7-year-olds appeared to have to work at being able to maintain the narrative task. The 7-year-olds were keen, and enthusiastic to takeover the storytelling activity. Although this also appeared to be the case with the 3-year-old English-language children, there was an important qualitative difference between these two age groups. The 3-year-olds’ contributions to the story resulted from questions and comments posed by their parents; for the 7-year-olds, this was not so clearly the case. Their contributionswere often unsolicited. These differences manifested by the two cultural groups require further investigation. They may be driven by language differences or by cultural

4

A Crosscultural investigation

89

differences that relate to “how totell a story.” Whereas this study has only attempted to outlinedifferences in the overallstructure of these storytelling sessions, the next focus of investigation is the storyclauses themselves. This analysis delineates the differences and similarities across and within the languages in the actual content of the stories the children are being by their told parents. The present study suggests that different styles of storytelling are used in Israel and Australia, particularly when children are3 and 7 years old. Israeli parents of 3-year-olds in our studywere more focused on plot-line delivery, whereas the Australian parentswere more interested in involving the children in the activity. Inother words, for the 3- and 7-year-olds we see a storytelling difference between Israeli and Australian parentsas being more story-oriented for the former and more interaction-oriented for the latter. The difference in styles is negligible at age 5, which may bea reflection of an awareness by parents-in general-that children of this age must be well preparedforschoolandtheonset of formaleducation.Althoughthe differences in the group patterns are negligible atthis age, it is worth pointing out thatwhile the Australian parents of 5-year-olds were very focused onthestorytellingtask,thechildrenseemedtobeconcentratingon the parental input to such an extent that their own contributions were minimal. As for the 7-year-olds, the parent-child relation in a storytelling taskis more vulnerable by definition.At this age both Israeli and Australian children have been trained to read, and most of them are independent readers. Hence, the storytelling task may be somewhat odd for the child, who may no longer be accustomed to being told a storyby the parent. This may add an affective element; that is, either the childmay be insulted or bored by the parent telling the story and undermining thechild‘s ability to read, or alternatively, the child may be “cuddled” into the extra attention given. These affective variables act differently foreach dyad in each language groupand across the groups.Still, the very suggestive pattern that emerges is that the 7-year-oldIsraeli children were neither too eager nor too involved in the storytelling, while the Australian 7-year-olds provided a lotof input to the story and attempted take to over the task. The findings here arenecessarily tentative. The group sizes at each age level were small; the parentswere professional middle-class parentsand may not be fullyrepresentativeofthepopulationfromwhichthey were drawn. Nonetheless, the resultsdo suggest cultural differences in the manner in which the two cultural groups approach the storytelling task, and there is some tentative support for the idea that these differences are reflected to theway children will approach a storytelling task. Clearly further investigation is needed. The next stage of the analysis of these datawill address the question of story content.This may provide some explanation of the cultural differences

90

W I C C L E S W O R T H 6: S T A V A N S

found in the approaches of the Israeliand Australian parents,as well as theage differences found within theAustralian data. In addition, data collectionof parental storytelling practices from other cultureswill expand our knowledge and awareness of the range of possibilities available. REFERENCES

Bamberg, M. (1987). The Acquisition ofnarratives: Learning touse language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. The linguistic encodingof Bamberg, M,,& Marchman, V.(1990) What holds a narrative together? episode boundaries.Papers in Pragmatics, 4,58-121. Berman, R.,& Slobin, D. I. (1994). Different ways ofrelating events in narrative:A crosslinguistic developmental study.Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Blum-Kulka, S. (1997). Dinner talk: Cultural patterns ofsociability and socialization in family discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Brice Heath, S. (1983). Ways withwords: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge, England Cambridge University Press. Haden, C., Reese, E., & Fivush, R. (1996). Mothers’ extratextual comments during storybook reading: Stylistic difference over time and across texts. Discourse Processes, 21,135-169 Harkins, D. A.,(1992). Parentalgoals and stylesof storytelling. InJ. Demick, K. Bursik, & R.Dibiase (Eds.), Parental Development(pp. 61-74). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hickmann, M.(19 95). Discourse organization and the development of reference to person,space, and time. InP. Fletcher &B. MacWhinney (Eds.), The handbook ofchild language(pp.194-218). Cambridge, M A Blackwell. Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1979). A functional approach to child language. Cambridge Studies in Press. Linguistics, W . Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1981). The grammatical marking of thematic subject in the development of language production. InW. Deutsch (Ed.), The child’s construction of language (pp.121-147). New York AcademicPress. Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1985). Languageand cognitive processes from a developmental perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes, I, 61-85. Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are youlNew YorkDial Press. McCabe, A., & Peterson, C. (1991). Getting the story: A longitudinal studyof parental styles in eliciting oral narratives and developing narrativeskill. In A. McCabe & C. Peterson (Eds.), Developing narrative structure(pp. 217-253). Hillsdale, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Minami, M,,& McCabe, A.(19 9 5). Riceballs and bear hunts: Japanese and North American family narrative patterns.Journal ofchildLanguage, 22,423-445. Ochs, E. (19 8 8 ) . Culture and language development: Language acquisition and language socialization Press. in a Samoan village. New York Cambridge University Peterson, C., & McCabe,A. (1983).Developmentalpsycholinguistics:Threewaysoflookingata child’s narrative. New York Plenum. Peterson, C.,& McCabe, A. (1996). Parental scaffoldingof context in children’s narratives. In C. E. Johnson & J. H. V.Gilbert (Eds.), Children’s language, Vol. 9 (pp. 183-196). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates. Polanyi, L. (1989). Telling the American story.Cambridge, M A MIT Press. Renner, T.(1988). Development oftemporality inchildren’s narratives. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Universityof California, Berkeley. Schieffelin, B. (1984). How Kaluli children learn what to say, what to do, and how to feel: An ethnographic studyof the development ofcommunicative competence.New York AcademicPress.

4

A Crosscultural Investigation

g1

Scollon, R.,& Scollon, S. (1981). Narrative, literacy andface in interethnic communication.Norwood, NJ:Ablex. Snow, C. (1977). The development of conversation between mothers and babies.Journal ofchild Language, 4,1-22. Snow, C., & Dickenson, D. (1990). Social sources of narrative skills athome and at school. First Language, 10, 87-104. Stavans,A. (1996). Development of parental narrative input. Journal ofNarrative and Life History, 6, 253-280.

Wigglesworth, G: (1997). Individual approaches to the acquisition of narrative. Journal ofchild Language, W , 279-309. APPENDIX

A Picture-by-Picture Descriptionof Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 196 g ) 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

14 15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

A boy and his dog are looking at a frog in a jar. The boy andthe dog arein bed; the frog is escaping fromthe jar. The boy andthe dog wake upand lookfor the frog. The boy andthe dog searchthe room forthe frog. They look outof the window; the dog has the frog's jar onhis head. The dog falls outof the window, breakingthe jar. The boy has also climbed outof the window and picks up the dog. They go to the forest, the boy calling forthe dog. The boy searches ina gopher hole. A gopher comes outof the hole and bites himon the nose. The dog is sniffing ata beehive; the boy is searching ina tree. The boy is frightened by an owl; the dog is chased by bees. The boy is bya rock. The boy climbs up the rock and leans 0n"branches' (really deer antlers). The deer hiding behindthe rock picks upthe boy on its antlers. The deer runsoff with the boy, the dog in hot pursuit. The boy and the dog are thrown down the cliff. They landat the bottom in a pond. The dog climbs on the boy's head. The boy hears something and tells the dog to be quiet. They climb over an old log. They seetwo frogs sittingon a bank, oneof them the escaped frog. They seethat there are alsoa number of baby frogs. They takeone of the babies and leave wavingto the remaining frogs.

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

The Acquisition of Polite Language by Japanese Children

KEIKQ NAKAMURA

Keio University

One fascinating feature of the Japanese language that is shared by many languages around theworld (e.g., Korean, Javanese,Vietnamese)is its elaborate system of polite language. Keigo, or verbal politeness in Japanese, is often described as involving two basic dimensions,namely, formality (whichreflects the psychologicaland/or social distance between participants)and honorifichumble language (which indicates respect and deference). Politeness in Japanese influences the form of many linguistic components, such as pronouns, verbs, adjectives, nouns, and conventional expressions. In addition, politeness is also marked by paralinguistic and nonverbal features such as intonation, physical distance, and posture, as well as conversational strategies such as indirectness and hesitancy. How doJapanese children learn how to master this complex system of linguistic politeness? POLITE LANGUAGE IN JAPANESE

Japanese societyis often described as being a vertically structuredsociety, and respect and deferenceto otherscan be expressed by the use of polite language (Nakane, 1973).The Japanese keigo ‘polite language’ system divides keigo into four general categories: sonkeigo ‘honorific-respectful language’, kenjoogo ‘humble language’, teineigo ‘formal language’, and bikago ‘beautification honorifics’ (for a full description of the keigo system refer to Bunkachoo, 1974, 1986; Kindaichi, Hayashi, & Shibata, 1988; Martin, 1g75).‘ Althoughkeigo functions as a marker of formality and respect, it can also be an indicator of psychological and/or social distance, as well as a mark of good breeding (Mizutani & Mizutani, 1983; Oishi, 1983).Postwar Japanese society,based on a more democratic system with a greater emphasis on horizontal relations, is said 1 Finally, along with these four basic categories, there are a large numberof greetings and polite expressions that involve gratitude, apology, self-blame, and humility (Martin, 1964).

93

94

NAKAMURA

to have had a strong influence on the current functions and uses ofkeigo. Many linguists claim that keigo nowadays is less a marker of vertical relations (i.e., respect and deference) than an indicator of social and psychological distance (i.e., formality), and a markerof etiquette and refinement(e.g., Bunkachoo, 1986; Mizutani &Mizutani, 1983,1987; Okuyama, 1983). Keigo usage varies accordingto many speakedhearer characteristics, such as gender, age, social status, occupation, dialect, educational background, group membership, and degree of familiarity,as well ascontextual factors suchas the topic of conversation and formalityof setting (Ide,1982,1990; Kikuchi, 1996; Niyekawa, 199 1;Yoshioka, 199 5). Another key factor is strategic purpose, such as sarcasm. Levels of politeness cannot be determined on the basis of one factor alone, as all of the above-mentioned factors interact in an extremely complicated manner. As Maynard (19 9 0 ) wrote, “choosing the appropriate style in different social encounters requires social sensitivityand experience” (p. IS), which makes it particularly challenging for nonnative speakers to master. Sonkeigo ‘Honorific-Respectful Language’

Honorific language,or sonkeigo (also referredto as subject honorifics),is used to show respect when oneis describing another personor his or her actions or belongings. Sonkeigo is usually used when one is addressing or talking about a person of higher status (e.g., an out-group member such as the speaker’s superior), as it “raises” thereferent’s status by increasing the vertical distance between the speaker and the referent.* For example, the question shachoo wa irasshairnasu ka? could mean‘will the (company) president go?’In this example, one uses the honorific verb form irasshairnasu to describe the actionof the respected president, who,in this case, could be either the addresseeor a thirdperson referent. Some verbshave honorific lexical substitutes, whereas other honorific verb forms are made grammatically. Nominal referents take honorific suffixes such as -sun or -sarna (Tanaka-san), while many nouns can take honorific prefixes such as o-, go-, and on-to refer to actions and objects related to the respected person(e.g., go-iken ‘opinion’,o-sumai ‘residence’).A handful of adjectives and adverbs also may take the go- or o- prefixes (e.g., go-shinsetsu ‘kind’,o-kirei‘pretty’).

Kenjoogo ‘Humble Language’ Humble language (nonsubject honorifics) is used to depict the actions or belongings of the speaker or in-group memberin relation to the nonsubject z In some cases, use of sonkeigo and kenjoogo is unrelated to the absolute amount of respect a person has fora referent, but occurs because the speaker is conversing basedon conventional social norms (Oishi,1974).

5

Polite Language in Japanese

95

referent in a deferent manner. Kenjoogo increases the vertical distance between the speakerand thereferent by signaling thespeaker’s lower status. For example, in watakushi wa mairimasu ‘I will go’, the humble first person pronoun watakushi is used with the humble verb mairimasu ‘to go’ to describeone’s own actions with humility.Humble formsappear in verbs (bothlexical substitutes and grammatically constructed forms), and afew nouns have humble forms (e.g., chichi for ‘father’) or can take humble prefixes, such as gw.3 Teineigo ‘Formal Language’

In general, teineigo (addressee honorifics) describes language that is formal and polite, as opposed to language that is informal and casual. Addressee honorifics are used to express the speaker’s politeness to, or distance from, the hearer,as opposed to honorific-humble language, which conventionally marks the speaker’s deference to an exalted referent (Kuno, 1987). Niyekawa (1991) described teineigo as involving the issue of “style.” Forexample, itis possible to speak in informalstyle and yet show respect to the referent.One can say sensei ga irassharu ‘the professor will go’ in a conversation to a friend, using the honorific predicate irassharu to describe the actionof the esteemed professor, although the predicateitself is in informal style because itis being used in a casual context.Use of teineigo depends on the situational contextas determined by factors such as the in-group:out-group relationships of the interlocutors (involving factors such as social position, power,age, and gender), thesocial setting involved, and the nature of the information being given (e.g., Ide, 1982; Martin, 1964;Mizutani & Mizutani, 1987). Teineigo predicates are usually marked withdew/-masupredicate endings, used with verbs, adjectives,and copulas, which can be usedin a conversation with one’s superiors orin a formal setting, such as an interview or a public speech. The informal -da style would be used in amore casual setting, perhaps in conversations with one’s friends. There are also simple lexical choices and personal pronouns with varying degrees of formality (e.g., first person pronouns watakushi, watashi, atashi, boku, ore). Bikago ‘Beautification Honorifics’ Bikago, or ‘beautification honorifics’, are used to “refine” or “beautify” one’s language. They differ from other formsof keigo in that they are notused to express respect for the addressee or referent.Many of these forms are now accepted as the standard form (e.g., o-cha ‘tea’).Women, in particular, 3 It is said that kenjoogo is the most complicated formof keigo in terms of the limited kinds of verbs that have humble forms, the syntactic position of the exalted non-subject referent and the pragmatic, aswell as contextual constraints,involved (Mori, 19 93).

96

NAKAMURA

frequently use honorific prefixes for refinement (e.g., o-soba ‘buckwheat noodles’, o-sushi ‘sushi’). Bikago are also common in child-directed language (e.g., p h o n ‘book‘, o-isu ‘chair’, o-uchi ‘house’) and are known to appear excessively in the speech of female kindergarten teachers, who use yoochien kotoba ‘preschool language’, asin o-juusu ‘juice’, and o-kaban ‘bag’. LITERATURE ON T H E A C Q U I S I T I O N O F POLITE LANGUAGE

In order togo beyond mere linguistic competence and use language effectively, children must undergo language socialization and develop communicative competence (Hymes, 1972).Politeness is an integral partof pragmatic competence. In order to comprehend and produce polite language, children must master thenecessary linguistic forms, and they must understand the pragmatic rules that govern shifts in register within each socialand situational context (Ervin-Tripp, 1977).As in the case of most studies on pragmatic and sociolinguistic development,much of the research on children’s acquisition of polite language focuses on English-speaking children. This research generallyfalls into two categories:children’s acquisition of social routines (e.g., greetings and polite expressions),and children’s acquisition of directivesand requests. Such research illustrates that social routines involving ritualized expressions, suchas hi, thank you, and please, are the earliest forms of polite speech acquired by children (e.g., Greif & Gleason, 1980). Parents are often persistent in their efforts to socialize their children in the correctuse of language used in social routines. Research on the comprehension of requests has shown that even by ages 3 to 4, children are able to respond to mitigated requests and hints madeby peers and caregivers (e.g., Garvey,1975,1984; Holzman, 1972; Shatz, 1978). Research on the production of requests has found that childrenable areto produce a wide range of request forms by the time they toare5 years 4 old (e.g., Bruner, Roy, & Ratner, 1982; Ervin-Tripp; 1977;Garvey, 1975,1984), and that the proportion of mitigated requests increases withage between the ages 2 and 5, especially when children are making requests to someone in power or in possession of desired items (e.g., Ervin-Tripp, 1982; Wllkinson, Wllkinson, Spinelli, & Chiang, 1984). Speaker-hearer characteristics such as age, familiarity, power,and role play a key role in influencing children’s choice of politeness forms (e.g., Andersen, 1978,1990; Ervin-Tripp, 1974; Ervin-Tripp &Gordon, 1986). As most research on children’s acquisition of polite language has focusedon the acquisitionof greetings and requests by English-spealung children,research on children’s acquisition of Japanese, a language with an elaborate politeness system, can help better our understandingof pragmatic development and communicative competence. However, surprisingly enough, thus far, very little research has been conducted on the acquisition of keigo by Japanese children.

5

Polite Language in Japanese

97

In general, Japanese researchers, mainlyrelying data from spontaneous utterances and parental questionnaires, believe that young children can only use informal verb forms and do not have productive use of different politeness registers until they receive formal instruction during elementary school (Mizutani & Mizutani, 1987). Morioka (1973) argued that while children may master reading or writing on their own, polite language has to be acquired within agiven social context, withan understanding of the relative positions of the speaker, hearer,and referent, as well asan understandingof the setting and conversational topic. In otherwords, the acquisition of proper gengo koodoo ‘linguistic behavior’is more difficult than the acquisition of gengo ‘language’ itself. The assumption is that children seldomuse polite language because they do not encounter contexts in which they need to use keigo, and therefore, children need to be “instructed” in the use of keigo across a wide variety of contexts. Recently, the need for children to use keigo has been reduced drastically by the increasing tendency for children to use the informal -da style even to speak to elder members of family.4 the Other researchers, such as Bunkachoo (1986), Muraishi (1g73), Murata (19 8 3) and Nakamura(19 g 6,19 g reported 7) that the earliest forms of polite language used by children areteineigo (formal language), referent honorifics (e.g., using the suffix -San), polite expressions or greetings, and beautification honorifics (see Nakamura, 1997, for a full description of the literature on this topic). In general, acquisition of honorific and humble forms has been reported to occur extremelylate (Mackie, 198 3). One possible explanation for thisis that the use of humble and honorificlanguage depends on complex interpersonal factors(e.g., uchi-soto ‘in-group vs. out-group’, jooge-kankei ‘top-down relations’), unlike theuse of teineigo, which relies more on situationalcontext (Clancy, 1986; Nakamura, 1996). Japanese childrenmust learn to functionin an extremely hierarchical society by varying their language appropriately accordingto the social context. It was hypothesized that they would be able to use a large repertoireof polite forms (including honorific and humble forms) appropriately in role-play contexts, which allow children touse forms that may not spontaneously appear in everyday interactions (Nakamura,199 6,1997). Such data would show thateven young children are grappling with the complicated linguistic forms and sociointeractional relations underlying correct keigo usage and also provide us with invaluable insight regarding pragmatic developmentand children’s acquisition of polite language. This study addresses four basic questions: do How Japanese children acquire the four typesof keigo? Why are certain typesof keigo easier to acquire than 4 This is because nowadays intimacy weighsmore heavily than hierarchy in determining style choice in contemporary Japanese families. Not only do childrenno longer use keigo in the home, they are usually not expectedby older family members to do so either.

g8

NAKAMURA

others? What speakedhearer characteristics and contextual factors are children sensitive to when using keigo? How are childrensocialized to use keigo? METHOD

This study is part of an ongoing project to examine aspects of the acquisition and development of Japanese children’s language that reflect pragmatic and social knowledge. Thirty children (3girls and 3 boys in each age group, ages 1 to 6) were observed in their homes during monthlyvisits over the courseof 1to 3 years (see Table 5.1).5 The children were recruited from middle-class families living in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Efforts were made to observe the same group of children across a wide range of activities (e.g., role-play, object construction, snacktime) with different interactants (e.g., parents, peers, siblings, unfamiliar adults). Research on English-speaking childrenhas shown that there are strong socioecological constraintson children’s use of language and has pointed to the need for researchers to collect data across different contexts (Cook-Gumperz & Corsaro, 19 7 7 ) .Each visit lasted approximately 6 o to g o minutes. Each session was audiotaped and videotaped, and the data was then transcribed and analyzed. During each visit, for approximately15-30 minutes, toy propswere used to encourage the children to engage in pretend play (e.g., store clerk-customer, doctor-patient,trainconductor-passenger,teacher-student).Role-play contexts allowed to the children to act out different hierarchical relationships by assuming a varietyof social roles in which they were given the opportunity to use different levels of politeness.6 In addition, questionnaires and interviews targeting issues pertaining to children’s use of language in different contexts and language socializationwere administered to the mothers. RESULTS

Even young children are clearly aware of the importance of polite language. Japanese children are able to use many different linguistic forms to mark politeness and often vary their language usage appropriately according to context. Nonverbal politeness such as bowing routines seem to emergefirst. Even 1-year-olds were able to bow at appropriate times, suchas when greeting or thanlung others,or when saying goodbye. 5 Nakamura (1996) was based on data collected from 18 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds and 5-yearolds. The current study includes data from younger subjects (i.e., 1-year-olds and 2-year-olds) as it was discovered in Nakamura (1996,1997) that various aspects of keigo acquisition occur much earlier than previously reported. 6 For example, Andersen (1990) found that children often used polite language when playing the role of a mother in a family setting.

5 TABLE

PoliteLanguageinJapanese

gg

5.1

Age, Gender, andNumber ofTarget Children, and Time Range ofvisits ~

Age in Years

~~~

of Visits

Number and Gender Time Range 3 girls l 3 boys

3 girls l3 boys 3 girls l3 boys

3 girls I 3 boys

3 girls I 3 boys

months months 18 months to 3 years 12 months to 18 months 12 months 12 12

Aisatsu ‘Greetings and Polite Expressions’

As reported previously in the literature (Bunkachoo,198 6), aisatsu emerge extremely early, with childrenas young as 12 months using aisatsu such as baibai ‘goodbye’ and doozo ‘please’,accompanied with the appropriate gesture (e.g., waving goodbye, bowing). Young children quickly expand their repertoire of greetings, using forms suchas ohayoo-gozaimasu ‘good morning’, konnichi wa ‘hello’, sayonara ‘goodbye’, and polite expressions such asarigatoo-gozaimasu ‘thank you’ and gomennasai ‘(I’m) sorry’. Seeing his teacher at the entrance tohis day-care center,Yuuki (z;z, male) said, with bow: a sensei, ohayoo gozairnasu!

‘Good morning, teacher!’

Similarly,Nao (z;o, male), bowed to thedaycare teacher as he left the classroom when his mother came topick him up at the end of the day: sensei, sayonara!

‘Goodbye,teacher!’ At an early age, the spontaneoususe of some polite expressions becomes second nature. Inone example, Ken (z;o, male) had been suffering from a fever of 1030 for several hours, and his mother had been cooling his forehead with cold compresses. In a daze,Ken whispered arigatoo ‘thank you’ and gomen ne ‘(I’m) sorry’. Evenat this earlyage, very young children areable to use the right social expressions spontaneously and appropriately. Aisatsu appear frequently during pretendplay scenarios, in which children assume a widevariety of social roles.For example, while playing store, even 1-year-olds playing the role of store clerks were able to use the polite greeting irasshairnase! ‘Welcome!’ when greeting customers.Two- and 3-year-olds were able to use more complicated routineexpressions, such as maido arigatoo-gozaimam ‘thank you (for your patronage)’ andmata oide-kudasai ‘please come again.’

100

NAKAMURA

As reported by Clancy(lg8 6 ) ,mothers and preschool teachers are particularly keen on modeling suchexpressions and constantly provide direct instruction. In the preschool, childrenrecite their greetings and politeexpressions in unison or in song at appropriate times during the school day. In fact, the acquisition of aisatsu is often explicitly listed by the teachers as one of the main goals of the preschool year. These greetingsand polite expressionsplay a key role in introducing and familiarizing young childrenbasic to sonkeigo, kenjoogo, and teineigo forms, as aisafsu often consist of these different polite linguistic forms. In addition, by learning to use greetings and politeexpressions children also learn to gradually comprehend the psychologicalfeelings which underliesaisatsu, such as omoiyari and sasshi ‘consideration forothers’,and wakimae ‘discernment’. Sonkeigo ‘Honorific-Respectful Language’

Children were able to address people with the honorific suffixes -San and -sama (e.g., Hashimoto-san ‘Mr. Hashimoto’). Somewere also able to use respectful nominal forms and prefixes (e.g., o-kyaku-san‘customer’, o-uchi ‘house’,kochira ‘here’), but not always consistently. Some children invented creative honorific forms, such as Ryota (4;2, male), who addressed a monster as o-kayuu ‘honorable monster,’ and Ken (3;0, male), who incorrectly referredto old men as 0-jii-San-not noticing thatthis term already had the honorific suffix -San incorporated in it. Polite request forms appeared frequently, but request forms with honorific predicates were more rare. Emi (4;6, female), pretending to be a doctor talking to ababy’s mother, said chotto o-machi-kudasai o-kaa-sama‘please wait a little, Mother’, using the honorific form for ‘mother’and apolite requestform of the verb matsu ‘to wait.’ Ken (3;2, male), pretending to be a storekeeper, saidmata oide ni natte kudasai ‘please come again’, using an honorific request form as his customer leaves the store. Many children were able to use such honorific request forms when in role, but somehad difficulty being consistent. As mentioned earlier, the acquisitionof aisatsu seems to play a key role in familiarizing children with honorific forms. For example, itterasshai,said when someone leaves the house, consists of the honorific form for the verb ‘to go’, namely irassharu. Similarly, the expression irasshaimase! ‘welcome!’, used by children when playing the role of store clerks as they welcome customers uses the same honorific predicateirassharu, which, in this case, means ‘to come’. Some of the childrenwere already using these expressions as early as 18 months. It seems that Japanese children first acquire expressions that happen to contain keigo forms and thengradually begin to grasp the linguistic rulesthat underlie keigo usage. At this early stage, childrendo not seem to separate the informational content of the utterance from the keigo form of the expression. With increased exposure to a variety of contexts, children seem to gradually learn to discriminate between differentlevels ofspeech.

5

Polite Language in Japanese

101

Children sometimes made errors in their use of honorific forms by using them todescribe their own actions.For example, Akira (3;0,male) pretending to be a customer making a take-out order on the phone, used an honorific noun form torefer to himself incorrectly: boku wa

0-

kyaku-

desu san

TOP HON customer HON ‘I am a customer’

C0P:POL

I

At this age, Akira probably consideredo-kyaku-san to be the standard form, using it without being aware of the honorific natureof the prefix0- and the suffix +an. Similarly, Emi(4;9, female), pretending to be a doctor, was misled by her mother’s use of the honorific form,using it to describe her own actions: Mother: senseiirasshai- mas-u

ka?

POL doctor NONPASTQ be ‘Doctor,are you (here)?’ Emi:

hai *irasshai-mas-u yesPOLNONPAST be ‘Yes,I am (here)’

Emi used an honorific form of the verb torefer to herself, instead of using a humble or neutral form.After this turn the mother laughed, sayingimasu deshoo ‘you mean imasu’, implying that the neutral formof the verb imasu would bemore appropriate to describe Emi’s own actions. Children also made errors in the honorific forms used to describe their referents’ actions: Koosuke (4;7):

tsugi wa shuuten de Pozaimasu Next TOP last stop C0P:POL ‘The next (stop) is the last stop’ oriT rem* kata wa go-chuui kudasai Get off POL people TOP HON attention please ‘(Those) peoplegetting off, please take care’

Here Koosuke, pretending tobe a train conductor,announced thelast stop with an ultraformal copula,and then attempted touse the honorific form orirareru or o-ori-ni-naru to describe the actionsof the passengers, but did notsucceed in making the formcorrectly (he did succeed in choosing an honorific form kata for people, and a polite request form). During role-play, children sometimes tried to use honorific forms, but often made morphosyntactic as well as pragmatic errors in their attempts to do so. Obviously the use of honorific forms is complex and difficult for young children to acquire.

102

NAKAMURA

Kenjoogo ‘Humble Language’

As in the case of honorific predicates, many examples of humble predicates used by the children were in formulaic, ritualized expressions, suchas ojama itashimmu ‘I will humbly impose on you’ (when entering someone’s house), itadakimasu ‘I will humbly receive this’ (stated beforemeals) or itte-mairimasu ‘I will humbly go and come back‘ (stated when one leaves the house). Furthermore, manyuses of humble predicates were variations of set routine expressions suchas Saeko (4;0, female) in Ichikawa to mooshimasu ked0 ‘(This is) Ichikawa (humbly) speaking’,used when answering the phone.A s in thecase of honorific predicates, the majorityof humble predicates that appear in early child language seem to be those that appear in formulaic, routine expressions. It seems that these expressionsserve the role of familiarizing the children to the humble forms, after which children gradually become capable of using them in different nonformulaic contexts. Children often attempted to use humble predicates when playing store scenarios, in which they portrayed the roles of storekeepers and customers.For example, when Ken (3;8, male) pretended to be a customer in a supermarket deciding between apples and tangerines, he said kochira o itudakimasu ‘(I’ll) take this one’, using the humble verb itadakimasu ‘to takeheceive’ and thepolite form forkochira ‘this one’, Ken wasfamiliar with this humble verb through its use in the polite expression itadakimasu, which is used when one is about to “receive a meal”or starteating.’ Some children were able to use humble forms in slightly more creative contexts,especially during role-play.Forexample,Mayu (54, female), pretending tobe a telephone operatorrecording, used the humble verb form tsukawarete-orimasen instead of the nonhumble formtsukawarete-imasen to say that the telephonenumber dialed is currently out of service: kono denwa bangoo

wa

tsukaw- are- te-orirna-

sen

This phone number TOP use PASS PRES.PROG POL NEG ‘This telephone numberis not being used‘

Although the children were able to use humble predicates, there were few examples of humble nouns (e.g., haha for ‘mother’). As Clancy (1985) proposed, children seem initially to use ritualized social routines to learn honorific and humblelanguage (especially predicate forms) within a specific context (e.g., ritualized social routines).Over time, with a wider repertoire of social experiences and a more sophisticated understandingof the relevant interpersonal factors, they are able to generalize such forms to wider a variety of social contexts, with increasing productivity and appropriateness.

7 Ken had been using this expression daily since was he a 1-year-old.

5

Polite Language in Japanese

103

Jeineigo ‘Addressee Honorifics’

By age 3, the children in this studywere able to use desul-masu forms in a context-appropriate manner, andwere also able to use polite request forms(-te kudasai). Ken (3;6, male), inviting his visiting grandparentsto sit on the sofa, said kochira ni o-suwari-kudasai ‘please sit over here: using an appropriate polite request. Polite requests appeared frequentlyduring role-play. For example, Shin (3;7), pretending tobe a chef offering an omelet to a customer, said: hooku de tabetekudasai

forkwitheatCONTplease Please eat this with a fork In the beginning, young children frequently use teineigo when they are repeating adult utterancesor directly quotingadult speech.As reported by Muraishi (1973), eventually theybegin to use formal language in order to respond to the level of the interlocutor (usually their mothers). When their mothers use teineigo they attempt to respond with the same level of formality.With age, children become better at initiating use of these forms and use them more consistently.Here we see Mika (3;2), pretending to be working at the counter of a fast-food restaurant: Mika:

irasshairnase...nani ga ii &U ka? welcomewhatSUBJ good C0P:POL Q ‘Welcome. What would you like?’

Mother:

nani ga

ii

kashira?

what SUBJgood wonder ‘What isgood?’ Mika:

Mother:

poteto

ka?

U &

potato C0P:POL Q ‘How about french fries?’ haipoteto

to

hambaagaakudasai

yes potato and hamburger please ‘Yes, please give me french fries and a hamburger.’ Mika:

hai chott0

o

-machi-kudasai

yes little HON wait please ‘Yes, please waita little’ Mika was able to use formal predicate formsconsistently, without prompting, in additionto a polite greetingand anhonorific request form. Occasions in which children code-switch between different levelsof politeness for different purposes are another excellent source of data. Children showed that they were sensitive to factors such as the familiarity of the addressee. For example, some of the children used casual forms for their mothers and polite forms to address the experimenter. Asking if he can play with one of the experimenter’stoys, Shin (3;6, male)says:

104

NAKAMURA

mother) (to

kore yat- ii?te

This do CONT good ‘Can I do this?’ (to experimenter)

yat-temo ka ii ...kore? do CONC good C0P:POL Q this ‘May (I) do this?’

He used a more formal requestfor permission, and postposingof the object, showing some hesitancyand reserve when addressing the experimenter. Children also code-switch betweendifferent politeness levels, depending on other characteristics of the speaker and addressee. Here,Yuriko (5;4, female), pretending to call her house, told her youngersister to pass the phone to her mother: mamanikawat-te Mommy to change IMP

‘Change with Mommy’

A few turns later, she called again, assuming therole of a well-bred lady whois speaking with herfriend’s daughter (playedby her youngersister): 0- kaasama kawatni tekudasai HON mother HON to change CONTplease ‘Please change with (your) mother’

In this example she used the honorific form for mother okaasama, with apolite request form. Althoughthe two situationsare similar, Yuriko varied her levels of politeness according to the different roles that she and her sister were playing. Contextual factors also play an important role. Many children seemed to associate usage of desu/-masu forms with a formal style of presentation or “identification” modeof speech. For example, children usually usedteineigo when identifying themselves during self-introductions.Similarly, children often used teineigo in their phoneconversations, especially when they did not know the identity of thecaller. Here we see Shin (3;7, male) in a conversation with his mother’s friend, whohad called to speak withher: moshimoshi ...Shin-chan h. ..konnichi wa ...i-masu yo. Hello Shin DIM C0P:POL hello be POL NONPASTEMPH

”hello ...this is Shin (speaking) ...hello ...(she) i s (here).’

Shin was ableto use desu/-masuforms consistentlyand appropriately. Children realize that certain contexts call for usage of formal language (e.g., interviews, public speeches), and are able to vary theirlevel of formality accordingly. As Muraishi (1973)reported, achild’s use ofteineigo seems to be closelyrelated to his or her sense ofaratamari ‘standing on ceremony’ during formalsituations.

5

Polite Language in Japanese

105

Furthermore, storytelling often encourages the use of teineigo. As Muraishi (1973) reported, even young children tend to end their narratives and stories with teineigo. The children in the study usually used teineigo to mark thevoice of the narrator, while using da-style informal verb endings to mark dialogue.* Bikago ‘Beautification Honorifics’

As bikago are frequently used in child-directed speech,as one might expect,

children use many bikago in both polite and casual language.For example, Nanami (3;4, female) said o-soto de asobu no ka naa? ‘Are they going to play outside?’ when shesaw a picture of two mice carrying knapsacks in her storybook. The childrenalso used words suchas go-hon ‘book’, o-uchi‘house’, o-mise ‘store’, o-ryoori ‘cooking’,o-shigoto ‘work’,and o-hashi ‘chopsticks’. However, in many cases, children had learnedthe o- or go- form as the standard form of the word and did notuse the word without the corresponding honorific prefix. In other words, theywere not using these formsas honorific forms, but simply as the standard form (i.e., the prefix was not isolated morphologically and productively). In general, girls tended touse beautification honorifics more frequently than boys. This pattern mirrors adult usage. Excessive use of these forms by women, especiallymothers and preschoolteachers (e.g., o-ekaki ‘drawing’, o-kutsu shoes)hasrecentlybeenthetarget o f muchpubliccriticism (Bunkachoo, 1974). Some women, in theireffort to sound refined and polite, overuse beautification honorifics, using unnecessary and incorrect forms. DISCUSSION

As researchers such as Clancy (1985)) Iijima (1974), and Muraishi (1973)

proposed, it seems extremelylikely that children initially associate certain polite linguistic expressions with a specific context (often ritualizedsocial routines suchasgreetings).Intheearlieststage,theygaininvaluablelinguistic experience by copying dialogues they hear around them (e.g., television programs, adult conversations), making up dialogues and imitating(e.g., adults 8 This reflects the tendency forchildren’s books to be writtenin teineigo, with informal language being the styleof choice for dialogue. In addition, although the children tended to use teineigo when retelling familiar stories (i.e., from books), they tended touse casula language when telling personal narratives. One possible explanation for this is that in thecase of personal narratives, children are emotionallyinvolved in the storytelling task, and therefore do not use teineigo, which would serve as a distancing function, creating a more formal mood. This follows into Maynard’s (1992)theory that the use of teineigo during narratives makes the speaker take a “narrative external position,”in which the speaker describes the event as an outsideobserver, while use of casual forms enables the speaker take to a “narrative internal position” as if the speaker were witnessing the scene right then and there.

106

NAKAMURA

train conductors,store clerks). Gradually they begin to grasp the linguistic rules that underlie these polite expressions, developing a basic understanding of the relevant interpersonalfactors, and generalizing such forms to a wider variety of contexts with increasing productivity and appropriateness. Later, formal instruction provides children with concrete knowledge regarding specific linguistic forms.Late acquisition of honorific and humble formsis probably caused by thelexical, morphological, semantic, andsocial complexities ofthe politeness system. In particular, limited experienceand a simple network of social relationships make itdifficult for children to master such forms.9 Only when children leave the protective environmentsof school and home for new roles in society are they ableto increase their proficiency in keigo, through trial and error,as well ascorrection, in new social contexts. Furthermore, unlike teineigo, honorific and humble languagerarely appear in child-directed speechand are usually not heard in the home. The parentchild relationship has becomeless hierarchical, and nuclear families are replacing extendedfamilies. Previously, with multigenerationalfamilies, both adults and children were required to use different levels offormality and politeness in their everyday home interactions (Bunkachoo,1988). Furthermore, changing standards and attitudes regarding polite language(i.e., a greater degree of equality in languageusage) have made it even more difficult for children to master the system. For example, recently many school teachers have chosen to avoid keigo usage in their interactions with their students, hoping to base their student-teacher relationships on intimacy, rather discipline. than In addition, many of the parents of the children in this study admitted that they themselves felt uncomfortable with their ownlevel of keigo proficiency and admitted that much of their keigo knowledge had been acquired on thejob, in work-related situations. Interviews withthe mothers of the target children revealed that mostof them felt that it was unnecessary for their childrento use sonkeigo ‘honorific language’ andkenjoogo ‘humble language’as long as they could use teineigo properly. With all these factors, it is surprising that childrenare able to use keigo at all. Even young children use greetings and polite expressions, beautification honorifics and teineigo spontaneously, in their daily interactions. In addition, they are able touse some honorific/humble language in role-play contexts. Role-play contexts give children the opportunity to engage in hierarchical relationships differing from their everyday roles. Such contexts illustrate that g Two sociocultural concepts that are said to underlie the use of keigo are (a) jooge-kankei ‘top-down relations,’ which refersto vertical human relations, such as the relationship between parents and children, managers andemployees, or teachers and their students, and(b) uchi-soto ‘in-grouplout-group,’which refers to thesense of belonging in a groupwhich exists in the context of the speaker-hearer dyad (e.g., Doi, 1973,Nakane, 1970). Such concepts canbe difficult to grasp, as an individual will often belong to manysocial groups (e.g., school, extracurricularactivity, family) simultaneously.

5

Polite Language in Japanese

107

Japanese children are sensitive to differences in politeness levels and that they are grappling with the difficult task of mastering honorific and humble language. Furthermore, childrenare able to make other more subtletypes of language adjustments to make their speech more polite. During polite speech, they use more hesitation, fewer sentence fragments, contracted forms, and colloquial sentence-finalparticles. As in the case of other linguistic forms, right after children acquire certain types of keigo forms, they becomevery rigid regarding the use of these forms, demanding that adults and other children also use the right forms at the right time. This is particularly true of aisatsu and teineigo. For example, Kunta(2;8, male) demanded thathis friend, who had bumped into him, apologize, saying ‘‘gomen ne-tte itte” ‘say you’re sorry’.Similarly, when Ken (3;2, male) thanked his mother for cooking his favorite dumpling dish, saying arigatoo ‘thank you’, his mother responded with a simplehai ‘yes’. However, Ken was unsatisfied with this abbreviated response, sayingarigatoo no atowa doo-itashimashite-tte iun da yo ‘(you) should say ‘you’re welcome’after (someone says) ‘thank you’. Furthermore, parents are often remindedby their children tosay the right premeal and postmeal greetings, namely itadakimasu (said before a meal)and o-gochisoo-sama (said after a meal).Several ofthe parentsalso commented that their children correctedthem when they responded with un ‘uh-huh‘ insteadof the more properhai ‘yes’. It is clear that children atthis stage are eager touse the right polite forms and also demand that others use such linguistic forms appropriately. Another interesting observation is that children are very sensitive to trends in language use regarding politeness. For example, one common error among the children was use of the humble form, notas a marker of humility for the speaker, but rather as a general polite or refined form. For example, in a store scenario, Nana (3;0, female), asked her customer to wait for her change by saying: mooshi-wake arima-

sen.

shooshoo o-machiitadake-masu

ka?

Excusehave POL NEG little HON waitreceive HON POL Q ‘(I’m) very sorry. Would you please wait (humbly) a little? Upon close examination, onefinds that inthis case, the use of the humble form to describe the customer’sact of waiting strays from its traditional usage as a marker of the speaker’s humility. Thisreflects a current trend in adult language usage, in which the humble formis used as an overall polite or refined form. Children seem to be extremely sensitive to such trendsin adult languageusage. It is also clear that children aresensitive to factors suchas speaker/hearer characteristics, social context, and topicof conversation. For example, although most of the children usedteineigo in role-play contextsand when answeringthe phone, a few of them used teineigo and other formsof polite language (e.g., polite requests) during rough-and-tumbleplay. The childrenalso tended to use

108

NAKAMURA

teineigo in formal contexts, such as in child-researcher interviews and in presentations to theirpreschool classes. As previouslymentioned,Japanesechildren also makespeaker- and addressee-related adjustments,based on factors such as familiarity and age. The children observedin the study tended to use casual language forms in their interactions with peers and younger siblings, while using polite language with unfamiliar and older adults.Research on English-speaking children has also found sensitivityto speaker-hearer characteristics such as agein the selectionof politeness forms.For example, Ervin-Tripp (1974) found that 3-year-olds used imperatives more often to children than to adults, and that when 3-year-olds used interrogative requests, they were usually adult-directed. Other studies have also confirmed that young children are sensitive to speaker-hearer characteristics such as age (or size), gender, degreeof familiarity, and role or status (e.g., mother vs. father; Andersen, 1990; Corsaro, 1979; Ervin-Tripp & Gordon, 1986; Ervin-Tripp, O’Connor, & Rosenberg, 1984; James, 1978; Walters, 1981). One direction for futureresearch is to identify which factors children are sensitive to in selecting polite language forms. Mizutaniand Mizutani (1987) suggested several factors determining the adultusage of keigo (i.e., familiarity, age, social relations, social status, gender, group membership,and situation). The data show that from an early age, children are sensitive to factors such as familiarity, age, and situation. Onequestion is “in what order are these factors ranked in children’s form choices?”Is this order determinedby the relative importance of social factors within a speechcommunity? Oris it determined by cognitive factors?For example, most Japanese children seem to stress familiarity over age, by using informal and casual forms to their grandparents. However, familiarity andage seem to beclosely intertwined when determining politeness levels, aschildren are morelikely to use polite forms with unfamiliar elderlypersons, as opposedtounfamiliaryoungerchildrenorpeers. Furthermore, how is polite language usage related to children’s understanding of social relations and social structure? For example, children seem to find it easier to understand uchi-soto ‘in-grouplout-group’ relations thanjooge-kankei ‘vertical/hierarchical relations’. Do the contexts and factors to which children are sensitive change withage? Is polite languageusage initially basedon characteristics of the interlocutor(e.g., familiarity, age)or the context(e.g., store, school)? Theseissues need to be examined more closely. Wlth increasing age, children gain greater controlover polite speech and are able to switch between different politeness registers spontaneously in a contextappropriate manner. However, it is also important to note that there are enormous individual differences in children’s use of polite speech, which are closely tied to factors such the attitudes and expectations of the child’s parents and teachers regarding polite language usage. Although some mothers provided constant instruction in the use of polite language, other mothers only corrected

5

Polite Language in Japanese

log

their children’s use of polite forms when they were addressing other adults (e.g., on the telephone, when greeting guests). It is also a well-known fact that keigo usage varies greatly accordingto factors such as dialect, age, gender, and class/occupation (e.g., Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyuujo, 1964). For example, older speakers are more likely to be more conservative regarding keigo usage, and urban dwellers are known to use more keigo than people living in rural areas. Howdo such factors influence the acquisition of keigo! Would children of families living in rural areas be less sensitive to keigo usage than children growing up in urban areas?Would children living with their grandparents be better at keigo usage than children growingup innuclear families? CONCLUSION

The results of the study show that even the youngest Japanese children are able to use polite linguistic forms in certain roles and situations. They areable to use a wide variety of greetings and polite expressions, bikago ‘beautification honorifics’, as well as honorific suffixes such as -San and teineigo ‘addressee honorifics’..It seems that Japanese childrenfirst acquire formulaic, routine expressions(e.g.,greetings andpoliteexpressions)whichhappen to contain keigo forms and then graduallybegin to grasp the linguistic rules which underlie keigo usage. During theearliest stages, children do notseem to separate the informational content of the utterance from the keigo form of the expression. These expressions serve the role of familiarizing the children to honorific and humble forms, afterwhich children gradually become capable of using them in different nonformulaic contexts. Data from role-play contexts help to show that young children are often grappling with the complicated forms and sophisticated concepts underlying honorific and humble language usage. Children often make attempts touse polite linguistic formswhen playing certain types of roles, such as those of storekeeper (e.g., addressing customers)and mother(e.g., addressing a doctor or teacher). Therefore, it is clear that the prevalentview that most children cannotuse keigo forms stems from thefact that they do notneed to use them in their daily spontaneous interactions. When presented with a wide range of hierarchicalroles and relationships in role-play contexts, children often show aprecocious ability to use sophisticated keigo forms. In attempting touse honorific and humble forms, children make two types of error: errors in linguistic form, stemming from morphosyntactic, semantic, and lexical complexities;and errorsin attributing the honorific or humble form to the wrong referent, stemming from the interpersonal complexities underlying keigo usage. However, as many of these errors reflect the current controversies and changes occurring in the keigo system, it isnot surprising to see how difficult it is for Japanesechildren tomaster these forms. It is not the overall grammatical structure thatmakes polite language so elusive in Japanese, but rather, the combination of the sociointeractional

110

NAKAMURA

relations that underlie the wholekeigo system with itslexical, morphological, and semantic aspects. In fact, nonnative speakers often have the most difficulty with such pragmatic subtletiesof the language, rather than theuse of complicated vocabularyand difficult grammatical constructions. In order to become a competent languageuser, a childmust master the various linguistic forms that mark different politeness registers and learn when and how to use them appropriately.Withage,aided by bettergrammatical skills andmore sophisticated cognitive abilities,as well as a larger rangeo f social experiences, children gradually expand their repertoire of polite language, becoming increasingly capable of communicating effectively in a wide variety of social roles. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for the support thisresearch has received from the U.S.-Japan EducationalCommission(FulbrightProgram),theNational Science Foundation,theUniversity ofCalifornia,theAmerican Psychological Association, the Spencer Foundation, and the JapanSociety for the Promotion of Science.A preliminary versionof this chapter appeared in Nakamura (199 6). This chapterwas written whileI was at the Universityof California, Berkeley. REFERENCES

Andersen, E. S. (1978). W111 you don’t snore, please? Directives in young children’s role-play speech Papersand Reports on Child Language Development, 15,140-150. Andersen, E. S. (1990). Speaking with style: The sociolinguistic skills ofchildren. London: Routledge. Bruner, J., Roy, C.,& Ratner, N. (1982).The beginnings of request. InK. E. Nelson (Ed.),Children’s language,Vol. 3 (pp. 91-138). New York GardnerPress. Bunkachoo [Agency of Cultural Affairs]. (1974). Kotoba shiriizu I: Keigo [Language series1: Polite language]. Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Publishing. Bunkachoo [Agency of Cultural Affairs]. (19 86). Kotoba shiriizu2 4 :Zoku-keigo [Languageseries 24: A sequel to “Polite language’l .Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Publishing. Bunkachoo [Agencyof Cultural Affairs]. (1988). Kotoba shiriizu 28: Kotoba no henka [Language series 28: Language change]. Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Publishing. Clancy, P. M. (1985).The acquisition of Japanese. InD. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, Vol.I: Thedata(pp. 373-534). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Clancy, P. M. (1986). The acquisitionof communicative style in Japanese. InB. Schieffelin & E. Ochs (Eds.), Language socialization across cultures (pp. 213-250). New York Cambridge University Press. Cook-Gumperz, J., & Corsaro, W. (1977). Social-ecological constraintson children’s cornrnunicative strategies.Sociology ofEducation, 5515-79. Corsaro, W. (1979). Young children’s conception of status and role.Sociology ofEducation, 52, 46-59. Doi, T. (1973). The anatomy ofdependence.Tokyo: Kodansha. Ervin-Tripp, S. M. (1974). The Comprehension and productionof requests by children. Papers and Reports in Child Language Development, 8,188-196. Ervin-Tripp, S. M. (1977).Wait for me, roller skate. InS. Ervin-Tripp &C. Mitchell-Kernan (Eds.), Child discourse (pp. 165-188). New York AcademicPress.

5

Polite Language in Japanese

111

Ervin-Tripp, S. M. (1982). Ask and it shall be given unto you: Children’srequests, In H.Byrnes (Ed.), Georgetown UniversityRoundtable on Languages and Linguistics. Contemporary perceptions oflanguage: Interdisciplinary dimensions(pp. 235-245). Washington,D C Georgetown University Press. Ervin-Tripp, S. M., & Gordon, D. P. (1986). The development of children’s requests,In R. L. Schiefelbusch (Ed.),Communicative competence:Assessment and intervention (pp. 61-96). San Diego, CA: College Hill Press. Ervin-Tripp, S. M,, O’Connor,M. C., & Rosenberg, J. (1984). Language and power in the family. In C. Kramerae, M. Schulz, &W. O’Barr(Eds.), Language andpower(pp. 116-135). New York Sage. Garvey, C.(1975). Requests and responses in children’s speech. Journalof ChildLanguage, z,41-63. Garvey, C. (1984). Children\ talk. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress. Greif, E. B., & Gleason, J. B. (1980). Hi, thanks, and goodbye: More routine information, Language in Society, 9,159-166. Holzman, M. (1972). The use of interrogative forms inthe verbal interactions of three mothers and their children.Journal ofPsycholinguisticResearch,I, 311-366. Hymes, D.(1972). On communicative competence, In J. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: Selected readings(pp. 269-293). Baltimore: Penguin. Ide, S. (1982). Japanese sociolinguistics: Politeness and women’s language. Lingua, 57,357-385. Ide, S. (1990). How and why do women speak more politely in Japanese. In S. Ide &N. H.McGloin (Eds.), Aspects ofJapanese women’s language.Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan. Iijima, T. (Ed.). (1974).Keigo o doo shidoo sum ka [How to teach polite language].Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Publishing. James, S. (1978). Effect of listenerage and situation on thepoliteness of children’s directives. Journal of PsycholinguisticResearch, 7,307-317. Kikuchi,Y. (1996).Keigo sainyuumon [A re-introduction to keigo]. Tokyo:Maruzen. Kindaichi, H., Hayashi,O., & Shibata, T. (Eds.). (1988).Nihongo hyakka daijiten [An encyclopedia of Japanese]. Tokyo: Taishuukan. KokuritsuKokugoKenkyuujo[NationalJapanese LanguageResearch Institute].(1964). Shoogakusei no gengo nooryoku no hattatsu [The development of linguistic ability in elementary school students].Tokyo: Meiji Tosho. Kuno, S. (1987). Honorific marking in Japanese and the word formation hypothesis of causatives and passives. Studies in Language, 11(1), 99-128. Mackie, V. C. (1983). Japanese children and politeness. Papers of the Japanese Studies Center, 6, Melbourne. Martin, S. E. (1964). Speech levels in Japan andKorea. In D. Hymes (Ed.), Language in culture and society (pp. 407-415). New York Harper andRow. Martin, S. E. (1975). A referencegrammarofJapanese.New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Maynard, S. K. (1990). An introduction to Japanese grammar and communication strategies. Tokyo: Japan Times. Maynard, S. K. (1992). Discourse modality: Subjectivity, emotion and voice in theJapanese language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mizutani, O.,& Mizutani, N. (1983).Nihongo notes. Tokyo: Japan Times. Mizutani, O., & Mizutani, N. (1987).How to bepolite in Japanese. Tokyo: Japan Times. Mori, J. (19 93). Some observations in humble expressions in Japanese: Distribution of o- V (stem) suru and ‘V(Causative) itadaku. In S. Choi (Ed.),JapaneseKorean linguistics, Vol. 3 (pp. 67-83. Stanford, CA: CSLI. Morioka, K. (1973). Keigo to kyooiku [Keigo and education]. In S. Hayashi & F. Minami (Eds.), Keigo kooza 7: koodoo no naka no keigo [Keigo lectures 7: Polite language in behavior] (pp. 197-253). Tokyo: MeijiShoin. Muraishi, S. (1973). Gengo hattatsu to keigo [Language development and polite language]. In S. Hayashi & F. Minami (Eds.),Keigo kooza 7:Koodoo no naka no keigo [Keigo lectures 7: Polite language in behavior](pp. 163-196). Tokyo: Meiji Shoin.

112

NAKAMURA

Murata, K. (1983). Kodomo no kotoba to kyooiku.Tokyo: Kanebo Shobo. Nakamura, K. (1996). The use o f polite language by Japanese preschool children. In D. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis, & J. Guo (Eds.), Social interaction, social context, and language: Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp (pp. 235-251). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Nakamura, K. (1997). The acquisition of communicative competence by Japanese children:The development of sociolinguistic awareness. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University o f California, Berkeley. Nakane, C. (1970). Japanese society. Harmondsworth Penguin. Niyekawa, A. (199 I). Minimal essentialpoliteness: A guide to the Japanese honorific language. Tokyo: Kodansha. Oishi, H. (1974). Keigo no shikumi [The structure of polite language]. In Bunkachoo [Agency o f Cultural Affairs], Kotoba shiriizuI: Keigo [language series I: Polite language] (pp. 25-36). Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Publishing. Oishi, H. (1983). Gendai keigo kenkyuu [Contemporary keigo research]. Tokyo: Ootsuki Shoboo. Okuyama, M. (1983). Gendai keigo jiten [Contemporarykeigo dictionary] (Vol. 5). Tokyo: Tokyo-do Shuppan. Shatz, M. (1978). On the developmento f communicative understandings: An early strategy for interpreting and responding to messages. Cognitive Psychology, 10,z71-301. Walters, J.(1981).Variation in the requesting behavior of bilingual children. InternationalJournal of the Sociologyof Language, 27,77-9z. Wllkinson, L., Wllkinson, A., Spinelli, F., & Chiang, C. (1984).Metalinguistic knowledge o f pragmatic rules in school-age children. Child Development, 55, Z I ~ O - Z I ~ O . Yoshioka, Y. (1995). Keigo koodoo to kihan ishiki- Hichiku hoogen-iki ni okeru gengo koodoo hoosa kara [On the relationship between consciousness of norms and honorific expression in Japanese: from the language survey of Hichiku dialect]. Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyuujo Hookoku 110. Tokyo: Shuei Shuppan.

Interactional Processes in the Origins of the Explaining Capacity

EDY VENEZIANO

Universite’ Nancy

2

and Universite’ Paris V - C N R S

One importantpragmatic slull necessary to handle interpersonal relationsis to provide explanations and arguments forone’s own action, demands, or point of view. This chapter addresses the way this capacity starts to be functional in early mother-child interaction and the processes that might underlie its emergence. Previousstudies have shownthatveryyoungchildrencanprovide explanations and justificationsof their behavior, particularly other-directed behavior such as requests and refusals, before they have acquired specific linguistic means, such as the connectivebecause, to express them (Bloom & Capatides, 1987;Dunn 1988; Dunn &Mum,1987; Hood &Bloom, 1979). In a longitudinal study of four mother-child dyads, we have shown that this capacity emergesduring thesecond half of the second year, when children are in the late single-word period (Veneziano& Sinclair, 19 9 5).Children’s early explanatory and justifyingactivity, though still quite primitive in nature,is particularly interesting to study. It provides insights not only into children’s ability to establish links between their behaviorand thereasons for it, showing early interest in psychological and social causes (see also Dunn, 1993), but also into their capacity to express them verbally, using languagein a displaced and informative way. Moreover,itprovidesinsights into children’sgrowing pragmatic, conversational, and social abilities. Indeed, explanations and justifications, if well placed in the conversational exchange, may play an important role in the regulation of interpersonal relations, because they may be used adaptively to influence the interlocutor’s intentions andbeliefs so as to modify hisor herbehavior. In this sense, the study of the emergence and early development of the capacity to provide explanations and justifications adds crucial informationon children’s early adaptive capacitiesand on their understanding of someone else’s mental states. ”3

114

VENEZIANO

One particularly revealing case is that of oppositions,that is, casesin which contrasts arise between the desires, intentions, or beliefs of children and their interlocutors: One partner intends to do something, makes demands on the other, or asserts something,and the other makes his or her disagreement known. Such a “pub1ic”contrast (Eisenberg & Garvey, 19 81, p. 151) needs tobe managed, and that is where explanations or justifications might interveneas an adaptive interactional strategy to redirect the relationship or tohave one’spoint ofview accepted with greater likelihood by the other.In conversational analysis, explanations-as reasons, motivations,and causes of the participants’ actions-have been considered as “a normatively required feature”of actions that are “unexpected or unlooked for” (Heritage,1 9 9 0 , p. 35).Studies of childrenin their third and fourthyear observed in thefamily environment show thatchildren’s use of justifications in conflictual situations with their mothers increases with age (Dunn & Munn, 1987; Dunn, Slomkowsky, Donelan, & Herrera, 1995; Eisenberg, 19 g 2 ; Tesla &Dunn, 19 92) and suggest that justifications may indeed be determinant in convincing othersof the validity ofone’s position. Similar phenomena are reported for interactions among siblings (Dunn &Mum,19 87; Dunn et al., 1995; Tesla & D u m , 1992) and peers (e.g., Eisenberg& Garvey, 1981; Goodwin Harkness,1990; Pontecorvo, 1990; Shantz, 1987). Very few studies have looked at thesespecific phenomena in mother-child interaction with children younger than age 3 (Dunn & M u m , 1987; Haight, Garvey, & Masiello, 19 g 5; Kuczinski, Kochanska, Radke-Yarrow,& GirniusBrown, 1987; and, for one data point at2 ; 9 , the studies by Dunn and her collaborators cited earlier) and even less for childrenin their secondyear ( D u m & Munn, 1987; Kuczinslu et al., 1987). Moreover, none of these studies provide fine-grained longitudinal data on individual dyadsbut mostly pooled dataon relatively large samples. Because this chapter focuseson the processes underlying the emergenceof children’s explanatory capacity, it provides both fine-grained longitudinal data on individual dyads and data concerning the early periodsof development. It moreover concentrateson justifications of naturally occurring oppositions which, like justifications of requests, areamong thefirst justificationsto appear in children’s production (Veneziano & Sinclair, 19 g 5). In particular, theeffect of explanations and justificationsis investigated before and around the time children start to provide justifications, by comparing theway the dyad resolves contrasting interactional episodes in which one partner justifies his or her opposition to those in which she or he does not justify it: Does the child’s provision of an explanation or justification of his or her opposition to the mother lead the latter give to up her previous action, demand, or statement more easily than otherwise? And,reciprocally, is the child sensitive to the mother’s providing explanations or justifications of her oppositions?Moreover, when the contrast is not resolved immediately on the third turnby the partner’s renouncement of the originalproject, and the

6

Origins of the Explaining Capacity

11 5

initial contrast becomes thus an open conflict of intentions, howdo children go about insisting on their original intention or statement after the mother’s opposition? And how do they persist opposing the mother case in the latter insists on her original intention or statement? Do children show adaptive behavior by modifying their formulationor by adding an explanation or justification to strengthen theircase? The pattern of developmental resultsis then discussed in relation to what it can tell us about the interactionalprocesses that underlie the emergenceof the explanatory capacity in the child. Itis argued that although these phenomena are inherentlysocial and require social and communicative skills, their acquisition is best understood within a constructivist approach requiring the child’s internal elaboration of the jointly constructed mother-childepisodes. METHOD

Subjects and Method of Data Collection The data presented here come from the longitudinal studies of two motherchild dyads-called Dyad A and Dyad C-observed at home during naturally occurring interaction. The language spoken at home was French. During the period under analysis the child inDyad A, a boy, was aged between 1;8.16 and 2;7.8; the child in Dyad C, a girl,was aged between ~ 3 . and 2 2;2.6. The two families were of middle-classsocial background. Both children are second born to anopposite-sex siblingabout 3 years older.The boy was going to a kindergarten in the mornings andstayed with his mother in the afternoons; the girl did not attend any day care. When the observational sessions were carried out, the mother was available for the child and the oldersibling was absentfrom home. After some preliminaries, the sessionswere audio- and video-recorded during approximately one hour, andwere held, whenever possible, every two weeks.’ In both studies, two observers2 were present during thesessions, one filming and the other sitting in a peripheral place in the room, taking notes and assuming a friendlybut nonintrusive attitude. For the boy, this situation was maintained during the whole observational session; for the girl, during the second half hour, the observer took a more active role. The sessions included various types offree play activities (block construction, ball playing, ritual games, manipulation of objects), book reading, spontaneous symbolic play and, sometimes, snacks around the kitchen table. Table 6.1 presents the number of sessions analyzed-corresponding to a total of 16 hours of recording forthe boy and 15 112 hours for thegirl-and the age of the child ateach recorded session. 1 For the girl,the last session, 4 months from the previousone, is an extrasession whose analysis is included here. z The authorwas one of them in both studies.

116

VENEZIANO

TABLE

6.1

Number of Sessionsand Ageofthe Child at Each ObservationalSession Session Number

Age of the Child at Session Dyad A C Dyad

1

1;8.16

2

1;8.30

1;3.1

3

1;9.20

1;4.0

4

1;10.4

5 6

1;10.17

1i4.14 1;4.26

1J1.1

13.9

7 8

1;11.15

2;o

1i5.23 1;6.4 1;6.22

1;3.2

9

241.15

10

2p.14

1;7.6

11

2;2.28

1;7.18

12

2;3.12

1;8.3

13

2;4.2

1;8.15

14

2;4.23

15 16

W.27 2;7.8

&9.3 1;10.12 2;2.6

Data analysis

The data fromeach dyad was analyzed independently bytwo persons. All the naturally occurring oppositions from thechild’s and from themother’s side were identified in the video recordings, and their interactional coursewas followed until the resolution of the contrast, namely, until oneof the partners accepted explicitly, or implicitly (letting go, changing the topic or center of attention, withdrawing from the situation), the other’s position (action, demand, statement, or opposition),or a compromise was found and mutually accepted. Both verbal and nonverbal cueswere used to interpret the opposition episodes and the sequences thus identified were carefully transcribed. They were then segmented into individual movements and entered on an analysis sheetrepresentingthestructureofthesequence while preservingthe information about its content. In mostcases, this step required the repeated slow-movement viewingof the audio-visual material. Definitions and Examples Defining Criteria for the Occurrenceof an Opposition. Much of the general framework and some of the specific categories found and distinguished here can

6

Origins of the Explaining Capacity

117

also be found in other studies of oppositions andof conflicts (see, in particular, Dunn & Munn, 1987; Eisenberg 8 Garvey, 1981). Although authors differ concerning the defining criteria of a conflict or a dispute, all agreethat an oppositional move is necessary. Some include in their analyses ofconflictsall occurrences containing a first opposition, considered already to be adversative, conflictual episodes (e.g., Dunn & M u m , 1987;Eisenberg, 1992; Eisenberg & Garvey, 1981); others limit the extent of the term“conflict”to episodes containingtwo oppositional moves (e.g.,Haight et al., 1995;Laugaa & Brossard, 1997; Shantz, 1987). In this studywe use the term opposition to refer to thesecond move of a sequence in whichone of the interactional partners explicitly manifests dislike, disagreement, aversion,or any other behavior that is contrary to the immediately previous action, realor potential proposal, demand, or statementof the other interactional partner.All cases of opposition have been considered. For this study, however, negative answers to real yes/no questions as well as to sincere demands for confirmation or clarification concerning the interpretation of the child’s previously manifested intention, cases in which the opposition to the otheris part of a mutually agreed game, and instances of passive opposition in which one partnerdoesn’t respond or attend to the other’s request for action or attentionwere been considered oppositions. They have been excluded because these responses areambiguous in the sense that they might not signify opposition: They might manifestlack of attention, or alack of availability of any lund of action other than the one the child is engaged in, and so on. Given their ambiguity, we think that they should be dealt with separately from clear cases of oppositions and conflicts (see,however, Tardif, 1998, for a different stand on this matter). Following Eisenberg and Garvey (1981) the opposing partner is referred to as the “opposer,”and theopposed partner,as the “opposee.” The opposer’s and the opposee’s moves constitute the minimal pair required for an opposition to take place. This is not considered, however, to constitute a conflictor a dispute (if it is “simple,” as Dunn & Munn, 1987, call it), but simply the opposition of one partner. Indeed, although itis often assumed that theopposee’s initial move reflects an underlying clear-cut intentionon his or her side, itisn’t until the third move of the oppositional episode (i.e., until the opposee’s second move) that the extent to which he or she cares about the initiating action, demand, or propositionbecomes clearer. Thus, from theobserver’s point of view, it is only at the timeof the thirdmove that an overt divergence of intentions or opinions may appear and a conflict be declared. Ways of Expressing the Opposition. An opposition may be expressed verbally and/or nonverbally. Verbal oppositions may explicitly contain the negative particle non ‘no’, accompanied or not by other verbalizations. When they do not contain the negative particle, they may be expressed in one of the followingways:

118

VENEZIANO

by a negative sentence: for example, ne tire pas ‘don’t pull’, said while the child is trying to remove the hat from a doll’s head; maman n’enleve pas les souliers ‘mommy doesn’t removethe shoes’, said after the child has requested the mother to remove her shoes;moi je vois pas une maman qui boit le biberon ‘I don’t see a mommy that drinks from the bottle’, said after the child has said#Jbibon maman ‘mommy# bottle’; by a sentence which, by its content, goes againstor hinders the action or proposition of the opposee: for example, attends on vu mettre les chaussettes d’abord‘wait, we are goingto put thesocks first’, said while the child tries to slip her feet into her shoes; ilfaut le hisser ‘you should leave it’, said after the child’s request to remove the toy cradle’scurtain; by a sentence introducedby an adversative marker likemais ‘but’: for example, mais c’est la jaquette du cloun ‘but it is the clown’s jacket’, said whilethe child is trying to slip the clown’s jacketon her rocking horse’s handle; by expressing directly the reason(s) for the opposition: for example, elle est trop petite cette baignoire ‘it’stoo small this bathtub’, while the child is trying to a place relatively big dollinto a toy bathtub; c’est tout cousu ‘it’sall sewn up’, refusing the child’s requestto remove the doll’s shirt. The availability of videotaped material hasallowed us to consider also nonverbal oppositions. To be included, nonverbal oppositions must present an active behavior of resistanceandlor an action that goes in the opposite direction of that requested or executed by the opposee. For example,the motherholds the child by the hipspreventing her from going to her father, after she had got up saying papa. Different Types of Opposition:Protests, Refusals, Denials, and Prohibitions.

Authors worhng specifically on oppositions often make distinctions relative to the content or topic of the opposition (see,e.g., Dunn 8r Munn, 1987; Eisenberg, 1992; Haight et al., 199 5). Another way of distinguishing oppositions isto consider the events that trigger the oppositions. In this relation, Eisenberg (1992), for example, distinguishes four typesof speech acts: two kinds of request andtwo kinds of statement. In her analysis of negation in general, Bloom (1970) found a developmental progression in the semantic categories of nonexistence, rejection, and denial. Oppositions, as an interactionalcategory, can fall into the last two. Forthe purposes of our developmental study, we thought itof interest to distinguish oppositions according to whether theevents triggering them were expressed verbally or not, or constituted language events in themselves. Accordingly, we distinguished them into protests, refusals, denials, and prohibitions. Protests are oppositionsto events that are present in the situation 3 The symbol “#” means the presence of a pauseof between .5 and 1 second; the symbol’’,##‘l pause longerthan 1 second andup to 2 seconds.

a

6

Origins of the ExplainingCapacity

11 g

and that have been brought about by the other’s action; for example, the child says non and pushes back the hando f his mother, who had pressed one o f the buttons o f his taperecorder. refusals are oppositions toevents that are not in the situation but are expressed by the other’s verbalization in the formo f directives (orders, different kinds o f request), o f proposals for activities involving the addressee or of announcements of intentions involving the speaker; for example, the child says non, refusing the mother’s suggestion togive the doll something to drink; the mother refuses the child’s request to open a bottle, saying ah non on va pas l’ouvrir‘ah no we are not going to openit’. Denials are oppositions to the other’s statements about events, which may or may not be present in the situation; for example, the child denies the mother’s statement Fa c’estfait‘this is done’, talking about thedoll’s skirt, bysaying non # sepafesa ‘no # it’s not done this’; or the mother denieschild’s the statement ton lit‘your bed’, talking about one o f the beds in the room, byreplying rnais c’estpas rnon lit Fa ‘but it is not my bed this’. Prohibitions are a kind o f negative directive, or “control act” (Ervin-Tripp, Guo, & Lampert, 1990), a sort o f preemptive opposition to the other’s likely action. Along the dimension discussed here, they can be seen as temporally displaced protests that, contrary to the latter, can be performed onlyverbally. In our sample they are usually produced to prevent the repetition o f an undesirable action that has just been performed; for example, after the child has broken oneo f the toy cradles, the mother says tu sais tu dois pas les casser‘you know you must not break them’. Justijications of Oppositions. Oppositions were distinguished according to whether theywere accompanied by a justification. A justification consists of a statement that provides the reason (theexpzanans) for the opposition which, fromaninteractionalandpragmaticperspective, is supposedtobean explanandurn (an act that needs to be explained; Barbieri, Colavita, & Scheuer, 19 9 0 ; Berthoud-Papandropoulou, Favre, & Veneziano, 19 9 0 ; Veneziano & Sinclair, 1995). Logically, these kinds o f explanation are analogous to the “regressive” typeo f argument (Grize, 19 9 6 ; Schlesinger, Keren-Portnoy, & Parush, in preparation) in which the conclusion (here, the object o f the opposition, or the explanandurn) is put forward first and the argument(s) is (are) provided later in its support. Since we were dealing with the first manifestations o f explanations and justifications,two operational criteriawere retained (Veneziano, 1990; Veneziano & Sinclair, 1995): (a) the explanandurn may be marked in a nonverbal way, whereastheexplanansneedstobe verbalized4 (hence the possibility that oppositions may be nonverbal and that their verbal expression may contain only the justification); @) the verbalization o f the explanans is addressed to the interlocutor and cannot be confounded 4 This criterion may be judged too restrictive. Thus, Rojo-Torres (forthcoming) argues that nonverbal explanantia are producedby 3-to 4-year-old deaf children in peer interaction.

120

VENEZIANO

with the verbalization of an ongoing action or event. This latter criterion excludes ambiguous cases in which it is unclear whetherthe child’s production is the verbalization of an ongoing actionor the justification of his opposition. The following are all examples of justified oppositions.For each of the types of opposition distinguished earlier we provide one example producedby the mother and one produced by the child. Examples of justified protests: In Example (1) the protest is produced by the mother, in Example (2) by the child: Mother’sjustifiedprotest: The child is pulling the top of a perfume bottle. The mother says non #on p u t pas enlever # Fa c’est impossible# sinon on le casse‘no # it can’t be removed# it is impossible # otherwise it breaks’. The child puts the bottle down and covers the top with a second cap, accepting the mother’s protest. The mother justifies her protest by appealing firstto the property of the topimpossible to remove-and then to negative a consequence ofthe child’s action-the top breaks. (I)

Child’sjustifiedprotest: The mother places a doll (mother figure) in a toy chair. The child protests he action by sayingnon # Id le papa ‘no# there thefather’. The mother accepts by removing the doll she had placed and letting the child put his doll there (the father figure). The child justifies his opposition by stating a different plan, alternative to the one of the mother-not the mother, the father. (2)

Examples of refusals accompanied by a justification: (3)

Mother’sjustifiedrefusal: The child tends a toy to cup her mother sayingko ‘more’ (request for more water). The mother refuses by saying non, t’as assez bu C‘no, you havedrunk enough C’. The mother justifies her refusal making an evaluation of what the child has ready drunk and judging it sufficient, implying that no further water is required. The child accepts implicitly as she abandons her initial request. (4)

Child’sjustifiedrefusal: The mother suggests that the child use the water that is contained in a small bottle sayingId t’as de [’eauA # Id dedans‘there you have some water A # in there’. The child, holdinga toy bathtub, looks back at his mother and says pas assez ‘not enough‘ and then goes to the bathroomto get some water. The mother accepts implicitly by letting him carry out his action. The child justifies his refusal with an evaluation, an estimate of the water he needs which is more than thatproposed.

6

Origins of theExplainingCapacity

121

Examples of denials accompanied by a justification: Mother’sjustifieddenial: book. The child, pointing to the Mother and child are lookinga picture at image of a truck, says monsieur dedans‘man inside’. The mother says non # y a pas de monsieur # Fa c’est le moteur‘no # there is no man# that is the motor’. a different identity for the reThe mother justifies her denial by specifying ferred object. The child accepts her interpretation and starts talking about the motor.

(5)

(6) Child’s justified denial:

The mother, taking the lead from the child, who was saidgoing he to make a joke, says jokinglyaprh on va chercher la blague ‘later we are goingto look for the joke’. The child immediately says non c’estpas une blague # c’est mes choses‘no it is not a joke # it’s my things’. The child justifies the denial by specifymga different identity for the referred entity. Example ( 7 ) provides an illustrationof a mother’s prohibition accompanied by a justification: Mother’sjustifiedprohibition: The childlooks with interestat the place where cassettes are inserted intohis Fisher-Price taperecorder and the mother says mais ld il fautpas mettre les doigts parce que ld tu vas tefaire mal ‘but you must notput your fingersthere because there you are goingto hurt yourself’, and then continues: mais ici ya va # Id ‘but here it’s ok# there’, showing another part of the taperecorder. The child accepts and touches the place shown by the mother. The mother justifies her prohibition by bringing to the child’sattention a negative consequence of the prohibited action-tohurt himself; then she adds what the child cando instead. (7)

Unfolding of the opposition sequence. Three main types of unfolding have been distinguished here. Thefirst one consists of third-turn resolution: The opposition is resolved immediately in the episode’s third move where the opposee gives up explicitly (by complying verbally and/or inaction) or implicitly (e.g., by abandoning one’s position, not insisting, changing the subject) the initial position (action, demand, or statement). Examples (1) to ( 7 ) are all instances of third-turn resolution, where itis the opponent’s stand or will that prevails immediately, before anyclash is overtly declared. In thesecond typeof unfolding, the resolutionof the oppositionis delayed. In the third turn, the opposee opens intermediary an sequence, producing an intermediary sequence move (ISM), that is, a neutral move signalinga time of halt, consisting oftenof a clarification or confirmation request (comparableto Garvey’s, 1977,“side sequence”). Example (8) shows an episode in which it is

122

VENEZIANO

the mother who opens an intermediary sequence, Example(9) an episode in which it is the child who does so: (8) The mother opens anintermediary sequence: MI: on le met assis ld sur le garage

M’s initiating move

‘we seat him there on the garage’ (seating a clown on the top part of a toy garage) C1

non

child‘s protest

(removing the clown from the garage) Mz: non?

M’s ISM:clarification

request Cz: /ekun laba/

C clarifies, providing a justification of his protest (a different place forthe object) M explicitly accepts the C’s position

‘the clown there’ and thengoes towarda pile of toys, on the floor M3: ah c’estlrt bas #pour le clown! ‘ah it isthere # for the clown’

In this example there is no overt contrastbetween mother andchild. The child manifests his disagreement towards themother’s previous move but, in her third turn, the mother doesn’t insist on her initial intent. However, the resolution of the opposition is delayed by the mother’s request for clarification or confirmation of the child’s opposition, followed by the child’s clarification that provides at the same time a simple justification for his previous protest(a different place forthe clown). After the intermediary sequence, the mother explicitly accepts the child’s position. (9)

The child opens an intermediary sequence: Cl: 000 maman mommy’ warm child’s initiating ‘(to) move (looking at mother after having placed a baby dollinto a toy cradle) MI: il n b pas tellement chaud Id, il n’a pas de couverture ‘he is not so warm there,

he doesnot have any blanket’ Cz: hein ? Mz: il n’a pas tellement chaudId il a pas lespiedsau chaud

M’s justified denial

C’s ISM: a clarif. req. M clarifies by repeating and adding justification

‘he is notso warm there, his feet are not warm’ (to warm) C3: (C doesn’t insist and changes subject) C implicitly gives up her idea Here the resolution of the opposition is delayed by the child’s request for clarification ofthe mother’s denial, followed by the mother’s reinstatement for her

6

Origins of the Explaining Capacity

123

previous turn (a negative property of the object), to which she adds anotherjustification, and then by the child’s implicit acceptance of the mother’s proposition. The thirdtype of unfoldingis identified as a conflict: In the third turn, the opposee insists on his or her initial intentionor position, thus producing a conflictual move (CM). It is the production of such a conflictual movethat signals the presenceof two overtly different intentionalor belief states among the interactional partnersand that opens an overt conflict. Example (IO) shows an episode in which itis the mother who opens a conflict, Example (11) an episode in whichit is the child who does it: (IO)

The mother opens aconflict MI: on essuie les miettes? ‘we wipeout the crumbs?’ (M approaches the child’s bib to her mouth) Cl: non protests (shakes her negatively) head refuses Mz: on essuie les miettes? wipe ‘we out the crumbs?’ (M’s first (M wipesthe child’s mouth with the bib) Cz: (grasps the bib and pulls it away) child insists M3: tu me la donnes ? ‘you giveit to me?’ (pulls gentlythe bibto her side) c 3: nhnh (holds on the bib) M4: tu me la donnes ‘you giveit tome’ (pulls gentlythe bib to her side) c4: nhnh (holds onto the bib) M5: tu la donnes d maman

M’s initiating move

C

M’s action, M’s proposal

insists Mother CM)

mother insists

child insists mother insists

child insists mother insists

‘you giveit tomommy’ (pulls gentlythe bibto her side)

c5:

nhnh

child insists

(holds onto the bib) M6: mh? tu me donnes? insists mother ‘mh? you give it tome?’ (pulls gentlythe bibto her side) C6: nhnh insists child (holds on the bib) M7:(sitsback on thechair and abandons)Mgivesinimplicitly After the mother’s first conflictual move follow five moves by the childand four additional moves by the mother, in which the two partners insist on theirown

124

VENEZIANO

positions: The mother wantsto recuperate the bibto wipe thechild‘s mouth and the child wants to prevent the mother from accomplishing this. The conflict is finally solved by the mother, who abandons her project. (11)

The child opens aconflict Cl: peux mettre # le tapis Id? C’s initiating move ‘can put # the carpet there?’ (the child touchesthe carpet under the bed) MI: on vu pasle mettre maintenantA M’s refusal, with ‘we arenot going to put it now A’ temporal delay child insists: Cz: oui ‘yes’ C‘s first CM M2: non mother insists child insists, providing CS: j k i envie moi a justification ‘I feel like it’ M3: tu pourrais laver le bCbt M insists, proposing ‘you could wash the baby’ a different activity C4: accepts mother’s proposition and givesup C givesin implicitly the initial ideaof the carpet

In this case, after the mother’s refusalof the child’s permission request, the child insists, starting an overt divergence of intentions. Themother repeats her refusal and thechild insists with his original intention by providing a minimally distant justification. The conflictis finally solved bythe mother’s strategy to divert the child’s attention with an alternative proposal and the child’s acceptance of it. Intermediary sequences may sometimes arise after a conflict has been declared,and aconflict may arise after an intermediarysequence. Coding. Opposition episodeswere transcribed and analyzed for structure, as follows. Each episode was coded for (a) the presence or absence of a justification accompanying thefirst oppositional move, and (b) the pathway to the resolution of the opposition, namely, whether the opposition is resolved immediately in the third turn, after an intermediary sequence, or after conflictual moves or a mixture of conflictual and intermediary-sequence moves. It was also coded for type of opposition and type of justification. When an intermediary sequence, a conflict, or a mixture of the two occurred, the unfolding of the sequence was coded forclues for assessingthe occurrence of a resolution, and who gave in or whether a compromisewas reached. RESULTS

Developmental Periods Alhough theage ranges during which the two children were studied are shifted by five months relative to each other, some developmental similarities can be detected during the first 10 months of the study. Indeed, we have been able to

6

Origins of the Explaining Capacity

125

distinguish three corresponding periods: first a period (from 1;8 to 1;lofor the boy; from1;3 to 1;6 for the girl) in which the children produced very few justifications in general; a second period (from 1;lo to Z;I for the boy; from1;6 to 1;8 for the girl) in which justifications were produced more regularlybut appeared more as justifications of requests and of the child’s own action; and a third period (from 2 ; to ~ 2;4 for the boy; from 1;9 to 2 ; for ~ the girl) in which a sizeable increase in the productionof justifications was observed, particularly in the justifications of oppositions.The data are thus presented according to these three developmental periods, to which has been added, for DyadA, a fourth period covering thelast 2 months of the longitudinal study. Mothers’ and Children’s Oppositions: Number and Justificationof First Oppositions and Types

A total of 591 opposition episodes was identified and analyzed in the two studies, 254 for Dyad A (122 produced by the child and 132 bythe mother) and 337 for Dyad C (164 produced by the motherand 173 by the child). As can be seen in Table 6.2, during thefirst two periods both children justified their first oppositions very infrequently: Until1;8.15 only four such justifications were observed for the girl, and until 2;1.15 only nine for the boy. A change was observed at the third period, starting at 1;9.3 for the girl and at2;2.14 for the boy, when respectively 56% and48% of the first oppositions were accompanied by a justification. By contrast, from the beginning of the observations, mothers justified their first oppositions frequently and always to agreater extentthan thechildren: the girl’s mother in Dyad C, between 62% and87%; the boy’s mother inDyad A, between 59% and 81%. The difference is important and significant for the three periods forDyad C [ x 4 2 x 2) = 47.20, 63.20, p (( .OOI, respectively at Periods I and11, and 8.55, p 74> 90 Piaget, J., xviii, xx Pitcher, E., 1 ~ 1 529 , Polanyi, L., 1,29,73, 90 Pontecorvo, C., 114,141 Potter, J., 6 9 , p Pradl, G., 9,15,29 Pratt, C.,145,160 Prelinger, E.,11,15,29

R Radke-Yarrow,M., 114,141 Ratner, N., 59,71,96,110 Ravid, D.,20,26,29 Reeder, K.,xi,xiv, xvii, 143,146,147, 148,149,150,159,161 Reese, E.,74,90 Reid, L., 144,160 Reilly, J., 2, 29 Reimann, B., x v , xx Reinhart, T.,1,20,29 Renner, T., 74,90 Rojo-Torres, M., 141 Roland, F., 5,11,28 Rosenberg, J., 108,111 Rotto, P., 145,146,159 Roy, C.,9 6,110 Rumelhart, D., 1,2,29 Ryan, E., 147,160,161 S

Said, E., 1,29 Sanchez-Lopez, I., 4,5,28 Sarbin, T., 70,72 Scheuer,N.,119,140 Schieffelin,B., x v , xviii, x x , 58,72,73, 90 Schlesinger,I., 119,141 Scollon, R., xiii,xx,73,9 1 Scollon, S.,xiii, xx, 73,91 Sebastian, E., 26,29 Segal, R.,12,29 Seidman, S., 9,29

Shantz, C., 114,117,141 Shapiro, J., 148,159,161 Sharwood Smith,M., 147,161 Shatz,M, 25,29,96,112,144,161 Shen,Y., 1,2,20,27,28,29 Shibata, T., 93,111 Silva, E.,51 Silveira,M., 36, 5 1 Sinclair, H., 113,114,119,127,136,137, 139,140,141 Slobin, D., xii, xiii, xiv, xix, xx, 2,3,4, 10,15,16,19,20,25,26,27,28,29,

30,31,32,33*34,5b 52,73>75,86, 87,88,90 Slomkowsky,C., 114,140 Smoczynska, M.,31,33,49,52 Snow,C.,xiii, x v , xx, 73,74,91 Sorsby, A.,x v , xx Souza, R., 6,5 3 1 Spinelli, F., 96,112,144,161 Stavans,A., xi, xiii, xviii, 73,74, 88, 91 S t e i n , N . , 5 6 , 5 8 , 6 7 , 6 8 , 7 2 , 1 5 9 r161 Sternberg, M., 1,30 Sutton-Smith, B., n,30 Swan, M., 156,16 1

T Talbot, J., 61,72 Talmy,L.,32,33,50,52 Tardif, T.,117,141 Templeton, S., 147,161 Tesla, C., 114,141 Thompson, S.,6 6,72 Trabasso,T.,56,58,72,159,161 U Umiker-Sebeok, D., ~ 3 0

v Van Dijk,T., 2,30 Veneziano, E.,xi, m,xvi, xvii, 113,114, 119,127>136,137,139,140,141

Vygotsky, L.,xviii,xx, 137,141

A U T H OI RN D E X

W Wade, E., 5 8 , p Wakefield, J., 146,147,161 Walters, J., 108,112 Watson, R.,xv,xx, 148,159,161 Wlerzbicka,A., 31,52,57,58,72 Wlgglesworth, G., xi, xiii, xviii,4 , 3 0 , 73,91 Wllkinson,A., 96,112,144,156,161

Wllkinson,

L.,96,112,144,161

Willows, D., 147,161 Winner, E., 143,161 Wlttgenstein, L., 6 0 , 7 2 Wyllie, M.,147,160

Y Yaden, D., 147,16 1 Yoshioka,Y., 94,112

169

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

Subject Index

A Action structure,25 Adverbs, 19-20 Affective capacities, xi Age-related analyses, xiii American Psychological Association, 110

Anger, xiv,55-71 See also Personal anger narratives; Grammar, of anger; Explanatory discourses, on anger; Attribution ability,xiv, 158 Attribution of intentions, 143 constructed in interactions, 144--145,149--150 See also Pragmatic attributions

B Background information, 9 , 1 8 , 2 5 , 3 9 motivation, 8 setting, 2 0 , 2 2 3 Basic interpersonal communicativeskill (BICS), 158 Berger, Andrea,71 Bhatia, Sunil,71

C Cambridge University Press,5 0 Cat and horse series,11 Cat Story,3 7 , 3 9 - 4 0 , 4 3 - 4 6 , 4 8 , 5 0 CHILDES system,37 “Children’s theoryof mind,” 137 Cognitive skills, xi, xii, xvii, 25 Cognitive-linguistic capacities, xviii

Cognitive-linguistic representations, xv Communicative contexts,xi Communicative intentions,145 Conscientizacao, 147

Conversational abilities, child’s,x v , 113 Conversational discourse, xvi Conversational goal, child’s,145 contextual information in,146 Conversationally embedded narratives, 1

Coulon, Darine,140 Crosscultural differences, xviii Crosscultural narrative investigation Australian-English subjects,73-90 Israeli-Hebrew subjects,73-90 Crosslinguistic study,20 Crosslinguistic variation, xviii

D de Paola, Tomi,151,160 Digressions, xiii,75 See also Narratives, parentkhild, asides; Discourse, xi, xiv, x v , 7, 5 0 Discourse-learning contexts, xiii Discourse-making process, xvi Discourse-organizational capacities, xiii Dynamic actions,32 Dynamic discursive perspective, xi Dynamic negotiation,m i t

Elicitation methods of, xii, xvii, n,16

172

SUBJECT INDEX

procedures, 146 setting, 9,21,26 techniques, xi See also Picturebook elicitations Emotion concepts, 56,58-59,69 Emotion talk,x v , 55-60,66 attributing blame in,6-6 6 8,70 elicitation techniquein, 6 8 eliciting empathy in,66-68,70 See also Anger; Sadness constructions; Emotional development, xiv, 71 Emotions in linguistic forms, 59, 69 language-appropriate labels for, 57 natural perceptionof, 57 English composition, 147 Explaining, origins of in interpersonal relations, 113,115, 137 Explanatory capacity, child’s and conflicts, 117,123-124,134, 136

and verbalizations, 119--120 in maternal interactions,113-140 role of justifications in, 114, 119--121, n.4-127,130--134,136--140 (see

also Justifications) types of explanations in, 130-131,138-140 role of oppositionsin, 114-121, 124-127,130-140 resolution of, 121--122, 124 types of, 117--11g, 125,128-12g Explanatory discourses on anger, 55,63-64 (seealso Anger; Grammar, of anger; Personal anger narratives) on sadness, 6 4-65 (see also Sadness constructions; Grammar,of sadness) European Portuguese,37,41,47,49 and language acquisition, 49 locative character of,40 morphological and lexical markers in, 42,49-50

representation of movement in, 31-50 semantic and syntactic characteristics of,38,45,47,50 and spatial references, 36 theoretical frameworkof, 33,40,44 F

Fight stories elicitation settings in, 9-14 setting elements in, 3, 6-9,13 temporal location,17 transition markers in, 19 Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique, 140 Form:function relations, xi, xiii,mi, 1516,38,60,67 Framing information,3,7 Frog stories,75,91 as crosslinguistic study, 25 elicitation settings in,9-14 movement in, 33 setting elements in, 3-6,13-14 temporal location,16-17 and tense shifting,ZO-ZI, 23 transition markers in, 18 C

Gauthier, Isabelle, 140 Global discourse level, xii Global narrative action structure, 20 Global plot-organization as action structure, 2,1z Grammar, 147 of anger,x v , 6 0-6 5 of sadness,x v , 6 0-65

H Hampton Fund, 159 Hebrew context,3-4, IO,13-14,16, 1g-20,22-25 See also Crosscultural narrative investigation, Israeli-Hebrewsubjects; Hierarchically organized (story), xiv Horse Story, 37-40,43-46,50

SUBJECT INDEX

I Intentional representations, xvii Interlocutor queries,2 Interpersonal exchange activity, xiii Italian language,4 9

I Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, n o Japanese language acquisition of polite forms,93-110 (see also Keigo; Polite language; Polite speech) Japanese narrative interactions,74 Junta Nacional de Investigacao Cientifica e Tecnologica, 50 Justifications, xi, xiv, x v , xvi, 144,146 See also Explanatory capacity, child’s, role of oppositions in; K

Keigo(politeness), 9 3 - 9 4 , 9 6 - 9 8 , 106-10 9 bikago, 9 3 , 9 5 - 9 6 , 1 0 5 , 1 0 9 kenjoogo,93-95, I O O - ~ O Z , 106 sonkeigo,93-94,100--101,106 teineigo, 93, 95,97,100-109 See also Polite language; Polite

speech “Know that” type, xvii “Know-how ofthe mind,” 137

L Language in relation to emotion,5 6 , 5 8 , 6 0 , 70

in relation to thought,56,58,70-71 structure, xii,33 Language acquisition,1 6 , 3 6 and adult grammar,48-49 of mother tongue,31 and organization of discourse information, 31 and spatial relationships,31

173

Language proficiency,147,158 Language-related analyses, xiii Lexical and morphological cues, 49

See also Motion, lexical and morphological markers for; Lexical devices, xiii Linguistic awareness, child’s, 147 Linguistic forms,144,147 Linguistic-pragmatic knowledge,143, 156

Linguistic representations, xvii Linguistic structures,xv Linguistic utterances,143 See also Utterances, child‘s; Linguistics Program ofthe National Science Foundation,27 Literacy, xi, xii, 26,74,86,143,147 Literacy development,73 Locative expressions,31-32 Locative states,32 Locative structures,48

M Make-believe stories, xvii, 11-12,16 Metacognitive comments,8 , 2 5 Metalinguistic operations, xvii, xi Metapragmatic awareness, xviii competence, xiv knowledge, 145,157 operations, xi utterances, 145 Metarepresentational operations, xvii, xi Metatextual comments,8 Monologic narrative,2 Morphology, transparent,32 Morphosyntactic devices, xiii Motion global devices for,32 lexical and morphological markers for, 32-34> 38,42,49 local devices for,32 Motivational elements, xii,6 , 1 4 in narratives,4-6,25

174

SUBJECT INDEX

N

Personal experience narratives, xiv, xvii,

Narrative ability, xiv,xi, xii, 16,73-75 beginnings, 21,25 construction, 25 development, xi, xiii, 25,143,147 discourse, 2,11 form, 18 functions, xii, 15 genre, xii, 16,73 openings, 15-17 relation o f linguistic form:narrative function in, 26 scene, 1 - 2 schema, 25 structures, xii, 1, 9 supported with pictures, xvii transitions, 15,17-20 writing, 155,157-159 Narratives crosscultural differences in, 73,

Piaget, Jean,136 Picture-based elicitations, 5,12,14 Picture-based tasks, 26 Picturebook narratives,xii, 2 Pictured storybook, 3,11-12,14 Plot,xiv, 8,17-20,23 Polish language,32-33,49 Polite language linguistic formsof, xvi, 9 6,9

85-86

interactive, 74-75,88 juvenile, 9 parentlchild, 74-75,79,81-82, 84-85

asides, 77, 84,86 child utterances, 77,84 focusing devices,77,83 non-story-related clauses, 77, 83-84

1-3,6,9-12,17,21126,73-74

105-110

social context for,96-97,105-106, 10

Polite speech, 143-145 in social contexts,144 Portuguese language,32-34,36 See also European Portuguese Pragmatic attributions,151,155-157 Pragmatic intentions, xiv,144,147 Pragmatic knowledge,x v , xvii, xviii Pragmatic representations, xvii Prompting, 74

R Reading, 147 Reynolds, Ayden,71 Roadville and Trackton,74 Role play,xviii, 97-99,101-104, 106-107,109,145

story-related clauses, 77, 80-83

spontaneous, xvii National Science Foundation,110 Natural semantic metalanguage,31 Nelson, Keith,71

0 Oral stories,xii, 1 ~ 1 7

P Pancakesfor Breakfast, 151 Personal anger narratives,21,55 Personal conflict narratives,xii

9-110

See also Keigo; Polite speech;

S Sadness constructions, xiv,55-71 See also Grammar, of sadness; Explanatory discourses,on sadness; Scene setting,47-8,IO,12,17,22-23 crosscultural differences in, 27 crosslinguistic differencesin, 27 descriptions of, 19-20 transitions in,26 and communicative context,13-14 by elicitation method, 13-14 by narrative genre,13

8-9

9,

SUBJECT I N D E X

Scene-setting elements, 1-3,9,14,11,15, 26-27

elicitation context of, 3 linguistic forms of, 3 Scene-setting information, 5 , 1 2 Scene-setting orientation, 9 Shapiro, Jon, 159 Sicard, Michelle,71 Social abilities, child‘s,x v , 113 Social-cognitive knowledge, xvii Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, 159 Spatiotemporal frame,xii, xiii Speaker’s intentions, 146 Spencer Foundation, n o Spracbbewusstbeit, 147 Start o f story, 2,12 Story grammar,1 See alsoGrammar Story construction,xiii Story openings, xii stereotypic lexical items in, 25 See alsoNarrative openings Story planning abilities, xii Story plotline,1 See alsoPlot Story-setting elements, 5 Story setting functions,14 Story structure,3 8 - 4 ~ 4 6 - 4 9 Storybook, 10 5 open-ended, textless,xiii Storybook reading,73-74 Storytelling, 24,105 conversational style in,xiii performance, 2,14 tasks,xii,xiii, 7 7 , 8 4 , 8 6 - 9 0

175

T Tel Aviv University,27 Temporal and spatial information,74 Tense shifting, 21-22, 26 and motivation,2 0 from background to foreground, 21-23

textual devices for,24 “Theory of mind” framework, xvii Transition markers, 17-20 Transitional narration, 9

U University o f British Columbia, 159 University of California, 27,110 U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation, 27 US.-Japan Educational Commission (Fullbright Program), 110 Utterances, child’s, xiv,143 -144

V Verb tense, shiftin, 18,19-24 and linguistic compensation,2 0 , 2 4 Verbs, 38

W Wakefield, Jane, 159 Writing, xiv,143,147,150-151,155-159

Z Zero marking,18