cohesion and coherence in narratives: a crosslinguistic analysis
TRANSCRIPT
COHESION AND COHERENCE IN NARRATIVES: A
CROSSLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS IN ENGLISH AND ROMANIAN
_______________
A Thesis
Presented to the
Faculty of
San Diego State University
_______________
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
in
Linguistics
_______________
by
Ioana Daciana Ionescu
Summer 2011
iii
Copyright © 2011
by
Ioana Daciana Ionescu
All Rights Reserved
iv
DEDICATION
This work would not have been possible without the lifelong support of my mother,
and my father, and for that, I am eternally grateful. I would also like to thank Dr. Robert S.
Nelson (my North Star) for his tireless efforts on my behalf.
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The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, ofthe marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a littleof this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
-Albert Einstein
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ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
Cohesion and Coherence in Narratives: A Crosslinguistic Analysisin English and Romanian
byIoana Daciana Ionescu
Master of Arts in LinguisticsSan Diego State University, 2011
This is a comparative study of how storytellers of different ages and differentlanguage groups approach the challenge of conveying a narrative. This study focuses onthose elements devices that bring cohesion and coherence to a story. The devices emphasizedin this study are connective markers, pronoun and noun phrases, and evaluative comments.While other crosslinguistic studies have investigated cohesion and coherence in narratives(Berman & Slobin 1994, Hickmann 2003), little comparative work has been done betweenRomanian and English children and adult narrations (across language group and amongages). The wordless picture book ‘Frog Where are You?’ by Mayer (1969) was used togenerate the narrative data for this study. The age groups of the narrators in this studyincluded 3-year-olds, 5-year-olds and adults (20-24 years old) in both languages.It was found that the usage of sequential connective markers increased with age while listingmarker usage decreased in both languages. The data suggested that children graduallydevelop their understanding of temporal sequence during school years. Adult employed morespecific forms of temporal sequencing than children.
With regard to noun phases and pronouns it was found that pronoun usage decreasedand noun phrase usage increased from childhood to adulthood in both languages. It was alsofound that ambiguous pronoun use decreased as age increased in both languages. This datasuggests that pronoun use may be less taxing cognitively than using noun phrases.
This study showed that the frequency of the use of evaluative comments increasedwith age. It appears that as children grow older their style of narration becomes moresophisticated and complex, changing from telling the story picture-by-picture to a more fluiddescription with links to more than one picture. The frequency of usage of distancing devicesalso increased as a function of age. As the story became more complex the older children andadults developed the cognitive ability to distance themselves from the story. It was found thatthe frequency of usage of negative qualifiers and causal connectors decreased in bothlanguages as children grew older and reached their lowest frequency in adults.
Another finding was that older children and adults were more adept than youngerchildren at identifying positive emotions that characters in the story were feeling. The overallincrease of frequency of usage of these evaluative comments suggests that there are cognitivedevelopmental changes from childhood to adulthood that result in a more complexunderstanding of the relationship between emotions and events.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................. vi
LIST OF TABLES.....................................................................................................................x
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................ xii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................... xiii
CHAPTER
1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1
1.1 Overview of the Study .......................................................................................4
1.2 Romanian and English Syntax ...........................................................................4
1.3 Objective of the Study .......................................................................................5
1.4 Thesis Organization ...........................................................................................6
2 GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE OF ROMANIAN AND ENGLISH ........................8
2.1 Syntax ................................................................................................................8
2.2 Nouns .................................................................................................................9
2.3 Pronouns ..........................................................................................................10
2.4 Verb Structure..................................................................................................13
2.5 Cohesive Devices.............................................................................................15
2.6 Summary..........................................................................................................17
3 LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................18
3.1 Cohesion ..........................................................................................................18
3.2 Connectives......................................................................................................21
3.3 Substitution and Ellipsis ..................................................................................22
3.4 Development of the Use of Cohesive Devices ................................................22
3.5 The Use of ‘When’ and ‘While’ by English Speakers.....................................24
3.6 Pronoun Development .....................................................................................25
3.7 Evaluative Comments ......................................................................................26
3.8 Research Questions Addressed in the Study....................................................28
4 METHODS ..................................................................................................................30
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4.1 Participants.......................................................................................................30
4.2 Materials ..........................................................................................................31
4.3 Procedure .........................................................................................................32
4.4 Analysis............................................................................................................33
4.4.1 Connective Markers ................................................................................33
4.4.2 Pronouns .................................................................................................34
4.4.3 Evaluative Comments .............................................................................35
5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS OF CONNECTIVES.............................................36
5.1. Connectives.....................................................................................................36
5.2 Connectives Employed For Sequential Events ................................................38
5.3 Connectives For Simultaneous Events.............................................................42
5.3.1 Picture by Picture Analysis...........................................................................44
5.3.1.1 Use of ‘And’ ..................................................................................44
5.3.1.2 Use of ‘When’ and ‘While’............................................................45
5.3.1.3 3-Year-Old Narrations Involving the Usage of ‘When’ ...............45
5.3.1.4 5-Year-Old Narrations Involving the Use of ‘When’ ...................47
5.3.1.5 Use of ‘While’ by 5-Year-Olds......................................................48
5.3.1.6 Adult Narrations Involving the Usage of ‘When’..........................49
5.3.1.7 Adult Narrations Involving the Usage of ‘While’ .........................50
5.3.1.8 Adult Narrations Involving the Usage of ‘When’ and‘While’ for the Same Picture .....................................................................52
5.4 Listing Connectives .........................................................................................53
5.4.1 Listing Connectives: 3-Year-Olds ..........................................................53
5.4.2 Listing Connectives: 5-Year-Olds ..........................................................54
5.4.3. Listing Connectives: Adult Speakers.....................................................54
5.5 Summary of the Development of Connectives Markers..................................55
6 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS OF PRONOUNS ...................................................57
6.1 Pronouns ..........................................................................................................57
6.1.1 References in the Subject Position by 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds in Romanian Narratives............................................................................63
6.1.2. References in the Subject Position by Adults in RomanianNarratives.........................................................................................................64
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6.1.3. References in the Subject Position by 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds in English Narratives................................................................................65
6.1.4. References in the Subject Position by Adults in EnglishNarratives.........................................................................................................67
6.2 Pronoun and Noun Phrase References in the Subject Position........................67
6.3 Distribution of Pronouns Versus Noun Phrases in the Subject Position .........69
6.3.1 Romanian Narratives ..............................................................................69
6.3.1.1 ‘ The Boy’ as Subject.....................................................................69
6.3.1.2 ‘The Dog’ as Subject .....................................................................73
6.3.1.3 ‘The Boy and the Dog’ as Subject .................................................74
6.3.1.4 The ‘Other Referential Choices’ as Subject...................................75
6.3.2 Comparison between English and Romanian Narratives........................76
6.3.2.1 ‘The Boy’ as Subject......................................................................76
6.3.2.2 ‘The Dog’ as Subject’ ....................................................................80
6.3.2.3 ‘The Boy and The Dog’ as Subject................................................81
6.3.2.4 The ‘Other Referential Choices’ as Subject...................................82
6.4 Summary of Pronoun and Noun Phrase Usage................................................83
7 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS OF EVALUATIVE COMMENTS .......................84
7.1 Evaluative Comments ......................................................................................84
7.1.1 General Developmental Patterns.............................................................84
7.1.2 Discourse Functions of Evaluative Comments and theirDevelopment ....................................................................................................87
7.2 Summary of Evaluative Comments .................................................................90
8 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................92
8.1 Connectives......................................................................................................92
8.1.1 Connectives Employed for Sequential Events........................................92
8.1.2 Connectives Employed for Simultaneous Events ...................................94
8.1.3. Connectives Employed for Listing Events ............................................95
8.2 Pronouns ..........................................................................................................96
8.3 Evaluative Comments ......................................................................................98
8.4 Implications....................................................................................................100
REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................102
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LIST OF TABLES
PAGE
Table 2.1. Masculine Noun Declension...................................................................................10
Table 2.2. Feminine Noun Declension ....................................................................................10
Table 2.3. Neuter Noun Declension.........................................................................................11
Table 2.4. Personal Pronouns in Romanian for all Cases ........................................................11
Table 2. 5. Shortened Forms of Unstressed Accusative Pronouns ..........................................12
Table 2.6. Comparison of Present and Subjunctive Conjugations...........................................14
Table 5.1. Frequency of Connectives Employed in English and Romanian Narratives..........37
Table 5.2. Frequency of Connective Forms Expressing Temporal Sequences........................39
Table 5.3. ‘Other’ Connective Forms Expressing Temporal Sequence...................................41
Table 5.4. Frequency of Connectives Illustrating Simultaneity in English andRomanian .....................................................................................................................43
Table 5.5. Occurrences of ‘When’ and ‘While’.......................................................................46
Table 5.6. Frequency of Connective Forms Expressing Listing..............................................53
Table 6.1. Frequency of Clause Usage in English and Romanian...........................................58
Table 6.2. Frequency of References in Subject Position ........................................................59
Table 6.3. Percentages of Referential Choices by 3-year-old Romanian Speakers.................60
Table 6.4. Percentages of Referential Choices by 5-year-old Romanian Speakers.................60
Table 6.5. Percentages of Referential Choices by Adult Romanian Speakers ........................61
Table 6.6. Percentages of Referential Choices by 3-year-old English Speakers .....................66
Table 6.7. Percentages of Referential Choices by 5-year-old English Speakers .....................66
Table 6.8. Percentages of Referential Choices by Adult English Speakers.............................68
Table 6.9. Percentages of Pronoun and Noun Phrase (NP) References to ‘the Boy’ inEnglish and Romanian .................................................................................................68
Table 6.10. Distribution of Noun Phrases versus Pronouns per Picture: RomanianNarratives.....................................................................................................................70
Table 6.11. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (The Boy) in Romanian Narratives .........71
Table 6.12. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (The dog) in Romanian Narratives ..........72
Table 6.13. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (The Boy and the Dog) inRomanian Narratives ...................................................................................................72
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Table 6.14. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (The Other Referential Choices) inRomanian Narratives ...................................................................................................73
Table 6.15. Distribution of Noun Phrases versus Pronouns per Picture: EnglishNarratives.....................................................................................................................77
Table 6.16. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (The Boy) in English Narratives..............78
Table 6.17. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (The Dog) in English Narratives .............78
Table 6.18. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (The boy and The Dog) in EnglishNarratives.....................................................................................................................79
Table 6.19. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (The Other Referential Choices) inEnglish Narratives........................................................................................................79
Table 7.1. Percentages of Evaluative Comments Based on Total Number of Clauses ...........85
Table 7.2. Percentages of Evaluative Comments in English and Romanian ...........................86
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LIST OF FIGURES
PAGE
Figure 5.1. Dispersion plots for ‘and’ amongst 3-year-old English speakers. Vertical= student number (N). Horizontal = picture number (0-24). .......................................44
Figure 5.2. Dispersion plots for ‘and’ amongst 3-year-old Romanian speakers.Vertical = participant number (N). Horizontal = picture number (0-24). ....................45
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the chair and the chair committee for sharing their wealth of
knowledge and their individual support in this academic endeavor. I would like to give a
special thanks to my chair, Dr. Choi, for her helpful advice and guidance during this
process. Also, I would like to give my appreciation to Dr. Poole and Dr. Shapovalov for
being my second and third readers for this thesis.
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This study uses components of a narrative to provide an understanding of language
development from children to adults in two different languages (Romanian and English).
The basis of the data for this study arises from narratives given by three age groups (3-year-
olds, 5-year-olds, and adults). The narratives employed for this study are based on the
wordless book Frog, Where are You? by Mercer Mayer (1969).
A narration or a story told by a speaker presents an explanation of a sequence of
events and its structure generally includes a beginning, a development and an end. A
description of the sequence of events as well as a description of the characters in the story are
its essential elements (Labov & Waletsky, 1967). Within the story there are elements of
cohesion that connect different parts of the story so that it makes sense to the reader or the
listener. Goldilocks and the Three Bears is an example of such a story and most children in
North America know and can probably recite it. In this introductory chapter, this story will
be used as an example to describe cohesive features commonly found in narratives.
The ability to link the sequential elements of a story is essential to the story’s
comprehensibility by the reader or the listener. A simple assemblage of events and facts is
insufficient to tell a good story. It is the cohesion of these events and facts that makes the
story sensible. The linguistic mechanisms used to make a story understandable and to
organize the discourse are referred to as cohesive devices (Hickmann, 2003). Types of these
narrative devices include lexical substitutions, ellipses, pronouns, and connectives (Halliday
& Hasan, 1976; Peterson & McCabe, 1991). This research examines two of these cohesive
devices, connectives and pronouns, and looks at how these forms of cohesion change as the
linguistic capabilities of native speakers progress with age.
Cohesion can be established through words or phrases called connectives.
Connectives establish causal relationships (the position of events in time). The temporal
relationship between one set of events and another set of events is termed temporal
orientation. The present study will examine how linguistic expressions for temporal
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orientation develop from young children to adults in first language development. Temporal
orientation includes three categories: sequencing, simultaneity and listing (Halliday & Hasan,
1976). The connective forms that are often used when describing sequential events are ‘then’
or ‘and then’. In example (1), from Goldilocks and the Three Bears, connectives can link
several elements in sequential time.
(1) She lay down in the first bed, but it was too hard. Then she lay in the second bed, butit was too soft.
It can be seen that with the use of ‘then’, that the second bed was taken after trying
the first bed. Here the use of ‘then’ establishes a sequential relationship of two events which
helps listeners’ comprehensibility of the story line. In Example (2) it should be mentioned
that the bears were initially in other parts of the house before going upstairs to the bedroom.
‘When’ signals this sequence of events.
(2) They decided to look around some more and when they got upstairs to the bedroom,Papa bear growled, "Someone's been sleeping in my bed."
Two or more events that happen within the same period of time are considered to be
simultaneous. In English simultaneity is expressed through the use of the connective forms
such as ‘when’, ‘while’ and ‘as’. The use of ‘as’ in Example (3) marks the time when two
events occurred simultaneously: the sitting on the chair and its breakage.
(3) But just as she settled down into the chair to rest, it broke into pieces!
Listing connectives connect clauses without giving any temporal signal (either
sequentiality or simultaneity) between them. Typical connective forms used for listing
include ‘and’ and ‘or’.
(4) There was a bowl of porridge in the room and there was a chair in the room.
In this instance no simultaneity or time ordering is indicated with the use of
‘and’. Thus, it is simply a listing without regard to time. Connective forms can serve several
functions. More specifically, the listing connective ‘and’ can serve a temporal function. For
instance; in Example (5) both the first and the second ‘and’ indicate sequential events. First
she screamed, next she jumped up, after that she ran out.
(5) She screamed, "Help!" And she jumped up and ran out of the room.
Listing connective forms can also express simultaneity. In Example (6) it is implied
that Goldilocks is laughing at the same time that she is jumping.
(6) Goldilocks is jumping and Goldilocks’ is laughing at the same time.
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In addition to connectives, pronouns can also be effective cohesive devices.
Pronouns are classified as either endophoric or exophoric. The endophoric pronouns are
those that are internal to a story or discourse. That is, they refer to “nearby” nouns that either
precede them or follow them in a discourse. Exophoric pronouns are those that refer to
something outside the discourse. Endophoric pronouns can be further subdivided into
anaphoric and cataphoric pronouns.
A pronoun that refers to a noun before the pronoun’s position in the discourse is an
anaphoric pronoun. In Example (7) ‘she’ refers back to Goldilocks.
(7) Just then, Goldilocks woke up and saw the three bears. She screamed, "Help!"
In Example (8) the pronoun refers to a noun that appears after it. This type of pronoun
is called a cataphoric pronoun. In the above examples, two instances of ‘she’ refers to
Goldilocks.
(8) After she'd eaten the three bears' breakfasts Goldilocks decided she was feeling alittle tired.
Pronouns that refer to entities that are outside the discourse are called exophoric
pronouns. The referents of such pronouns need to be clearly understood from the context of
the discourse. For example, the phrase “the king” refers to a person that could be identified
only if one knows the country in which the king rules. Otherwise there are many kings in the
world and the reader or listener would not know to which king the writer was referring.
In addition to the usage of connectives and pronouns, the use of evaluative comments
will be explored in this study. Evaluative comments can be considered to be another device
for cohesion because they are used to aggregate the details of a story which are then
incorporated into the narrator’s broader view of the story as a whole. For example, the
narrator can incorporate his/her evaluation of the characters’ feelings into the story. It is
expected that, as children grow older, they use more evaluative comments in their narrations
of a story. This developmental pattern should be similar in English and Romanian as the use
of evaluative comments relates to cognitive development. If biological, cognitive and
linguistic developments evolve simultaneously then the particular language that a child
speaks should have little effect on their cognitive ability to use cohesive devices make a story
more comprehensible.
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1.1 OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
This study examines language development with regard to cohesion and evaluative
comments by Romanian and English speaking children and adults. The narratives used for
this study are based on the wordless book Frog, Where Are You? by Mercer Mayer
(1969). This book represents a series of pictures that tell a story.
Three age groups consisting of 3-year- old, 5-year-old and adult Romanian and
English speakers told narratives based upon the pictures in this book. The English speaking
narrations used for the present analysis were extracted from an online corpus of both
children’s and adults’ spoken language (MacWhinney, 2003). The Romanian narrative data
were collected for the present study in Bucharest, Romania by Romanian interviewers.
The analysis of the narratives of these three age groups was performed in order to
understand how particular cohesive devices and evaluative comments develop in the two
language groups and whether these cohesive devices change across language groups and
across age groups within and across languages. Similar studies have been performed with
other language groups (e.g. English, German, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Turkish and
Mandarin Chinese) with regard to narration and cohesion (Berman & Slobin, 1994;
Hickmann, 2003). Romanian was chosen for this study because it has received relatively
little attention and because the author of the present study is a native Romanian
speaker. Thus this work is expected to be a contribution to first language development
research by providing Romanian data on cohesiveness and evaluative comments by
comparing developmental patterns.
1.2 ROMANIAN AND ENGLISH SYNTAX
Romanian and English provide a rich linguistic contrast for the examination of
cohesive devices. The verb structures of these two languages differ in interesting ways.
Romanian has a rather extensive inflectional system of verbs which results in making
subject/pronoun/verb pairings redundant. Although both languages have the same subject-
verb-object word order shown in the Examples (10) and (11), they differ in verb inflection:
(10) El a pus capul pe geam.
He stuck head out window.
He stuck his head out of the window.
5
(11) Ø a pus capul pe geam.
Ø stuck head out window.
Ø stuck his head out of the window.
In example (10) el ‘he’ is a subject and refers to the child. But in Romanian the
subject is optional and thus can be deleted as in Example (11). The information about the
subject is defined by the verb inflection which agrees with the gender, number and person of
the subject. In Example (11), the verb a pus ‘stuck’ contains the information that the subject
is male, singular and in the third person. In contrast to Romanian, in English the pronoun ‘he’
is the only form that carries information regarding gender, number and person. As a result the
subject is required in English. This difference between Romanian and English may reveal
some crosslinguistic differences in the development of pronoun usage in narrative.
Connectives are uninflected linguistic forms that join together words, sentences,
clauses or phrases. Connectives include adverbs such as ‘then’, ‘and then’, ‘and’, ‘earlier’,
‘later’, ‘meanwhile’, ‘so then’, ‘when’ and ‘while’. Translation equivalent forms are found in
the two languages as for example, in timp ce in Romania and ‘while’ in English have the
same meaning and express simultaneity, as shown in Example (12).
(12) O bufnita a iesit din copac si la aruncat pe copil in timp ce viespile il urmareau pecopil.
An owl comes out and throws out the child while the bees chase his dog. Chapter two
provides a more detailed presentation of the connectives and other grammatical features in
Romanian and compares them to English.
1.3 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
This study compares the narrative discourses of children and adults who speak either
English or Romanian. The focus will be on how they use pronouns and connectives as
cohesive structures. The use of lexical cues (i.e., connective words) for sequencing,
simultaneity and listing will be analyzed as well as the use of endophoric and exophoric
pronouns. In addition, the use of evaluative comments will be investigated in this study.
Younger children can be difficult to understand when they are telling stories. It is
through their growing ability to organize and connect ideas within a discourse that their
narratives become more comprehensible. Cohesion and comprehensibility are intertwined.
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This study attempts to show how both types of ability develop through the use of
connectives, pronouns and evaluative comments.
The study compares English and Romanian. For comparison the nature of how
language development proceeds within each language group is initially discussed. Then, the
way children from different linguistic backgrounds develop into adults is examined with
respect to the aforementioned linguistic and cognitive (evaluative comment) elements.
Published data indicate that children demonstrate predictable patterns of lexical
preference as they grow older regarding temporal connectives (Silva, 1991). Since the
connective forms ‘when’ and ‘while’ in English are similar to their counterparts in
Romanian, it is reasonable to predict that children in both languages will express similar
patterns as their language skills develop with age.
Since the usage of lexical devices of cohesion has been shown to increase with age, it
is expected that the use of ambiguous pronouns to relate components of a narrative will
decrease with age. One important aspect of the current study is that the syntactic structure of
the Romanian and English languages can be quite different with regard to pronoun usage.
This must be taken into consideration with regard to data analysis. As described in the
preceding section, in Romanian (i.e., a pro-drop language) the subject pronoun can be
dropped without any loss of meaning. Such null subjects (“missing” pronoun occurrences) in
spoken language can be expected to increase with the same frequency in Romanian as
pronoun usage increases in English speaking children.
1.4 THESIS ORGANIZATION
This thesis is organized as follows. The first chapter introduces the research terms and
the issues and questions involved in this study. Chapter two describes in detail the
differences in the syntactic structure of Romanian and English with an emphasis on the
linguistic devices of cohesion. Chapter three is a literature review on narratives and
evaluative comments found within them and expands on the cohesion theme, including
findings from other languages in terms of children’s linguistic development. Chapter four
states the methods used to gather and evaluate the data used in this study. Chapter four also
includes a discussion of the temporal and pronoun connectives and evaluative comments with
regard to linguistic development of children over time. Chapters five and six provide the
7
results and discussion of the connective and pronoun data. Chapter seven presents the
findings and a discussion regarding the evaluative comments. Chapter eight compares the
analyzed results from chapters five, six and seven with previous studies, and provides a
general conclusion.
8
CHAPTER 2
GRAMMATICAL STRUCTURE OF ROMANIAN
AND ENGLISH
This chapter will discuss the similarities and differences between general aspects of
Romanian ad English grammatical structures. Romanian and English are both Indo-European
languages and as such it is expected that they will have at least some characteristics in
common. However, most of the discussion in this chapter will focus on the differences
between the two languages.
2.1 SYNTAX
The most salient similarity between Romanian and English gleaned from their syntax
is that both languages have a subject-verb-object (S-V-O) canonical word order. For
example, in the English sentence ‘She reads the book’ the word ‘she’ is the subject, ‘reads’ is
the verb and ‘the book’ is the object of the sentence. Similarly, the Romanian equivalent
bears this same word order, as seen in Example (1).
(1) Ea citeste cartea
She read: PRES:3SG the book:FDSG
‘She reads the book’
Ea ‘she’ is the subject, citeste ‘reads’ is the verb and cartea ‘the book’ is the object.
(In this chapter the following abbreviations are used to indicate the properties of verbs and
nouns: PRES, present; PAST, past; PRT participle; 1, first person; 3, third person; D,
definite (noun); SG, singular; PL, plural; F, feminine; M, masculine; N, neutral.)
Another similarity in the syntax of Romanian and English is the use of prepositions as
opposed to postpositions, which are used in many languages of the world. The Romanian
translation starts with the preposition and is followed by the noun, as shown in Example (2).
The prepositional phrase ‘at the hotel’ in English starts with a preposition and is followed by
the noun.
9
(2) la hotelul
at hotel: NDSG
‘at the hotel’
A difference in the syntax of Romanian and English is the word order of phrases
when nouns are modified by adjectives. In Romanian, as in all Romance languages, the
adjective usually follows the noun (Deletant, 1983, p. 41), as seen in Example (3). In
English, the adjective normally precedes the noun, as in the phrase ‘a small fish’.
(3) un peste mic
a fish:MDSG small
‘a small fish’
2.2 NOUNS
The structures of Romanian and English nouns are similar in that, as in Indo-
European languages, they both have singular and plural forms, as opposed to a language like
Chinese which does not typically use a plural morpheme. Most English singular nouns are
pluralized by the addition of the morpheme ‘-s’ as in ‘house’ (SG) versus ‘houses’ (PL). In
other cases, singular nouns in English have an irregular plural morpheme such as –en in
‘oxen’ (PL) for ‘ox’ (SG) or an internal vowel in the plural, such as -e for ‘men’ (PL) in
‘man’ (SG).
Romanian is more complex in large part due to the fact that, like all other Romance
languages, its inanimate nouns have grammatical genders. However while most Romance
languages which only have masculine and feminine nouns, Romanian “has also reintroduced
what has been described as a neutral gender” (Comrie, 1990, p. 310). In addition, “Romanian
is more conservative [than other Romance languages] to the extent that it retains three
distinct case forms: nominative/accusative, genitive/dative, vocative” (Comrie, 1990, p. 310).
However, according to Comrie, the Romanian vocative evolved in the language through
Slavonic influence, not directly from Latin, and appears to be in the process of disappearing.
A third consideration is that Romanian uses suffixes to mark definiteness (Comrie, 1990, p.
10
312), as shown in Example (4). This is in contrast with English and other Romance
languages which use articles before nouns.
(4) Hotel-ul
hotel: NDSG
‘the hotel’
To illustrate the different noun declensions in Romanian, Tables 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3
show three nouns, a masculine noun (‘arbore/tree’), a feminine noun (‘casa/house’) and a
neuter noun (‘oras/town’) in the singular and plural forms of two main cases
(nominative/accusative, genitive/dative) in both their definite and indefinite forms.
Table 2.1. Masculine Noun Declension
arbore ‘tree’ Singular Plural
Nom./acc. -def arbore arbori
Nom./acc. +def arborele arborii
Gen./dat. –def arbore arbori
Gen./dat. +def arborelui arborilor
Table 2.2. Feminine Noun Declension
casa ‘house’ Singular Plural
Nom./acc. -def casa case
Nom./acc. +def casa casele
Gen./dat. –def case case
Gen./dat. +def casei caselor
2.3 PRONOUNS
“The personal pronoun system [in Romanian] derives directly from Latin” (Comrie,
1990, p. 313) and is similar to the English system. Table 2.4 shows 1st, 2nd and 3rd person
singular pronouns in Romanian along with their respective plural forms. As in English,
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Table 2.3. Neuter Noun Declension
oras ‘town’ Singular Plural
Nom./acc. -def oras orase
Nom./acc. +def orasul orasele
Gen./dat. –def oras orase
Gen./dat. +def orasului oraselor
Table 2.4. Personal Pronouns in Romanian for all Cases
Forms Nominative Accusative Dative
Unstressed
Stressed (pe +)
Unstressed
Stressed
1st sg. eu ma
mine
imi
mie
2nd sg. tu te
tine
iti
tie
3rd sg. (m.) el il
el
ii
lui
3rd sg. (f.) ea o
ea
ii
ei
1st pl. noi ne
noi
ni
noua
2nd pl. voi va
voi
vi
voua
3rd pl. (m.) ei ii
ei
le
lor
3rd pl. (f.) ele le
ele
le
lor
Romanian distinguishes between male and female personal pronouns in the 3rd person
singular (el ‘he’ versus ea ‘she’), but Romanian also makes this distinction in the plural
forms (ei for males versus ele for females), whereas English merges ‘he’ and ‘she’ into ‘they’
in the 3rd person plural.
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English only has one 2nd person pronoun ‘you’ while Romanian has a total of four.
Tu and dumneata are both familiar forms in the singular while voi is the familiar plural
(informal form) and dumneavoastra is the formal singular or plural, similar to the French
vous. Tu and dumneata both use the singular form of the verb whereas voi and
dumneavoastra use the plural form.
In addition, both languages have separate sets of pronouns depending on case.
However, a major difference is that in English the accusative and the dative cases are
identical (me, us, him, her, them), while in Romanian they have different forms. In fact,
Romanian has two sets of accusative pronouns and two sets of dative pronouns, as can be
seen in Table 2. 4. In essence, the difference between them is that the stressed form is used
for emphasis.
Another difference between English and Romanian pronouns is their position with
respect to the verb. In Romanian, the unstressed accusative pronouns (see Table 2.5) precede
the main verb, as shown in Example (5).
Example (5) El ma vede
He me:1sg sees: PRES: 3SG
‘He sees me’
Table 2. 5. Shortened Forms of Unstressed Accusative Pronouns
Unstressed Accusative Shortened form of unstressed
accusative followed by
auxiliary verb a avea
Optional stressed accusative
form in parenthesis
English Translations
ma El m-a vazut (pe mine) ‘he saw me’
te el te-a vazut (pe tine) ‘he saw you’
il eu l-am vazut (pe el) ‘I saw him’
ne el ne-a vazut (pe noi) ‘he saw us’
va el v-a vazut (pe voi) ‘he saw you’
ii el i-a vazut (pe ei) ‘he saw them’
le el le-a vazut (pe ele) ‘he saw them’
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However in the past tense, the unstressed forms (except for the 3rd person singular
feminine: o) precede the auxiliary a avea ‘to have’ with reduced form such as ‘m-a vazut’ in
Example (6).
Example (6) El (pe mine) m- a vazut la scoala.
He (on me) me:1SG has: PRES: 3SG seen: PST PRT at school.
‘He saw me in the school’.
As mentioned above, o ‘her’ is the only exception. It is placed after the past
participle, as shown in Example (7).
Example (7) El a vazut -o
He has: PRES: 3SG seen: PAST PRT her.
‘He saw her.’
One last difference with respect to pronouns is that, as mentioned in Chapter 1,
Romanian is a pro-drop language. “Along with most other Romance languages Rumanian
subject personal pronouns can be dispensed with, there being sufficient morphological
differences between the personal verb forms to make them redundant, except for emphasis or
contrast” (Comrie, 1990, p. 315). Example (8) shows the subject pronoun in parentheses in
the Romanian sentence to indicate that it is optional. In contrast, the English personal subject
pronoun is obligatory and must be expressed in every case.
Example (8) (Eu) lucrez cu Maria
I work: PRES: 1SG with Maria
‘I work with Maria’
2.4 VERB STRUCTURE
Romanian inflections agree with the subject’s person, gender and number, making the
personal subject pronouns redundant. Verbs are classified into four main types or
conjugation patterns, two of which are shown below in the present tense. (Deletant, 1983, p.
39).
Example (9) a lucra ‘to work’
lucrez ‘I work’ lucram ‘we work’
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lucrezi ‘you work’ lucrati ‘you work’
lucreaza ‘he/she/it works’ lucreaza ‘they work’
a dori ‘to wish’
doresc ‘I wish’ dorim ‘we wish’
doresti ‘you wish’ doriti ‘you wish’
doreste ‘he/she/it wishes’ doresc ‘they wish’
Like English, the Romanian verb system also includes multiple tenses and moods,
including the present, the subjunctive, the imperfect, the past and the future. The subjunctive
tense form is almost identical to the present tense form. The subject verb is preceded by the
word sa (which is usually translated into English with the word ‘to’) and differs from the
present tense only in that it has a special form for the 3rd person, both singular and plural.
The subjunctive is used when it is preceded by certain auxiliary-type verbs such as a vrea
(sa) ‘to want (to)’; a trebui (sa) ‘to have (to)’, ‘must’; a putea (sa) ‘to be able (to)’, ‘can’
(Deletant, 1983, p. 57).
Compare the present tense of a cita ‘to read’ with the subjunctive tense in Table 2.6.
The forms of the present tense and subjunctive forms for a cita ‘to read’ is the same for the
1st person (citesc). However, for the 3rd person, the subjunctive form is different from the
present tense form and yet it is the same form for both the singular and the plural (citeasca),
as shown in Table 2.6 (Deletant, 1983, p. 65).
Table 2.6. Comparison of Present and Subjunctive Conjugations
Present Subjunctive
citesc ‘I read’ vreau sa citesc ‘I want to read’
citeste ‘he/she reads’ vrea sa citeasca ‘he/she wants to read’
citesc ‘they read’ vor sa citeasca ‘they want to read’
The future tense in Romanian is expressed with the subjunctive form preceded by the
word ‘o’ as shown in Example (10).
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Example (10) o sa lucrez ‘I will work’ o sa lucram ‘we will work’
o sa lucrezi ‘you will work’ o sa lucrati ‘you will work’
o sa lucreze ‘he/she will work’ o sa lucreze ‘they will work’
The past tense in Romanian is formed with auxiliary verb a avea ‘to have’ plus the
past participle of the verb. Example (11) shows the past tense form of the verb a lucra ‘to
work’ for all persons: the auxiliary verb agrees with the person number, which is followed by
the prepositional phrase of the verb lucrat.
Example (11) am lucrat ‘I worked’ am lucrat ‘we worked’
ai lucrat ‘you worked’ ati lucrat ‘you worked’
a lucrat ‘he/she worked’ au lucrat ‘they worked’
As seen in Table 2.5, the accusative and dative unstressed pronouns usually preceed
the conjugated auxiliary verb a avea.
“The imperfect [in Romanian] is a direct development from Latin” (Comrie, 1990,
313). The endings for the imperfects are somewhat different depending on the verb type.
Example (12) will suffice to illustrate the conjugation of the imperfect.
Example (12) lucram ‘I was working’, ‘I used to work’
lucrai ‘you were working, ‘you used to work’
lucra ‘he/she was working’, ‘he/she used to work’
lucram ‘we were working’, ‘we used to work’
lucrati ‘you were working’, ‘you used to work’
lucrau ‘they were working’, ‘they used to work’
2.5 COHESIVE DEVICES
This thesis addresses the use of conjunctions and connectives in Romanian and
English, and compares how they are used in spontaneous discourse. Conjunctions in
Romanian and English are fairly similar. The most common of these are si ‘and’, si atunci
‘and then’, pentru ‘for’, ori ‘or’, in timp ce ‘while’, cind ‘when’. Connectives that both
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languages use are temporal adverbs such as atunci dupa ‘then after’, şi dupa ‘and after’, şi
aici ‘and here’, dupǎ ‘after’, dupǎ aia ‘after that’, mai devreme ‘earlier’, mai tîrziu ‘later’,
deja ‘meanwhile’, aşa ‘so’, şi aşa ‘and so’, aşa atunci ‘so then’, aşa dupǎ ‘so after’, atunci
cînd ‘then when’, şi cînd ‘and when’.
The following examples show the usage of temporal connectives within narration by
Romanian speakers. For example, in Romanian (similar to English) the temporal connective
in timp ce ‘while’ indicates simultaneity. Example (13) shows that the narrator wants to
mention two simultaneous events that have different protagonists. The first protagonist is
baiatul ‘the boy’ and the second protagonist is ciinele ‘the dog’. The shift from the one
protagonist to another is attained using the subordinate conjunction in timp ce ‘while’.
Example (13)
Baiatul a cazut in timp ce ciinele era urmarit de
albine.
‘Boy’ has:PRES:3SG fallen: PAST PRT while ‘dog’ was:PAST:2SG chased: PAST by
bees.
‘The boy fell while the dog was chased by the bees’.
Example (14) reveals how si ‘and’ connects two simultaneous events. While the boy
was sleeping the frog escapes from the bowl.
Example (14)
Copilul dormea si broasca a disparut.
Boy slept: PAST PRT and frog has: PRES: 3SG vanished: PAST PRT
‘The boy was sleeping and the frog vanished’.
Example (15) reveals how the conjunction ‘si aici/and here’ connects the sequence of
events within the story plot.
Example (15)
Si aici copilul a adormit.
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And here the child has: PRES: 3SG slept: PAST PRT
‘And here the child has fallen asleep’.
In chapter three the usage of connectives in discourse will be analyzed in more detail.
2.6 SUMMARY
As we have seen, Romanian and English have similarities but also important
differences in their grammatical structures. Word order is similar, with one difference being
that accusative and dative unstressed pronouns in Romanian typically precede the verb,
whereas in English all object pronouns follow the verb. Other similarities include the use of
plural nouns as well as connective forms but pronoun forms differ noticeably between the
two languages (Table 2.4).
A major difference between Romanian and English grammatical structures discussed
in this chapter is the use of three distinct genders for inanimate nouns in Romanian, a
characteristic which modern English does not have. Another linguistic structure that English
has lost and that Romanian has retained is the extensive conjugation system of verbs which
make the subject pronouns redundant, allowing Romanian to be a pro-drop language.
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CHAPTER 3
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter will review previous studies of the use of cohesive devices (connectives
and pronouns) both within a language as a function of age and across multiple languages.
This literature review will show what has been discovered in two areas: (1) how cohesive use
changes over time and (2), whether cohesive usage development is different across
languages.
3.1 COHESION
Peterson and McCabe (1991) found that there are three aspects of a narrative that
make it comprehensible: content, cohesion and staging. The events of the story and
background information are two aspects of content. Cohesion is the meaningful connection
between sentences. This can be accomplished by statements in a narrative that refer back to
previous statements. Staging is another way that makes a story comprehensible. Staging is
the presentation by the writer of a particular point of view at a particular point in the story.
The choices of how events are presented and who presents them are what make a story
cohesive and understandable (Berman & Slobin, 1994).
A story can be told from multiple perspectives. By manipulating and adjusting
perspective the narrator can shape the attitude of the listener of the story. One technique is
focusing on one event over another. This may bias the listener’s sympathy for one character
over another. For example, focusing on a broken expensive chair versus someone who was
hurt attempting to sit in that chair shifts the focus of the spotlight that the narrator uses to
highlight events and players throughout a story.
The usage of various forms of syntax can affect audiences (Peterson & McCabe
1991). The subject of a sentence carries the focus of the idea that it represents. Subject choice
is a way of shaping audience perspectives. The narrator chooses whose shoes we step into
when making these syntactical choices. When the papa bear says in the Goldilocks story,
“Someone has eaten my soup!” we, as readers, can enter into the bear’s view of the situation.
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On the other hand, if the narrator says that Goldilocks was hungry, we can see her point of
view. In these ways the narrator guides the feelings and the attitudes of the listener.
Cohesive devices link the elements of a story together in such a way that it makes
sense. Cohesive devices are what bring relationship to what could otherwise be disjointed or
unconnected aspects of a narrative. The overall accounting of events in a story is the chief
objective of a narrator and cohesive devices are what help make this happen (Stein & Albro,
1997).
One way that cohesion binds elements is binding them with pronouns within
sentences. For example,
(1) Tacobar gave the food to the cat and the cat ate it.
The ‘it’ in this sentence is linked directly to the food. This cohesive link is one way of
connecting the elements of a narrative. Intra-sentence connectives as well as links between a
series of sentences are important elements of a comprehensible narrative Hickmann (2003).
Halliday & Hasan (1976) and Peterson & McCabe (1991) categorize cohesive devices
into six categories: reference, lexical cohesion, conjunction, ellipsis, and substitutions. The
six categories are described in the following section.
When one element of a narrative refers to another element of the narrative this
cohesive device is called narrative reference. For example,
(2) The boy was looking for a key. He found it beneath his mother’s pillow.
The ‘it’ at this point would not be comprehensible without “the key” being presented
by the narrator in the previous sentence. Narrative reference can be demonstrative or
personal (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).
Examples of demonstrative reference include ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘these’ and ‘those’.
Demonstrative references relate to location in space and relative distance from the observer
(Halliday & Hasan, 1976). For example,
(3) This apple is mine and that one is yours.
In this example relative location in space of two apples with respect to the speaker is
given by ‘this’ and ‘that’.
Personal referencing is often accomplished with pronouns. It is a way to refer to an
entity throughout a discourse and be relatively clear as to what is being referred to
(Beliavsky, 2003; Karmiloff-Smith, 1983). Endorphic pronoun references are referring to
20
things inside the narrative and exophoric references refer to something outside the text
(Halliday & Hasan, 1976) (see Chapter 1). Pronoun references can be ambiguous or fully
cohesive (Beliavsky, 2003; Halliday & Hasan, 1976). Example (4) shows a fully cohesive
reference where ‘he’ unambiguously refers to ‘John’.
(4) After John administered first aid, he called 911.
Below is an example of an ambiguous reference.
(5) Bob and Pascal sat close to the heater and he glanced down at the floor.
In example (5) he is ambiguous as to whether it refers to Bob, Pascal or someone else.
Using ambiguous pronoun references leads to a lack of comprehension on the side of
the listener.
Similar cohesive problems can arise with exophoric references (Beliavsky, 2003).
Unless the listener knows what is being referred to externally when using such pronoun
references, coherence is lacking. A woman looking out of a kitchen window may say to
someone in the house:
(6) That is what I really want!
Without looking out the window and without prior reference, the person in the house
would not understand the reference of ‘that’ in Example (6).
Referential pronouns can be categorized as to whether they refer to something that
previously appeared in the text or something yet to come. Anaphoric pronouns refer to prior
entities and cataphoric pronouns refer to those entities yet to be mentioned in the narrative
(cf. Chapter 1).
Researchers have described how the narrator can establish or shift the
reader’s perspective through pronoun use (Bamberg, 1997; Berman & Slobin, 1994). In
addition, Bamberg (1997) describes how placing the story’s protagonist in the subject
position is a way of guiding the reader into placing themselves into the position of the
protagonist of the protagonist. Moreover, continuing to use pronoun references to the subject
position in subsequent sentences further solidifies seeing the story from the point of view of
the protagonist. It can be seen that personal pronouns are not only used for cohesion but also
to support a particular perspective.
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3.2 CONNECTIVES
Connectives are used to indicate causal or temporal relationships between two or
more items (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Hickmann, 2003; Peterson & McCabe, 1991). Causal
conjunctions include words and phrases such as ‘and, but, so, because, after that’, and ‘in
conclusion’. Example (7) is an example of a causal connector.
(7) With a small gesture of her hand she signaled she was ready, so the new bell hopapproached her with shimmering anticipation.
Here, ‘so’ links the cause, her having signaled, and the effect, his approach.
Temporal connectives express sequence and simultaneity (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).
Sequence is when one event follows another while simultaneity is when events happen at the
same time. An example of sequence is,
(8) The boy saw the frog and then he began to run after it.
Here, the sequence of events begins with the sighting of the frog followed by the
action of running after it. The ‘and then’ is the indicator of the sequence of events.
‘While’ and ‘when’ can be used to indicate simultaneity, i.e. occurrence of two events
happening at the same time. For example,
(9) She is choosing her outfit while listening to the radio.
Here the events of choosing and the listening are happening at the same time. The use
of ‘while’ indicates the simultaneity of the two actions.
Listing connectives are used to indicate additional information to what has already been
presented. A conjunction typically used for this function is ‘and’. For example,
(10) The earthquake caused the power shut downs and seismic activity caused structuraldamage to the area.
Here the ‘and’ simply presents a listing of information.
Many of the connective forms serve several functions. The multifunctionality of the
use of ‘and’ is shown in the following examples. The first example is the use of ‘and’ for
sequential events.
(11) She opened the door and stepped into the limo.
Obviously the door needed to be opened before stepping in, thus ‘and’ establishes a
sequence of event. Here is an example of where ‘and’ expresses simultaneity of two events:
(12) She is drinking and watching George on Skype.
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3.3 SUBSTITUTION AND ELLIPSIS
A word or phrase can substitute for another while maintaining the meaning of the
substituted item. For example, ‘one’ in example (13) contains the meaning of ‘cell phone’.
(13) The Egyptian policeman took my cell phone and gave me back another one.
Ellipsis means that something has been omitted. The item that has been omitted is
typically an item mentioned previously (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). In example 14 the verb in
the second phrase is understood as ‘flew’.
(14) The motorcycle flew over the wall and the bike ø over the fence.
In example 15, Sasha is omitted in the second clause yet it is clear who pulled him. In
this case, proximity is important in ellipsis, as the missing information may not be readily
recovered if the information is too distant from the ellipsis.
(15) Sasha grabbed his arm and Ø pulled him.
3.4 DEVELOPMENT OF THE USE OF COHESIVE DEVICES
It has been found that the frequency and complexity of cohesive devices change over
time from childhood to adulthood. Berman and Slobin (1994) compared developmental
changes in frequency and complexity across several languages. Berman and Slobin’s study
(1994) is of particular interest with regard to the questions in this thesis, and therefore it will
be explained in some detail. They used five languages to gather relevant data: English,
German, Hebrew, Turkish and Spanish. The ages studied were three, five, nine and adult.
Berman and Slobin’s objective was to track narrative ability over time. Narrative ability was
based on the ability to tell a story of the wordless book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer,
1969). This picture book is about the adventures of a boy looking for his lost frog. Use of
picture books for eliciting useful data from children, at least in cultures where children have
experience with pictures, is supported by Bornens (1990) and Katzenberger (1992) (cited in
Berman & Slobin, 1994, p. 17).
Bamberg (1997) and Berman & Slobin (1994) used the Frog, where are you? picture
book so that the narrator will use a third person perspective when telling the tale. Using the
same picture story for all groups reduced the number of variables in their research. More
specifically the study held the stimulus constant while varying ages and languages (Berman
& Slobin, 1994).
23
Despite the controlled variable of a single picture book, there are various ways
narrators can approach the task of telling the story (Berman & Slobin, 1994). These
variations in narrative approach include a simple description of the pictures, a formal
presentation of the story in a literary manner, which Berman and Slobin (1994) call ‘bookish
story telling’. As might be expected, younger children tended to describe the pictures while
adults took a more literary approach when narrating the story.
Berman and Slobin (1994) found specific language features in children’s narratives.
For example, German children would use more verbs in the active form than would Spanish-
speaking children. Although variations were found between languages, a predictable pattern
emerged for children in all languages. For example, a similar sequence of development of
narrative could be found across all languages (Berman & Slobin, 1994).
Hickmann’s 2003 study is particularly relevant for this thesis with regard to the
manner in which cohesion development differs across different languages as the study
tracked the development of specific connective types for various languages. The languages
used in the study were English, French, German, and Chinese, and the ages studied were four,
five, seven, and ten and adult. The format of gathering data was similar to past studies in that
the narrator was to tell a story based upon sets of picture sequences. One aspect of the study
involved the use of sequential and simultaneous markers. Sequential markers included ‘then’,
‘after’ and ‘before’ (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Hickmann, 2003). The results were that
children in all four languages developed similarly with regard to the frequency of use of
sequential markers. The frequency of use of these markers decreased across all the
languages. In contrast, the use of simultaneous markers increased over time. These
developmental patterns were true for all of the languages in the study.
Crosslinguistic variations were found in how the use of simultaneous markers
increased. Chinese children at the ages of four and five increased their use of these
connectives relative to their counterparts in English, German and French who did not show
an increase until the age of seven.
Use of listing devices provided interesting variations amongst the languages. For all
age groups in English, about 62 percent of all connectives were listing devices. The relative
use of connectives by French and German usage was only about half to two thirds of the
English usage. Interestingly, the difference in usage between children and adults of these
24
connectives in English varied by only six percent whereas the differences were much bigger
with French and German children; French and German children used listing connectives
approximately one third of the time (33% of all connectives) and adults half of the time
(Hickmann, 2003).
Children showed similar patterns of development with regard to their narrative
presentations of the story and this development was similar across languages (Berman &
Slobin, 1994). Children at the age of three generally described the story on a picture-by-
picture basis with few sequential or causal components. By the age of five, children were
able to incorporate temporal organization by using ‘and’ to indicate sequence. At age nine
children could bring together both sequential and causal components of a narrative using a
variety of connective forms. Adults’ narration was well organized and expressed all of the
aspects of temporal relations.
3.5 THE USE OF ‘WHEN’AND ‘WHILE’ BY ENGLISH
SPEAKERS
Another important study is Silva’s work (1991) on simultaneous connectives. In this
study she looked at two adverbial connectives ‘when’ and ‘while’ used by four, seven, eight
and nine-year-olds and adults. In a manner similar to Berman and Slobin (1994), she used
picture books as a means of eliciting the data.
Silva (1991) found that five-year-old children were competent with the use of when to
express simultaneity and that both children and adults used ‘when’ with almost similar level
of frequency and grammatical accuracy. What she did notice as a difference was in the way
adults used ‘when’ syntactically. Adults tended to prepose a ‘when’ in subordinate clause
before a main clause, to set up a sequence as in example 16 (Silva, 1991, p. 655).
(16) ‘When the mother came home she found the toys scattered all over the room.’(Silva, 1991, p. 655).
It can be seen that first the mother arrived home and afterwards saws the toys. Thus
the use of a preposed subordinate ‘when’ clause signals a sequence of events. The
subordinate clause not only set up temporal sequence but it also provides additional
information to the main event. In contrast, children rarely used such complex sentence
construction. Children are not yet able to utilize ‘when’ in this fashion. Also Silva found
25
that adults use ‘while’ much more commonly than children do, even compared to children as
old as ten (Silva, 1991).
3.6 PRONOUN DEVELOPMENT
Language development with respect to pronoun use in children has shown that as
children age, their pronoun use becomes more cohesive (Bamberg, 1997; Beliavsky, 2003;
Berman & Slobin, 1994). Beliavsky (2003) investigated pronoun use in children at various
grades (kindergarten, first, second, third and fourth grade) and adult speakers. In this single
language study in English Beliavsky divided the children’s responses into three categories:
(1) full textual reference, (2) semi-cohesive and (3) exophoric or unrecoverable
references. Kindergarten children used unrecoverable references at a rate of 15 percent
relative to all references. This percentage went to zero by the time the children were in third
grade. On the other hand, full textual reference usage went up to 88 percent in the fourth
grade from 63 percent in kindergarten. Beliavsky (2003) found that the use of semi-cohesive
references steadily declined with age.
According to Karmiloff-Smith’s study (1983) children have three levels of
development in regard to pronoun use. In Karmiloff-Smith’s study the participants were four-
to nine-years of age. A narration was to be given based upon a picture of a man holding a
bunch of balloons and giving one to the boy. The boy walks away, loses the balloon and it
flies away, and the boy cries. At level one children use the pronoun ‘he’ in every possible
instance, using it for the balloon seller as well as for the boy. This led to ambiguity for the
listener. At level two children use the pronoun ‘he’ to consistently refer to the protagonist.
They also consistently put the protagonist in the subject position and established as a theme
for the narrative.
At level three children either assign the boy or the balloon seller as the subject of the
sentence or refer to the two characters in an efficient and unambiguous way. There is much
more control of pronoun usage for both characters while maintaining through frequency of
usage that one character is more prominent than another in the story. As children grew older,
they were much freer to use both nouns and pronouns for the protagonist as well as to use
pronouns for minor characters in the subject position. These findings were supported by a
more recent study by Bamberg (1997).
26
Berman and Slobin’s (1994) work shows that a growing awareness of potential
perspectives increases with the age of the narrator. In addition, they point out that younger
children are not able to understand the perspective of the listener and therefore are not aware
of what the listener may or may not know. For example, the young narrator may use
references that are clear to them but are ambiguous to the listener because the young narrator
cannot yet make assumptions concerning the reference point (background) of the audience
with respect to the story being told.
It has been noted that for English speaking children the range of characters that are
pronominalized changes with age (Berman & Slobin, 1994). Younger children use pronouns
mostly to refer to the main character whereas older children will expand the pronoun
reference to other characters in a story.
The present study will examine whether these developmental changes are also shown
in Romanian children. The expectation is that Romanian speaking children will develop
linguistically in similar ways to English speaking children. The rationale for this reasoning is
that language development is based upon the biological and thus cognitive development of
the brain independent of the particular language used by the children.
3.7 EVALUATIVE COMMENTS
In addition to these referential elements a narrator also provides a commentary on the
facts and events in the story. This commentary is called evaluation (Peterson & McCabe,
1983). It provides meaning and direction to the events in the story (Bamberg & Damrad-
Frye, 1991).
Here is an example from Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
(17) Goldilocks was very tired by this time, so she went upstairs to the bedroom.
Here the narrator is commenting on reasons for Goldilocks’ behavior. The narrator is
telling the listener why Goldilocks goes upstairs and thus evaluating for the listener the
situation in the story. This is quite different than simply describing facts and events in the
story. Such evaluative comments place specific events within the story into a larger context
with regard to the objective or the theme of the story. This therefore helps to contextualize
the events and make them more comprehensible in relation to the overall story line.
In the Goldilocks story, the narrator tells us several times that she is tired, and then
presents us with the consequences of her being tired. In example 18 we can see that she is
27
sitting on the chairs because she is tired and later we will see her lying on the beds because
she is tired. The commentary on her state puts the events of the chairs and the beds into a
larger picture, e.g., what happened “to” the bears’ house as a result of her ‘tiredness’, and
how she was discovered.
(18) After she'd eaten the three bears' breakfasts she decided she was feeling a little tired.So, she walked into the living room where she saw three chairs. Goldilocks sat in thefirst chair to rest her feet.
One aspect of the study conducted for this thesis utilizes the work of earlier
researchers Bamberg and Damrad-Frye (1991). Bamberg and Damrad-Frye followed the
development of evaluation in narrations from five-years-olds up to adults. Subjects were
asked to tell a story based upon the picture book, Frog, Where are You? (Mayer, 1969).
The use of evaluation in the narrative was divided into five categories: (1) causal
connectors, (2) negative qualifiers. (3) distancing devices & hedges, (4) frames of mind and
(5) character speech.
‘Causal connectors’ are interclausal connectors such as ‘because’, ‘so’ and ‘and’, that
specify a cause-effect relation (Bamberg & Damrad-Frye, 1991).
‘Negative qualifiers’ include any negation or negative prefixes. The following
sentence includes both a negation and the negative prefix ‘un’.
(19)“She untied her tennis shoes, but she did not take them off”.
Narrators can distance themselves from the narrative in a variety of ways. One way is
to use words that ‘hedge’ rather than state exactly what is happening in the story. Examples
include modal verbs such as ‘might’, ‘seem’, and ‘could’ and adverbs such as ‘probably’
(Bamberg &Damrad-Frye, 1991). In this way, the reader or listener is distanced intentionally
by the narrator from a precise understanding of particular aspects of the narrative.
‘Frames of mind’ consist of references to emotional states such as ‘being sad’,
‘happy’, ‘scared’, ‘curious’, ‘amazed’, and ‘perturbed’. Emotion verbs that convey transitive
actions which initiate emotions in others (e.g. scare, frighten) are also included in this
category.
Another way that a narrator can evaluate the story is to use ‘character of speech’
(Bamberg &Damrad-Frye, 1991). The narrator can have characters speak through him/her
rather than simply tell the story. In this way the focus changes from the narrator’s perspective
to the character’s perspective. Consequently the character is now ‘carrying’ the story line
28
instead of the narrator. Since the character lacks the story-line knowledge of the narrator this
device may represent another way of placing the reader or listener at a distance.
Bamberg & Damrad-Frye (1991) looked for preference and variation of usage across
the five evaluative lexical categories as a function of age from five years old to adults.
Surprisingly it was found that five-years-olds used all of the linguistic devices of evaluation
without preference of one device over another. On the other hand adults used evaluative
devices three times as often as five-year-olds, and two-and-a-half times as often as the nine-
year-old children. It was also found that the adults used significantly more ‘frame of mind’
and ‘hedges’ than children. In addition adults used ‘frame of mind’ considerably more than
the other four evaluation types. Moreover the frequency of ‘frame of mind’ among adults
was twice that of nine-years-olds. The use of hedging also increased significantly, nearly
quadrupling in frequency among adults compared to nine-years-olds. These dynamic
linguistic changes that occur from nine-year-old to adults are evidence of significant
cognitive changes during corresponding age periods.
3.8 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ADDRESSED IN THE STUDY
This study will consider the following general questions related to the use of
connectives, pronouns and evaluative comments by Romanian and English narrators of three
age groups (3-year-olds, 5-year-olds and adults).
Connectives
1. How do Romanian and English speaking children (3-year-olds, 5-year-olds) andadults express the relationships between sequentiality, simultaneity and listing?
2. What are the functions of the expressions of sequentiality and simultaneity within thetemporal structure of a narrative discourse?
3. How does the use of the two markers of simultaneity, ‘when’ and ‘while’, vary withage for Romanian and English speakers?
Pronouns
1. How does the frequency and appropriateness of pronoun usage change with agebetween Romanian and English speakers?
2. Does the frequency of pronouns to refer to the boy vs. other characters change withage?
29
Evaluative Comments
1. What is the developmental pattern in the use of different types of evaluativecomments?
2. What are similarities and differences between Romanian and English in the waychildren and adults provide evaluative comments?
30
CHAPTER 4
METHODS
This chapter describes the participants, materials and procedures used in the present
study.
4.1 PARTICIPANTS
A total of 48 narrative transcripts by English and Romanian speakers (24 in each
language) were analyzed for this study. The Romanian narratives were told by a group of 3
year olds with a total number of six narrations, a group of 5 year olds with a total of eight
narrations and a group of adults 20 to 24 year olds with a total of ten narrations. The
Romanian narrative data was collected in Bucharest and Timisoara, Romania by Romanians
interviewers. The childrens’ data was collected at the Montessori kindergarten (Bucharest)
and the adults’ data was collected at the USAMVB (University of Agricultural Sciences and
Veterinary Medicine of Banat from Timisoara). All of the Romanian adults were
undergraduate students. The native English speakers’ transcripts were attained from the
CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2003) electronic database. The CHILDES data based is composed
of repository of transcripts of spoken data from a range of age groups spanning children to
adults. The English data were randomly selected to match the ages, gender and the number of
participants in each age group from the CHILDES database (MacWhinney, 2003).
The three age groups for the English and Romanian languages were selected in order
to analyze the development of coherence and cohesion in terms of use of referential
pronouns, of connectives and evaluative comments (Peterson & Dodsworth, 1991). The three
age groups were chosen because prior research suggested that different age groups employed
different distribution of connectives, pronouns and evaluative comments. As reviewed in
Chapter 3, Karmiloff-Smith (1983) claims that essential changes in intersentential
development occur after the age 5. Peterson & Dodsworth (1991) assert that the usage of
cohesive devices becomes more refined as children grew older. Silva (1991) states that the
usage of a specific connector such as ‘when’ increased from the 6-years-olds to 8-years-olds.
31
4.2 MATERIALS
The wordless picture book Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 1969) was used to generate
narrations by the English-speaking and Romanian-speaking participants. This picture book
was chosen because it does not contain words and the structure of the story is episodic.
Moreover, the book has been utilized for narrative analysis by a number of researchers
(Bamberg, 1997; Bamberg & Damrad-Frye, 1991; Berman & Slobin, 1994; Trabasso &
Nickels, 1992; Trabasso & Sperry, 1985). Thus, findings of the present study with those of
previous studies can be compared both qualitatively and quantitatively.
The book, Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969), is about an adventure that a boy and
his dog have while they are in search of their lost frog. There is no text in the book, merely a
series of drawings that portray the various events that happen to the boy and his dog during
the course of his search. The book content is summarized by describing each picture with a
corresponding number (for example, 1 represents picture #1).
1. The boy and the dog are sitting at the foot of his bed looking at a frog in a jar.
2. The boy and the dog are sleeping in bed and the frog is escaping from the jar.
3. The boy and the dog are looking at the empty jar.
4. The boy and the dog are looking everywhere in the room for the frog. They lookedunder the bed, in the shoes, wherever their friend could hide. The dog wanted to lookmore closely to see if the frog could still be in the jar by inserting his head in the jar.Unfortunately the dog’s head became stuck in the jar.
5. The boy and the dog are looking out of the bedroom window. The boy is calling for thefrog.
6. The dog falls out of the window with the “frog” jar over his head.
7. The jar breaks and the boy is holding the dog. The dog is licking the boy and the boyis upset.
8. The boy and the dog are in the woods. The boy is calling for the frog and there is aswarm of bees nearby.
9. While the boy is looking down a hole in the ground, the dog is barking at the beehive.
10. The boy is holding his nose, and a gopher has come out of the hole. The boy receiveda warning from the gopher, which was upset and bit his nose. The dog is still barkingat the bee hive.
11. While the bees seem to be organizing an attack against the dog, the boy has climbed atree and is looking in a hole in the tree.
32
12. An owl has flown out of the hole in the tree and the boy fell from the tree. The owlwas annoyed because the noises the boy made startled it and so she tried to scare theboy. At the same time the bees chased the dog.
13. The owl flew after the boy and the boy hid under a big rock.
14. The boy climbed on top of the rock and called for the frog. The dog returned afterbeing chased by the bees.
15. A deer with antlers picked up the boy from the rock.
16. The deer took the boy to the edge of a cliff. The dog followed.
17. The deer tossed the boy off the cliff, and the dog fell with the boy into a pondsurrounded by a forest scene.
18. The boy and the dog landed in the pond.
19. The boy sat up in the pond and smiled. The dog was on the boy’s shoulders.
20. The boy approached a hollow log and held his finger over his mouth indicating forthe dog to be quiet. From the water they heard noise.
21. The boy and the dog crawled over the log.
22. The boy and the dog discovered two frogs on the other side of the log.
23. The boy and the dog watched as a group of baby frogs came out from behind a plant.
24. Happy to have found his friend, the boy received the consent of the frog parents totake a frog. The boy took a baby frog and waved good bye to the frog family as hewalked away.
4.3 PROCEDURE
Each Romanian participant was interviewed individually in a quiet room and was
provided with the same instructions that Berman & Slobin (1994) used in their interviews:
“Here is a book. This book tells a story about a boy (point to the picture on the cover), a dog
(point) and a frog (point). First, I want you to look at the pictures. Pay attention to each
picture that you see and afterwards you will tell the story”. The title of the book on the cover
was taped over so that the participant would not be able to read the title. That was done in
order to avoid biasing the children and adults.
First, the participant paged through the book so as to acquaint the participant with
each pictures of the story. After looking through the entire book, the participant was asked to
tell the story while looking at the pictures. For the 3-year-old age group the teacher helped
the child to turn the pages in the book. The teacher did so without providing any verbal
information. The 5-year-old age group and the adults looked through the entire book without
any assistance from the interviewer. According to Berman and Slobin (1994, p. 22), notifying
33
the children and adults in advance that they would be asked to tell a story while they looked
at each picture “will minimize the burden on memory” on the participants. The interviewer
informed each participant that his/her narration would be taped. The interviewer did not offer
further instructions regarding story content or structure.
In order to be consistent with Berman and Slobin (1994, p. 24) “the story was always
told to an interviewer who already knew the story and was able to see the story”. At the end
of the story telling period, each recording was reviewed for clarity. Narrative output was
transcribed at a later time by the investigator for analysis.
In this study the term “narrative” is employed to describe both children’s and adults’
narrations although many young children did not present a full plotline in their story.
Berman and Slobin (1994, p. 24) used the same term “narratives” in order to preserve the
word ‘story” for the content of the picture book as illustrated by its author.
4.4 ANALYSIS
All narratives were analyzed for connectives, pronoun usage and evaluative
comments. An overview of the analysis for each domain is provided here.
4.4.1 Connective Markers
Connective markers were separated into three categories based upon their meaning.
These semantic categories are sequential connectives, simultaneous connectives, and linking
connectives (coordinating conjunctions).
English sequential connectives include ‘then’, ‘and then’, ‘after’, ‘so’, ‘and so’ and
‘and’. In Romanian, sequential connectives include atunci ‘then’, atunci cind ‘then when’,
si cind ‘and when’, şi atunci ‘and then’, şi ‘and’. In both cases these connectives establish
time sequences so as to place one event before or after another (see example 1).
(1) R/5yrs:Băiatul ia broscuţa, şi atunci le face papa la familia de broscuţe.
Boy takes frog, and then waves goodbye to family of frogs.
The boy takes a baby frog, and then he waves goodbye to the frog family.
English simultaneous connectives include ‘when’, ‘while’ and ‘and’. The Romanian
simultaneous connectives observed in the data include cind ‘when’, in timp ce ‘while’, si
‘and’ and in acelas timp ‘at the same time’ (see example 2).
(2) R/5yrs:In timp ce baiatul se uita jos intr-o gaura, cîinele lătra la viepsi.
34
While boy is looking down in ground, dog barking at beehive.
While the boy is looking down at a hole in the ground, the dog is barking at a
beehive.
The listing connectives observed in English include ‘and’ and ‘or’. In Romanian the
most common coordinating conjunctions are also si ‘and’ and ori ‘or’. These connectives link
clauses together while not appearing to link sequential or simultaneous events (see example
3).
(3)R/Ad: Bǎiatul stă in mlastinǎ şi cîinele este pe spatele bǎiatului.
Boy sits in pond and dog is on shoulders boy.
The boy sits in the pond, and the dog is on the boy’s shoulders.
In the previous example there was no indication of sequentiality or simultaneity. The
two clauses ‘boy sits in the pond’ and ‘the dog is on the boy’s shoulder’ are linked in a way
that the listed events that are not connected temporally.
Each connective was categorized into one of the three connective markers
(simultaneous, sequential and linking). Each connective marker was counted for form and
function and the percentages of each connective marker were established based upon the
narrated data.
4.4.2 Pronouns
A pronominal reference can be indicative of a shift of perspective during a narration.
How a speaker weaves noun phrases such as ‘the boy’ and ‘the dog’ with their associated
pronouns throughout a narration can establish a relationship of each character with its
environment. This analysis focuses on pronouns used as subjects. The pronouns in the
subject position were coded for the referent. For example, each pronoun has been identified
with its referent as shown in the example 4.
(4)R/Ad: Căpriorul fuge spre prăpastiei şi atunci el îl arunca pe băiat.
Buck walk to edge and then he throws off boy.
The buck walks to the edge. And then he throws the boy off.
In this case, ‘el/he’ refers to the buck. Null subjects were included in the analysis of
the Romanian narratives (see example 5).
(5) Ø caută broasca în cizme. Iar copilul nu a găsit broasca şi Ø îşi pune cizmele (lui)pe picior.
35
Ø looks frog in boots. And child not find frog and Ø is putting boots (his) in feet.
The boy looks for the frog in the boots. And, he can’t find the frog and he is putting
the feet in his boots.
In the first sentence the pronoun el ‘he’ is missing but the verb cauta ‘looks’ carries
the inflection that is necessary to identify the referent. Similarly, in the second sentence, the
subject is missing from the second clause but the inflection of the verb isi pune ‘is putting’
refers to ‘child’ as the subject.
To comprehend the development of pronoun usage, use of noun phrases in the subject
position was also examined. The narratives were analyzed by identifying the number of
occurrences of pronouns and nouns in the subject position in each picture and then
calculating the frequency of usage of each form. These results were compared first between
the age groups within each language and second across languages within the same age
groups.
4.4.3 Evaluative Comments
Evaluative comments were also examined. The same system of evaluative remarks
created in a related study by Bamberg and Damrad-Frye (1991) was employed in this present
study. This system categorized these remarks into causal connectors, negative qualifiers;
distancing devices, frames of mind, and character of speech (see Chapter 3). Examples of
causal connectors include fiindca ‘because’, atunci ‘since and’ asa ‘so’. Negative qualifiers
include negative prefixes such as ne ‘un’, dez ‘dis’ as well as syntactic negation. Distancing
devices are hedges that were used to qualify whether something was true or not. These
include terms such as probabil ‘probably’ or apare ‘seems’. Frames of mind are inferred by
emotional expressions used by the narrator. These include terms such as fericit ‘happy’ or
frica ‘afraid’. Character speech could be direct or indirect speech indicating that a character
is talking, thus putting the narrator presence at a distance. An example of a narrator
describing a situation is: “The boy called out for the frog”. An example of character speech
said by the boy is: “Frog where are you?”
The frequency of usage of each type of evaluative comment was analyzed across age
groups within each language and across languages within the same age groups.
36
CHAPTER 5
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS OF CONNECTIVES
In this chapter the use of connectives markers in English and Romanian narrations is
analyzed with the goal of illuminating differences in crosslinguistic development between the
two languages.
5.1. CONNECTIVES
The use of temporal connectives by English and Romanian speakers is analyzed in
this chapter for three different age groups: 3-year-olds, 5-year-olds and adults. It was found
that amongst the three age groups and in both languages there are both similarities and
differences with regard to the usage of temporal connectives.
The temporal relationships addressed in this chapter are sequential, simultaneous and
listing relationships. Sequential connectives illustrate that an action took place either prior to
or after another action. The forms ‘and’, ‘and then’, ‘then’ and ‘after’ all express temporal
sequentiality.
(1) E/Ad-Pic#12: While the boy’s looking into a hole in a tree the dog knocks thebee hive down and then he gets chased by the bees.
Simultaneous connectives refer to situations that occur concurrently or overlap in
time as in “the boy found the frog when he looked behind the log”. The forms ‘when’,
‘while’ and at the same time express simultaneity.
(2) E/Ad-Pic# 10: While the dog is still barking at the beehive the boy gets bitten bya gopher in the hole.
Listing connectives are employed to connect clauses that have no apparent temporal
relationship. For example the listing connectives include conjunctions such as ‘and’, and ‘or’
which were also examined.
(3) R/3yrs-Pic # 12: O pasare a iesit din copac. Si copilul a cazut din copac.
A bird came out of the tree. And the child fell down from the tree.
Table 5.1 shows the frequency of usage of the three types of connectives by the three
age groups of English and Romanian speakers. The results indicate both crosslinguistic
37
Table 5.1. Frequency of Connectives Employed in English and Romanian Narratives
Language English Romanian
Age
Type of
connectives
3 yrs.
Nr. of
occurrence
5 yrs.
Nr. of
occurrence
Adults
Nr. of
occurrence
3 yrs.
Nr. of
occurrence
5 yrs.
Nr. of
occurrence
Adults
Nr. of
occurrence
Sequential 53(52.5%) 144(64%) 238(69%) 83(57.6%) 152(62%) 201(66.3%)
Simultaneous 22(21.8%) 47(21%) 62(17.8%) 27(18.7%) 49(20%) 83(26.7%)
Listing 26(25.7%) 32(15%) 37(13.2%) 34(23.7%) 42(18%) 19(7%)
Total 101 223 337 144 243 303
similarities and differences. In both languages the usage of sequential connectives increased
but the usage of listing connectives decreased from the 3-year-olds to adults. The usage of
simultaneous connectives in Romanian narratives increased slightly from 3-year-olds to
adults whereas in English narratives there was a decrease from 5-year-olds to adults. The
usage of connective as a whole did not differ significantly between the two languages except
in the case of the 3-year-old age groups for which the Romanian children’s total exceeded
that of their English counterpart by 43 (144 vs. 101, respectively).
The data indicate that regardless of language or age groups sequential connectives
were employed most frequently. As mentioned earlier, the frequency of usage increased as a
function of age with the adult groups showing the highest frequency. Table 5.1. reveals that
between the 3-year-olds and adult speakers there was a comparable frequency of usage
increase of 8.7% in sequential connectives (57.6% vs. 66.3%) in Romanian and 16.7%
(52.3% vs. 69%) in English.
The data for both languages showed that the frequency of usage of listing connectives
decreased as age increased. Between the 3-year-olds and adult groups the frequency of usage
decreased by 16.7% (from 23.7% to 7 %) in Romanian whereas it decreased by 11.8% (from
25% to 13.2 %) in English.
The two languages differed in the way the narrators used simultaneous connectives.
For Romanian speakers the relative usage of simultaneous connectives increased from 18.7%
38
to 26.7 % with increasing age for the three age groups whereas for the corresponding groups
of English speakers the opposite trend was measured. For English speakers the percent usage
of simultaneous connectives was essentially the same for 3 and 5-year-olds (21%) but it
decreased from the age of 5 to adults by 3.2% (from 21% to 17.8 %). One plausible
explanation (which will be discussed later) for the crosslinguistic difference may be that
there is a greater range of simultaneous connectives available in Romanian than in English.
The more-diverse forms available in Romanian may provide Romanian adults with additional
tools for specifying simultaneity in their narratives. This will be reported in more detail in
section ‘other connective forms’.
5.2 CONNECTIVES EMPLOYED FOR SEQUENTIAL
EVENTS
The connective forms used for describing sequential events were grouped into four
major categories: ‘and’ si, ‘and then’ si atunci , ‘then’ atunci and ‘Other forms’ altele. The
usage of the four types of connectives in the narrations is presented in detail in Table 5.2.
As shown in Table 5.2. for the English narratives the total percent usage of the three
sequential connectives ‘and’, ‘and then’, ‘then’ was 79% for 3-year-olds, 91.6% for 5-year-
olds and 81% for adults. These three categories were employed to a lesser degree by
Romanian speakers; 74.7% for 3-year-olds, 66.3% for 5-year-olds and 62.2% for adults. For
Romanian speakers the percent usage of these three categories trended downward as children
grew older.
The English data suggest that the sequential connective with the highest frequency of
usage was ‘and’ among the 3-year-olds (75.4%) and adults (71%). In Romanian the same
trend was observed with the highest frequency of si ‘and’ usage in the 3-year-olds and adults
(49.9% and 50.7% respectively).
Interestingly, 5-year-olds in both language groups displayed a similar usage
frequency pattern of ‘and’ and ‘and then’. 5-year-old English and Romanian speakers
showed much less use of ‘and’ (42.3% in English and 26.5% in Romanian) than either 3-
year-olds or adults of the same language. Furthermore, 5-year-old English speakers used
‘and’ and ‘and then’ with equal frequency (42.3%). In Romanian, the frequency usage of si
39
Table 5.2. Frequency of Connective Forms Expressing Temporal Sequences
Language English Romanian
English Romanian 3yrs. 5yrs. Adult 3yrs. 5yrs. Adult
And Şi 40
(75.4%)
61
(42.3%)
170
(71%)
41
(49.9%)
40
(26.5%)
102
(50.7%)
And then Şi atunci 1
(1.8%)
61
(42.3%)
14
(6%)
18
(21.2%)
39
(25.9%)
11
(5.5%)
Then Atunci 1
(1.8%)
10
(7%)
6
(4%)
3
(3.6%)
21
(13.9%)
12
(6%)
Subtotal 42
79%
132
91.6%
190
81%
62
74.7%
100
66.3%
125
62.2%
Other
Forms
Alti/Altele 11
(21%)
12
(8.4%)
48
(19%)
21
(25.3%)
52
(33.7%)
76
(37.8%)
Total Total 53 144 238 83 152 201
‘and’ and si atunci ‘and then’ were also similar (25.9% vs. 26.5% respectively). For both
language groups the usage frequency of ‘and then’ si atunci decreased considerably from 5-
year-olds to adults (42.3% to 6 % in English and 25.9% to 5.5% in Romanian, respectively).
One explanation for the decrease could be that employing two sequential markers ‘and’ and
‘then’ together produces a redundant form. If this hypothesis is true, then the data suggest
that adult speakers of both languages had the same perception regarding the redundancy of
this sequential marker.
In both languages the highest frequency of ‘then’ occurred in the 5-year-old groups.
In the English narratives the frequency of usage was 7% whereas in the Romanian narratives
the frequency of usage was 13.9%. For both English and Romanian speakers there was an
increase in frequency of usage of the sequential marker ‘then’ from 3 years to 5 years but a
decrease from 5 years to adults.
40
Frequencies of ‘other’ temporal connective forms were also analyzed. Table 5.2.
showed that at all ages Romanian speakers employed ‘other’ forms of connectives more
frequently than English speakers to refer to temporal sequences. Usage of ‘other’ connectives
by Romanians increased across the 3 age groups (from 25.3% by 3-year-olds to 37.8% by
adults) whereas in the case of English speakers usage decreased from age 3 to age 5 (21% vs.
8.4%) and then increased from age 5 to adulthood (8.4% to 19%). The list of ‘other’
connective forms is shown in Table 5.3. Romanian speakers used more diverse types of
‘other’ connectors than English speakers in all three age groups. For example, Romanian
adult speakers used 14 types whereas English adult speakers used 9 types. A higher token
frequency of ‘other’ connective forms by Romanian may result from the fact that they
utilized more diverse types of forms than the English speakers.
Table 5.3. shows that the 3-year-old English speakers used only two sequential
markers so, and and here. But the 3-year-old Romanian speakers employed four types of
marker şi aici ‘and here’, pînǎ ‘until’, déjà ‘meanwile’, şi aşa ‘and so’.
For English adult speakers the ‘other forms’ included ‘and when’, ‘and after’, ‘after’,
‘until’, ‘earlier’, ‘meanwhile’, ‘so’, and ‘and so’. For Romanian adults ‘other’ forms
included atunci dupa ‘then after’, şi dupa/apoi ‘and after’, şi aici ‘and here’, dupǎ ‘after’,
dupǎ aia ‘after that’, mai devreme ‘earlier’, mai tîrziu ‘later’, deja ‘meanwhile’, aşa ‘so’,
şi aşa ‘and so’, aşa atunci ‘so then’, aşa dupǎ ‘so after’, atunci cînd ‘then when’, şi cînd
‘and when’.
In both languages the vocabulary of ‘other’ sequential connectives expanded as
children grew older and the 5-year-olds’ repertoire was closer to the adults’ repertoire. Both
Romanian 5-year-olds and adults utilized more types of sequential markers than 3-year-olds
(8 types by 5-year-olds and 14 types by adults compared with 4 types by 3-year-olds). They
also employed more tokens of sequential markers (52 by 5-year-olds and 76 by adults).
Similarly, in English narratives the 5-year-olds and adults also utilized more types of
sequential marker than 3-year-olds (4 types by 5-year-olds and 9 types by adults compared to
2 types by 3-year-olds).
The Romanian data in Table 5.3. suggest that the lexical variation with regard to
sequential markers increased as a function of age (from 4 types I 3-year-olds to 14 types in
41
Table 5.3. ‘Other’ Connective Forms Expressing Temporal Sequence
Language English Romanian
English Romanian
3yrs. 5yrs. Adult 3yrs. 5yrs. Adult
Then when
And when
Then after
And after
And here
After
After that
Until
Earlier
Later
Meanwhile
So
And so
So then
So after
/Shortly after
Total
tokens/Total
type
Atunci cînd
Şi cînd
Atunci dupǎ
Şi după/ apoi
Şi aici
Dupǎ
Dupǎ aia
Pînă
Devreme
Mai tîrziu
Deja
Aşa
Şi aşa
Aşa atunci
Aşa după/
Puţin timp
8
3
11/2
1
2
4
5
12/4
1
1
1
12
1
1
2
28
1
48/9
11
2
2
6
21/4
7
17
4
13
2
2
3
4
52/8
4
4
1
18
7
11
9
2
3
3
3
2
4
5
76/14
adults). Furthermore, in every age group Romanian speakers used more types of sequential
markers than English speakers.
Both English and Romanian adult speakers used the sequential markers si dupa ‘and
after’, si aici ‘and here’, dupa ‘after’, dupa aia ‘after that’, mai tirziu ‘later’, déjà
‘meanwhile’, asa ‘so’, si asa ‘and so’. However, the sequential markers atunci cînd ‘then
when’, şi cînd ‘and when’ as well as aşa atunci ‘so then’, and aşa dupǎ ‘so after’ were
employed only by Romanian adults. One explanation for why only Romanian adults used
atunci cînd ‘then when’, şi cînd ‘and when’ may be that Romanian adults wanted to be
more explicit about temporal sequence and simultaneity in their narratives. Notice that these
two forms atunci cînd ‘then when’, şi cînd ‘and when’ designate sequential marker more
42
specifically than other forms as can be seen in examples (4) and (5). In example (4) atunci
cînd ‘then when’ joined the old information about events in the forest with new information
about the child being bitten by a gopher. One function of this sequential marker atunci cînd
‘then when’ is to specify the exact time and location (i.e. in the forest) when the main event
(i.e. being bitten by the gopher) occurred.
(4) R/Ad-Pic# 10: In padure atunci cînd copilul si-a bagat nasul in gaura a fost muscat siacum e in durere.Then when the child put his nose into a hole in the forest he wasbitten and now he is in pain.
In example (5) the child looks out the window and the dog falls from the window.
(5) R/Ad-Pic #6: Şi cînd copilul si ciinele se uita pe geam mirat, ghiceste ce sa intimplatcatelul cade de pe pervaz cu borcan cu tot.And when the child and the dog looked outthe window concern guess what happened the dog fell from the window with thebowl on his head.
For both English and Romanian speakers the usage of sequential markers expanded as
a function of age. Similarly, in both languages the 5-year-olds and adults utilized more types
of sequential markers than 3-year-olds.
5.3 CONNECTIVES FOR SIMULTANEOUS EVENTS
Table 5.4. reveals the frequency of simultaneous connectives that were used in order
to state concurrent events. It was found that for both languages and in all three age groups,
the connectives, ‘when’ cind and ‘and’ si were employed to convey simultaneity. 5-year-old
and adult English and Romanian speakers also used ‘while’ in timp ce. In addition, 5-year-
old and adult Romanians used in acelas timp ‘at the same time’. In both languages, more
types of simultaneous connectives were used in 5-year-olds and adults compared to 3-year-
olds.
In the Romanian narrations the usage frequency of the simultaneous connective cind
‘when’ increased from 7.2% for 3-year-olds to 33.7% for adults. This was a net increase of
26.5%. In the English narrations a similar trend was found for the connective ‘when’ with an
increase from 18.1% by 3-year-olds to 22.5% by adults (an increase of 4.4%). On the other
hand, in both languages the 3-year-olds never employed in timp ce ‘while’ in their narrations.
In Romanian narrations in timp ce ‘while’ usage increased from 2% by 5-year-olds to 54.2%
by adults (an increase of 52.2%). In English narrations a similar pattern was found for the
connective ‘while’ with an increase from 2% to 53.2% from 5-year-olds to adults, (an
43
Table 5.4. Frequency of Connectives Illustrating Simultaneity in English and Romanian
Language English Romanian
English Romanian 3yrs. 5yrs. Adult 3yrs. 5yrs. Adults
When
While
And
At the
same time
Cînd
In timp ce
Şi
In acelas
timp
4
(18.1%)
18 (81.9%)
16
(34%)
1
(2%)
30
(64%)
14
(22.5%)
33
(53.2%)
15
(24.3%)
2
(7.2%)
25
(92.8%)
19
(38.7%)
1
(2%)
25
(51%)
4
(8.3%)
28
(33.7%)
45
(54.2%)
3
(3.8%)
7
(8.3%)
Total Total 22 47 62 27 49 83
increase of 51.2%). In contrast to the ‘when’ and ‘while’ simultaneous markers, the usage
frequency of ‘and’ decreased considerably with increasing age. In the Romanian narratives si
‘and’ usage frequency decreased by 89% from 3-year-olds to adults (92.8% vs. 3.8%)
whereas in the English narratives the usage frequency of ‘and’ decreased by 57.6% (81.9%
vs. 24.3% see Table 5.4.).
A detailed analysis showed that for the Romanian data there were distinct differences
across the age groups in terms of the types of connective utilized to convey simultaneity. The
3-year-old Romanian speakers used şi ‘and’ 92.8% of the time to indicate simultaneity. Cind
‘when’ was used as a connective to indicate simultaneity only 7.2% of the time whereas in
timp ce ‘while’ was never used in this age group.
There was a steep decrease in the frequency of use of si ‘and’ in Romanian as a
simultaneous marker from 3-year-olds (92.8%) to 5-year-olds (51%). The 5-year-olds
Romanian speakers also used cind ‘when’ 38.7% of the time. In addition, they occasionally
used the connectives in timp ce ‘while’ (2%) and in acelas timp ‘at the same time’ (8.3%).
As with sequential connectives the data on simultaneous connectives revealed that the
Romanian speakers employed more connectives types than the English speakers in the 5-
year-old and adult age groups. In Romanian the 5-year-olds and adults used in acelas timp ‘at
44
the same time’ to convey simultaneity. In English, no comparable term was used. This
suggests that 5-year-old and adult Romanian speakers employed a greater range of temporal
constructions and tried to replace ‘and’ with a more accurate form.
5.3.1 PICTURE BY PICTURE ANALYSIS
In this section the usage of the simultaneous connectives ‘and’ si, ‘when’ cind and
‘while’ in timp ce for individual pictures in the story is presented. First the use of ‘and’ si in
both languages is examined followed by an analysis of the use of ‘when’ cind and ‘while’ in
timp ce in both languages and among the three age groups.
5.3.1.1 USE OF ‘AND’
Figures 5.1. and 5.2 show the dispersal plots of ‘and’ si for English and Romanian 3-
year-old narrators. In these Figures the horizontal line represents the picture number from 1
to 24, which represents all pictures employed in narrations. The vertical line represents the
participant number from 1 to 6. Although the details of the plots are hard to process they are
shown here in order for the reader to see the usage pattern of ‘and’ si in narratives of the 3-
year-olds. The dispersal plots reveal that the ‘and’ form was disseminated throughout the
story and was used in almost all of the pictures of the story.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24Figure 5.1. Dispersion plots for ‘and’ amongst 3-year-old English speakers. Vertical =student number (N). Horizontal = picture number (0-24).
45
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24Figure 5.2. Dispersion plots for ‘and’ amongst 3-year-old Romanian speakers. Vertical= participant number (N). Horizontal = picture number (0-24).
5.3.1.2 USE OF ‘WHEN’AND ‘WHILE’
Next the two markers of simultaneity ‘when’ cind and ‘while’ in timp ce were
analyzed with respect to where in the story these connectors were used. Table 5.5. presents
the distribution of occurrences of the two forms in relation to individual pictures in both
languages and across the three age groups.
5.3.1.3 3-YEAR-OLD NARRATIONS
INVOLVING THE USAGE OF ‘WHEN’
As shown in Table 5.5. the 3-year-old English and Romanian narrators used ‘when’
cind to explicitly mark simultaneity. Both English and Romanian 3-year-olds used ‘when’
cind in pictures #2 and #3. In picture #2 the boy and the dog are sleeping in bed and the frog
is escaping from the jar. In picture #3 the boy and the dog are looking at the empty jar. 3-
year-olds discerned that the boy and the dog were asleep when the frog climbed out of the
jar. The following examples (6) and (7) are narrations provided by 3-year-olds speakers to
describe picture #2. In the examples (6) and (7) the event of the frog escaping occurred
sometime during the period in which the child was sleeping.
(6) R/3yrs-Pic.#2: Si aici cind baiatul doarme broasca iese afara din sticla.
And here when the boy sleeps the frog is coming out from the glass.
(7) E/3yrs-Pic.#2: Look, when boy is sleeping, and his frog getting out.
It is noteworthy that, in the English and Romanian narratives ‘while’ in timp ce was
never used by the 3-year-old speakers. The data suggest children begin to use ‘when’ from an
early age in both languages whereas they acquire ‘while’ is a little later. Notice that ‘while’
designates simultaneity more specifically then ‘when’. The 3-year-old children did not use
46
Table 5.5. Occurrences of ‘When’ and ‘While’
Language English Romanian
Age 3yrs. 5yrs. Adult 3yrs. 5yrs. Adult
Picture
Nr.
When While When While When While Cind Timp Cind Timp Cind Timp
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
- - - - - -
1 - 6 - 3 4
1 - 4 - 4 -
- - 1 - - -
- - - - - -
- - - - - -
- - - - - -
- - - - - -
- - - - - 4
- - - - - 4
- - - - - 7
- - 3 1 - 6
- - - - - -
- - - - 1 4
1 - 1 - - 2
1 - - - - 2
- - - - - -
- - - - - -
- - 1 - 1 -
- - - - 1 -
- - - - - -
- - - - 3 -
- - - - 1 -
- - - - - -
- - - - - -
- - 3 - 1 3
1 - 3 - 5 -1 - 1 - - 3
- - - - - 3
- - 1 - 2 3
- - - - - 1
- - - - - 1
- - - - - -
- - 2 1 - 3
- - - - 1 8
- - 1 - 4 5
- - - - - -
- - - - 1 4
- - 2 - 2 2
- - - - 1 6
- - 1 - 2 1
- - - - 2 1
- - 2 - 2 -
- - 3 - - -
- - - - - -
- - - - 3 1
- - - - 1 -
- - - - 1 -
Total 4 - 16 1 14 33 2 - 19 1 28 45
a. (-) refers to zero occurrences.
47
‘while’ at all in either language. In the next section the frequency of usage of ‘when’ and
‘while’ in 5-year-old children is discussed.
5.3.1.4 5-YEAR-OLD NARRATIONS
INVOLVING THE USE OF ‘WHEN’
The English and Romanian narratives of 5-year-olds not only showed an increase in
the frequency of usage of simultaneous markers but also an increase in the number of
pictures where the markers were used. The Romanian 5-year-olds employed cind ‘when’ 19
times whereas the English 5-year-olds used ‘when’ 16 times. Furthermore, the Romanian 5-
year-olds use cind ‘when’ for 10 pictures whereas the English 5-year-olds used ‘when’ for
only 6 pictures. In both languages, the marker ‘when’ cind was used in pictures #2, #3, #4,
#12, #15 and #19 (see Table 5.5.). In picture 4 the boy and the dog are looking everywhere in
the room for the frog. The dog wanted to look more closely to see if the frog could still be in
the jar by inserting his head in the jar. Unfortunately the dog’s head became stuck in the jar.
One example of a narration in each language for picture #4 is provided in (8) and (9):
(8) R/5yrs-Pic#4: Cind ciinele cauta broasca peste tot si prostul si-a bagat capul in borcanin acel moment copilul si-apus cizma pe cap.
When the dog looks for the frog everywhere and Ø being stupid he got his head stuck
in the jar at that moment the boy put his boot on his head.
(9) E/5yrs-Pic#4: When the boy is trying to put the boot on his head the dog has his headstuck in the jar.
In Example (8) the Romanian 5-year-old conveys that the dog got his head stuck in
the jar when the boy put his boot on his head. In this instance the simultaneous marker cind
‘when’ preceded the main clause. The 5-year-old Romanian provided background
information to explain why the dog caught his head in the jar. Background information is
required in order to help the listener to better understand the narrative. Silva (1991) found
that 5-year-olds and adults employed ‘when’ in the subordinate clause in order to provide
background information and specify simultaneity of events (see also Berman & Slobin,
1994). It may be that the two events (the dog got his head stuck in the jar and the boy put his
boot on his head) are not related in any other way than being shown in the same picture.
The Romanian 5-year-old speakers also used cind ‘when’ in pictures #6, #10, #17 and
#20. In picture #17 the deer tossed the boy off the cliff, and the dog fell with the boy into a
48
pond surrounded by a forest scene. Example (10) was conveyed by a 5-year-old Romanian
speaker describing picture #17.
(10) R/5yrs-Pic#20: Cind copilul si catelu au cazut in balta ei erau speriati.When the
boy and the dog were falling into a pond they looked very scared.
5.3.1.5 USE OF ‘WHILE’ BY 5-YEAR-OLDS
The use of ‘while’ in timp ce occurred in only one picture in each language for 5-
year-old learners; picture #10 in the Romanian narratives and picture #12 in the English
narratives. ‘While’ is a more specific connective form than ‘when’ in conveying simultaneity
and that is probably why the appearance of ‘while’ is first observed at an older age. Since
‘while’ in timp ce was found only once in 5-year-olds in each language it may be the case
that the marker is in the initial state of acquisition at this age. The Romanian narrative
describing picture #10 and the English narrative describing picture # 12, are provided in
examples (11) and (12) respectively.
(11) R/5yrs-Pic#10: Din gaura a iesit o cirtita si l-a speriat pe copil in timp ce ciinelescutura de pom.
‘From the hole in the ground a gopher emerged and scared the boy while the dog was
shaking the tree’.
(12) E/5yrs-Pic#12: When an owl came out bammed the child on the ground while thedog was running away from the bees.
The two pictures, #10 and #12, have at least one thing in common. Two actions are
shown in picture #10, the child was bitten by the gopher while the dog was pushing on the
tree. In picture #12 the child fell from the tree while the dog was running from the bees. The
events also involved two or more characters (the child and the gopher along with the dog and
the bees in picture #10 and the child and the owl along with the dog and the bees in picture
#12). Seeing several actions performed by two or more characters in a picture may have
triggered 5-year-olds to use the specific simultaneous connector ‘while’.
In the following sections the usage of ‘when’ and ‘while’ is analyzed in adult
narrations in both languages. In section 5.3.1.6 the usage of ‘when’ cind for individual
pictures in the story in the adult narrations in both languages is examined. In section 5.3.1.7
the usage of ‘while’ in timp ce is discussed for individual pictures in the adult narrations. In
49
section 5.3.1.8 the usage of ‘when’ and ‘while’ that occur in both languages for the same
pictures is examined in adult narrations. First a general overview is provided.
In both languages adult narrators used ‘when’ cind for a larger number of pictures
than the 5-year-olds. Also, adult narrators used ‘while’ in timp ce more frequently than the 5-
year-olds. In fact, the 5-year-olds rarely used ‘while’ in timp ce. The adults in the present
study used ‘while’ in timp ce with a higher frequency than ‘when’. In the adult Romanian
narratives in timp ce ‘while’ was employed 45 times and in the adult English narratives
‘while’ was employed 33 times (compared to 1 occurrence in the 5-year-old narratives in
each language, see Table 5.4. The data suggest that adults perceive the simultaneity of events
in the pictures more than 5-year-olds do and they mark it more explicitly as well. The adults
not only increased the frequency of usage of ‘while’ in timp ce but they also took into
account the picture described and used them systematically. See section 5.3.1.7. for more
detail.
5.3.1.6 ADULT NARRATIONS INVOLVING THE
USAGE OF ‘WHEN’
‘When’ cind was employed in both languages in pictures #2 and #3. Picture #2
illustrates that the boy and the dog are sleeping in bed and the frog is escaping from the jar.
Picture #3 shows the boy and the dog looking at the empty jar. Examples (13) and (14) show
the use of ‘when’ in Romanian and English adult narratives for picture #2.
(13) R/Ad-Pic#2: Intr-o seara copilul sta cu ciinele lui intr-o camera se uita la o broscutacare era pusa intr-un borcan. Cind ei au adormit broscuta a sarit din borcan scapind.
In one night the child is sitting with the dog in a room and is looking at their frog who
was sitting in the bowl. When they were asleep the frog jumped out of the bowl and
escaped.
(14) E/Ad-Pic#2: But in the middle of the night when he sleeps with the dog on his bedthe frog climbed out of the jar.
‘When’ cind was also employed when a single central event occurred in the picture,
such as the pictures #22 and #23 (see Table 5.5.). In pictures #22 and #23 the boy and the
dog discovered two frogs on the other side of the log and they watched as a group of baby
frogs came out from behind a plant. In pictures #22 and #23 the discovery of the family of
50
frogs by the boy and the dog is the central event. Examples (15) and (16) are narratives
describing picture #23 in both languages.
(15) R/Ad Pic#23: Dar surpriza lor fu completa cind sub privirea mindra a tatalui lor dinstufaris iesira sarind noua broscute curioase sa-i intineasca pe noi veniti.
But they were more surprise when nine baby frogs, were coming out from the cat-
tails to meet the new strangers.
(16)E/Ad Pic#23: And when the boy and the dog were on the log they found the frogfamily.
In both narratives the marker ‘when’ cind was employed to refer to the action
(watching) of the boy and the dog and the emergence of a group of baby frogs from behind a
plant.
5.3.1.7 ADULT NARRATIONS INVOLVING THE
USAGE OF ‘WHILE’
‘While’ in timp ce was employed in pictures #10, #11, #12, #14, #15, #16 in both the
English and the Romanian narratives. All of these pictures followed a similar pattern of
involving two or more characters and illustrated more than one event in progress. Some of
the events were depicted over several pictures. For example, pictures #10 through #12. The
pictures #10, #11 and #12 have one thing in common, that is, they all have the boy and the
dog interacting with different characters such as the bees and either the gopher or the owl.
Examples (17), (18) and (19) are narratives describing pictures #10, #11 and #12.
(17) While the boy is looking into a gopher hole for his frog the boy is holding his nose.
(18) While the boy climbs on top of the tree and starts yelling in hole for the frog the doghad shook the tree so much that the beehive fell down.
(19) The hole the boy was looking into was the home of an owl and the owl came out ofthe hole and scared the boy the boy fell off the tree and landed on his back while thedog is running away from all the bees.
Both the Romanian and English narratives employed ‘while’ in timp ce with the
highest frequency in Picture # 11 with 8 occurrences (17%) out of 45 uses of in timp ce in the
Romanian narratives vs. 7 occurrences (21%) out of 33 uses of ‘while’ in the English
narratives. Picture #11 illustrates that while the bees seem to be organizing an attack against
the dog the boy has climbed a tree and is looking into a hole in the tree. In this picture, the
continuous stream of bees flying saliently demonstrates an on-going action of bees chasing
51
the dog. Example numbers (20) and (21) are taken from the adult narratives in both
languages for the Picture #11.
(20) R/Ad Pic#11: Ciinele se sprijina de copac uitindu-se la stupul de albine cazut lingael in timp ce copilul cauta broasca intr-o gaura a copacului.
‘The dog is pressing against the tree and looking at the fallen bee hive which is next
to him while the boy is searching for the frog in the hollow tree’.
(21) E/Ad Pic#11: To the dogs’ surprise he knocked the beehive off the tree while theboy was searching the trunk.
One interesting finding is that ‘while’ in timp ce was employed in both languages
to link two clauses with different protagonists. In example 20 in the first clause, the
protagonist was the dog whereas in the second clause the protagonist was the child.
According to Berman and Slobin (1994, p. 442) those clauses which entail simultaneity are
“continuative relative clauses” that function to advance the narrative action. (In these clauses,
the verb of the main clause tends to be a perception verb). Fillmore (1987) and Lambrecht
(1988), stated that the information in the continuative relative clause has the effect of
advancing the narrative plotline. These findings are supported by the present data for both
languages. In the first clause (Example 20) the dog is either looking or amazed at the fallen
bee hive whereas in the second clause the boy is searching in the tree. In the first clause the
verb of perception “look” was used whereas in the second clause the word “searching” was
employed in both languages (Examples 20 and 21). The information in the second clause
(Examples 20 and 21) that the boy was searching in the tree provides additional information
that helps the story line to move forward in the narrations of both languages.
In timp ce ‘while’ was employed to describe pictures #4 through #8 in the adult
Romanian narrations, whereas in the adult English narratives ‘while’ was not used in any of
these pictures. Pictures #4 through picture #8 depict the boy and the dog as looking in the
room for the frog and culminate with the dog getting his head stuck in the jar and falling out
of the window. These pictures describe at least two protagonists and at least two events, and
the Romanian adults (but not American adults) employed in timp ce ‘while’ in order to
connect the possible events. One explanation may be that Romanians in general use in timp
ce ‘while’ more often than English speakers. Examples (22), (23) and (24) describe Pictures
# 4, #6 and # 8. These examples come from the same Romanian adult narrator.
52
(22) R/Ad-Pic#4: Ø Cauta broasca in caciula in timp ce ciinele isi baga capul in borcanulgol.
Ø looking for the frog in the hat while the dog is inserting his head in the jar.
(23)R/Ad-Pic#6: Ciinele cade de pe pervazul geamului in timp ce copilul se uita uimit.
The dog fell off from the window sill while the child is shocked.
(24) R/Ad-Pic#8: Ciinele si copilul stind unul linga altul linga niste copaci o striga pebroasca in timp ce un sir de albine se apropie de ei.
The child and the dog are sitting next to each other near some trees and screaming
after the frog while a swarm of bees is flying toward them.
5.3.1.8 ADULT NARRATIONS INVOLVING THE
USAGE OF ‘WHEN’AND ‘WHILE’ FOR THE
SAME PICTURE
In both languages several adults used ‘when’ cind and ‘while’ in timp ce
interchangeably for picture #2. As shown above, in Examples (13) and (14) ‘when’ was
employed to describe picture #2. For the same picture, some adult narrators used ‘while”
instead as shown in examples (25) and (26). In Examples (25) and (26) ‘while’ in timp ce
was used at the beginning of the sentence in order to present old information and to connect
prior information with what is going to be new and unexpected in the narration plot.
(25) R/Ad Pic#2:Dup ce s-au jucat toti trei, baiatul oboist sa dus sa se culce iar prietenulsau catelul la urmat. In timp ce acestia doi dormeau, broasca pusa pe sotii, a iesit dinborcan si s-a facut nevazuta .
After the three friends play, the boy being tired fell asleep and his friend the dog
followed him. While these two were sleeping the frog being cunning, escaped
from the jar and vanished.
(26) E/Ad Pic#2: The boy earlier that day went to a pet store and got a new frog. Andhere he’s showing it to his dog who seems fairly interested in it. While they’re asleepthe frog who I guess is a pretty smart frog steps out of his jar and escapes.
In Examples (25) and (26) the old referents were the boy and the dog and they became
relevant in the new scene. The narrator used the connective form ‘while’ to situate the old
referents in a particular context and to introduce a new event within that context.
In both languages the percent usage of ‘while’ increased considerably from 5-year-
olds to adults (whereas the usage of ‘when’ was well established at age 5). The data suggests
that ‘while’ starts to be acquired by the 5-year-olds and reached the highest frequency of
53
usage in adulthood. This may reflect cognitive development: Concept of simultaneity
develops over time and expressing it with a specific form such as ‘while’ starts at around 5
years of age.
5.4 LISTING CONNECTIVES
The listing connectives used in the narratives of both languages were ‘and’ si and ‘or’
ori. Table 5.6. shows the listing connective forms and’ si and ‘or’ ori,’ their frequency of
occurrences in both languages and across the three age groups.
Table 5.6. Frequency of Connective Forms Expressing Listing
Connective
forms
English Romanian
English Romanian Age 3 Age 5 Adult Age 3 Age 5 Adult
And Si 26
(100%)
29
(90%)
30
(81%)
34
(100%)
38
(90%)
12
(63.2%)
Or Ori - 3
(10%)
7
(19%)
- 4
(10%)
7
(36.8%)
Total Total 26
(100%)
32
(100%)
37
(100%)
34
(100%)
42
(100%)
19
(100%)
a. (-) refers to 0 occurrences
As Table 5.6. shows, the general trend was the use of ‘and’ si with the highest
frequency in the narrations by 3-year-olds which then decreased as children aged into adults.
In contrast, in both languages, the use of the listing markers ‘or’ ori in narratives increased
slightly from childhood to adulthood. The data suggest that the listing marker ‘or’ ori begins
to be acquired from age 5. The following section summarize usage of listing connectives
‘and’ and ‘or’.
5.4.1 Listing Connectives: 3-Year-Olds
In the English narratives, the 3-year-olds used ‘and’ 26 times whereas in Romanian
the same-aged children used si ‘and’ 34 times. The present data reveal that 3-year-olds
employ ‘and’ si as the only listing marker.
Example (27) illustrates use of si ‘and’ by a 3-year-old Romanian speaker who
describes picture #1. In picture #1 the boy and the dog are sitting at the foot of his bed
looking at a frog in a jar.
54
Example (27) R/3yrs-Pic# 1: Este un copil si este un ciine in camera.
Este un ciine si este o broasca si el se uita.
There is a child and there is a dog in a room.
There is a dog and there is a frog and he looks.
5.4.2 Listing Connectives: 5-Year-Olds
In both languages the 5-year-olds employed two listing markers in their narrations:
‘and’ si and ‘or’ ori. ‘And’ si was far more frequent (90%) than ‘or’ ori (10%) in both
languages. In Example (28) a 5-year-old English speaker describes picture #1:
Example (28) E/5yrs-Pic#1: Once upon a time there was a boy with his frog and his
dog and one night the three were just sitting around.
Example (29) illustrates use of ‘or’ by a 5-year-old English speaker who depicts
pictures #13. In picture #13 the owl flew after the boy and the boy was hiding under a big
rock.
Example (29) E/5yrs-Pic#13: The boy tries to hide, I’m not sure if he’s hiding or he’s
doing something else he’s still calling the frog and he kept on calling the frog.
5.4.3. Listing Connectives: Adult Speakers
In the adult data a change in frequency pattern ‘and’ si and ‘or’ ori occurred in that
the frequency of usage of ‘or’ ori increased from 5-year-olds to adults. As Table 5.6. shows,
in adult narratives ‘or’ ori occurred with a frequency of 19% in English narrations and 36%
in Romanian narrations. However, similar to 5-year-olds, adults used the ‘and’ si listing
marker in their narratives more frequently than ‘or’ ori. ’ Example (30) was told by an
English adult speaker describing picture #24. In picture #24 the boy and the dog are happy
because they found their friend and the boy received the consent of the frog parents to take a
frog. The boy took a baby frog and waved good bye to the frog family as he walked away.
Example (30) And they find a frog and I think the frog is the daddy frog because he
has a big thing there a big throat and his frog has a mommy frog or a girlfriend or a
wife or whatever frogs have.
The data show that the connective ‘and’ si was the most frequently used listing
connective form in both languages in all three age groups.
55
5.5 SUMMARY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONNECTIVES
MARKERS
The development of connective markers denoting temporal sequence, simultaneity
and listing revealed similarities as well as differences between Romanian and English
speakers.
With regard to the sequential connectives there was a decrease in the frequency of
usage of ‘and then’ si atunci from 5-year-olds to adults in both languages (Table 5.2.).
Furthermore, the data suggest a decrease in the frequency of usage of ‘and’ si from 5-year-
olds to adults.
The two languages differed in the way speakers used ‘other’ connective forms.
Romanian narrations revealed a higher frequency of usage of ‘other’ sequential markers in
both token and type compared to English narratives. The diversity of types reached a
pinnacle in the adult narrations in Romanian. In the Romanian narrations frequency of usage
of ‘other’ markers increased as children grew to adulthood whereas in the English narrations
frequency of usage of ‘other’ markers initially decreased from 3-year-olds to 5-year-olds and
then increased with adults (Table 5.2. and Table 5.3.). Another difference found in the
present data between speakers of the two languages was that the Romanian speakers
frequently employed ‘other’ sequential markers such as ‘so then’ asa atunci and ‘so
after’asa dupa in narrations more so than the English speakers.
With respect to simultaneous connectives the frequency of usage of ‘when’ cind
decreased and ‘while’ in timp ce increased in both languages from 5-year-olds to adults. In
addition, adults in both languages preferred using ‘while’ in timp ce more than ‘when’ cind
as a simultaneous marker (Table 5.4.). Notice that ‘while’ designates simultaneity more
specifically than ‘when’. Thus, younger children learn more general forms before more
specific forms.
The development of listing markers revealed that the highest frequency in usage
occurred for ‘and’ si in the narratives in both languages and among the three age groups. In
both English and Romanian narratives there was an increase in the usage of ‘or’ ori from the
5-year-olds to adults (Table 5.6.).
Overall the frequency of usage of sequential markers in narrations increased over
time in both languages across the three age groups. On the other hand, the corresponding
56
frequency of usage of listing connectives decreased in both languages from 3-year-olds to
adults. The frequency of usage of simultaneous connectives tended to increase in Romanian
but tended to decrease in English narrations from the 3-year-olds to adults but the
increase/decrease was slight. Thus, the most significant development changes in connectives
occurred in expressing sequentiality (an increase with age) and listing (a decrease with age).
This suggests that children gradually develop their understanding of temporal sequence
during school years and adults employ more specific forms than young children.
57
CHAPTER 6
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS OF PRONOUNS
In this chapter the use of pronouns in English and Romanian narrations is investigated
with the objective of revealing differences in crosslinguistic progress between the two
languages.
6.1 PRONOUNS
In the present study the development of pronoun use in discourse in English and
Romanian speaking children and adults was examined in terms of number and frequency of
usage in the subject position. The rationale for focusing on the subject position is that the
narrator uses the subject slot to convey his/her perspective about which characters should be
highlighted at a given time in the story. The present study examines how the children and
adults construct events by assigning specific characters as subject of sentence and shifting
characters in the subject position based on the picture being described. Both a quantitative
and qualitative analysis of the use of nouns and pronouns in the subject position by age and
by language are presented.
As children grow older the length of their narrations become longer and in the case of
adults the narrations become more detailed and complex. In order to analyze the length of the
narrations the total number of clauses was counted in both languages and among the three
age groups. For both Romanian and English narratives the significant increase in the number
of clauses used occurred between age 5 and adults (20 clauses). Table 6.1 shows that in the
Romanian narratives at age 3 the narrations averaged 29 clauses, at age 5 the narrations
averaged 33 clauses and in adults the narrations averaged 53 clauses. The average number of
subject slots among Romanian speakers increased from 29 to 53. A similar pattern was
observed in the English narratives. In English speakers the usage of clauses increased with
age from an average of 33 clauses in 3-year-olds to 35 clauses in 5-year-olds to 55 clauses in
adults. The number of clauses used by English narrators is always slightly greater than the
number used by Romanian speakers for each age group. The narrations of 3-year-old children
58
Table 6.1. Frequency of Clause Usage in English and Romanian
Language 3yrs.
AVG N
5yrs.
AVG N
Adult
AVG N
English 33 202 35 274 55 551
Romanian 29 178 33 269 53 532
a. AVG is the average of clauses produced in each age group.N is the total number of clauses produces in each age group.
are generally composed of noun phrases and verbal phrases whereas the adult narrations in
addition have adjective or adverb phrases and preposition phrases.
In example (1) and (2) 3-year-old children describe picture #12.
Example (1) R/3yrs-Pic#12: Si acum a iesit un animal.
And now an animal came out.
Example (2) E/3yrs-Pic#12: A thing came out of there.
In examples (3) and (4) adult narrators describe picture #1 in both languages.
(3) E/Ad- Pic# 1: Ok, there’s a boy and a dog in a room and they’re both looking at a frogthat’s inside the jar.
(4) R/Ad-Pic#1: Intr-o seara inainte de culcare, baiatul si catelul sau se jucau cu celalatmembru al trio-ulu, o broasca, care zimbe fericita din vasul sau cilindric de sticla.
One night before the sleeping time, the child and his dog played with the third
member of the trio, a frog which smiled happily from her cylindrical bowl made of
glass.
In this analysis the boy and the dog are considered to be main characters because both
of the characters play together simultaneously with the frog.
Table 6.2 presents the usage of references in the subject position in terms of the
number of noun phrases, pronouns and null subjects. The category ‘Noun for main
characters’ (NMC) refers to the use of full nouns for the main characters of the story (‘the
boy’, ‘the dog’ or ‘the boy and the dog’) in the subject position. ‘Pronouns for main
characters’ (PMC) refer to use of anaphors in the subject position to refer to the main
characters. In example (5) the boy is in the subject slot and is one of the main characters of
the story. Moreover, ‘he’ is the anaphor which refers to the boy in a subject slot.
59
Table 6.2. Frequency of References in Subject Position
Language English Romanian
Subject
Position
3yrs. 5yrs. Adult Total 3yrs. 5yrs. Adult Total
NMC 74 113 298 485 71 118 236 442
NPC 46 54 90 190 25 34 68 127
Total
Noun
120
(59.5%)
167
(60.9%)
388
(71%)
675 96
(53.9%)
152
(56.5%)
304
(58.4%)
569
PMC 82 91 108 281 71 80 111 242
PPC 0 5 11 16 0 4 10 14
Total
Pronoun
82
(40.5%)
96
(35%)
119
(21%)
297 71
(39.8%)
84
(31.2%)
121
(23%)
256
Total Null
Subject
0 11
(4.1%)
44
(8%)
55 11
(6.1%)
33
(12.3%)
107
(20%)
144
Total
Subject
Slots
202
(100%)
274
(100%)
551
(100%)
1017 178
(100%)
269
(100%)
532
(100%)
969
a. Eng is defined as English and Rom as Romanian narratives.b. ‘NMC’ is defined as ‘Noun for main characters’ and ‘PMC’ as ‘Pronoun for main characters’.c. ‘NPC’ refers to ‘Noun for peripheral characters’ of the story such as the owl and ‘PPC’ as ‘Pronoun forperipheral characters’.d. Total Null Subjects refer to both main and peripheral character of the story.
(5) E/Ad-Pic# 14: The boy climbs on top of a rock and he leans onto some branches.
‘Nouns for peripheral characters’ (NPC) or ‘pronouns for peripheral characters’
(PPC) refer to peripheral characters of the story such as ‘the owl’, ‘the deer’, ‘the frog’, ‘the
gopher’ and ‘the bees’. In example (6) the subject slot is taken by the peripheral character
‘the deer’ and the anaphor ‘he’ refers to the deer as well being the only noun referent in the
previous clause.
(6) E/Ad-Pic# 16: The deer is angry so he carries the boy toward the edge of a cliff.
60
The use of a null subject was also analyzed because it “ties activities of the same
character together and presents them as a topical package” (Berman and Slobin, 1994, p.
226). The usage of the null subjects shown in Table 6.2 refers to the total number of null
subjects for both main and peripheral characters (see Table 6.3 through Table 6.5 for usage
details). Example (7) shows that the null subject refers to the main character of the story ‘the
boy’. In contrast, example (8) reveals that the null subject refers to a peripheral character of
the story ‘the gopher’.
Table 6.3. Percentages of Referential Choices by 3-year-old Romanian Speakers
Subject
Position
Boy Dog Boy and
Dog
Other
Characters
Ambiguous Total
NPs 35 29 7 25 0 96
Pronouns 24 19 9 0 19 71
Null
subjects
3 2 0 0 6 11
Total subject
slots
62 50 16 25 25 178
Total
percent
(35%) (28%) (9%) (14%) (14%) 100%
Table 6.4. Percentages of Referential Choices by 5-year-old Romanian Speakers
Subject
Position
Boy Dog Boy and
Dog
Other
Characters
Ambiguous Total
NPs 54 37 27 34 0 152
Pronouns 23 37 11 4 9 84
Null Subject 10 8 11 0 4 33
Total subject
slots
87 82 49 38 13 269
Total
percent
(32%) (30%) (18%) (14%) (6%) 100%
61
Table 6.5. Percentages of Referential Choices by Adult Romanian Speakers
Subject
Position
Boy Dog Boy and
Dog
Other
Characters
Ambiguous Total
NPs 97 35 104 68 0 304
Pronouns 39 21 47 10 4 121
Null Subject 27 31 46 0 3 107
Total subject
slots
163 87 197 78 7 532
Total
percent
(30%) (16.9%) (37%) (15%) (1.1%) 100%
(7) R/Ad-Pic#8: Copilul [new referent=boy] merge in padure si [Ø =boy]se uita sagaseasca broasca si [Ø =boy] striga dupa broasca .
The boy [new referent=boy] is going in the forest and [Ø =boy] looks for a frog and
[Ø =boy] is calling the frog.
(8) R/Ad-Pic#9 and Pic#10: Copilul se uita in gaura de pamint si cinele sare si latra lastupul de albine. Si atunci o cirtita [new referent=gopher] iese afara din viziunai, [Ø=gopher] musca de nas pe copil si ciinele inca latra la stupul de albine.
The boy is looking down the hole in the ground and the dog is jumping and barking at
the bee hives. And then a gopher [new referent=gopher] comes out, [Ø =gopher] bites
the child nose and the dog is still barking at the bee hive.
In the English and Romanian narratives noun phrases, pronouns and null subjects
were employed in all age groups but the frequency of usage changed. In the sections that
follow, we summarize the major findings for each type of referential choice: NMC, PMC,
NPC, PPC, and null subject as shown in Table 6.2.
In the English and Romanian narratives noun phrases, pronouns and null subjects
were employed in all age groups but the frequency of usage changed. In the sections that
follow, we summarize the major findings for each type of referential choice: NMC, PMC,
NPC, PPC, and null subject as shown in Table 6.2.
The frequency of noun phrases (NMC and NPC combined) used in English narratives
was greater than the frequency used in Romanian narratives regardless of age group. The 3-
year-old English speakers employed a level of noun phrases in the subject position of 59.5%
and 5-year-olds 60.9% and 71% by adult Americans (Table 6.2). Romanian speakers
employed almost the same level of noun phrases among the three age groups (53.9% by 3-
62
year-olds compared with 56.5% by 5-year-olds and 58.4% by adults). This represents a
relatively small growth in the percent usage of noun phrases from children to adults. In both
the Romanian and English narratives the noun usage for both main and peripheral characters
(NMC&NPC) increased with age.
In both languages it was found that the frequency of usage of nouns in the subject
position for the main characters (NMC) was much higher than for the peripheral characters
(NPC) across all three age groups. In example (9) the noun in the subject position refers to
‘the boy’ which is a main character. Example (9) describes picture #11.
Example (9)E/Ad-Pic#11:The boy is continuing to search for the frog and he comes
up with the idea that he’s going to check the wise denizen of the century old oak tree.
In example (10) the noun in the subject position refers to ‘the elk’ which is a
peripheral character. Example (10) describes picture #16.
Example (10)E/Ad-Pic#16: The elk is angry so he carries the boy and it looks like
they’re headed to the edge of a cliff and the dog, being a loyal dog, runs after the elk.
In both the English and Romanian narratives the percent usage of pronouns in the
subject position decreased with age. Between the 3-year-olds and adults the percent usage of
pronouns decreased from 39.8% to 23% in the Romanian narratives whereas pronoun percent
usage decreased from 40.5% to 21% in the English narratives (Table 6.2).
Similarly, in both languages the frequency of usage of pronouns for the main
characters was much higher than for the peripheral characters across all the three age groups
(compare PMC to PPC in Table 6.2). It is worth mentioning that the frequency of usage of
both nouns and pronouns for main characters was higher than pronouns for peripheral
characters since ‘the boy’ and ‘the dog’ are involved in every action within the story
(compare Total Noun and Total Pronoun rows in Table 6.2).
In both the English and Romanian narratives the level of usage of null subjects
increased with age. The level of usage of null subjects by Romanian speakers increased from
6.1% to 12.3% to 20% from age 3 to age 5 to adult for a net change of 13.9% (see Table 6.2).
In the English narratives the increase was smaller, from 0% (3-year-olds) to 4.1% (5-year-
olds) to 8 % (adults). One explanation may be that Romanian is a pro-drop language and as a
result both children and adults employed the null pronoun in their narratives to a greater
degree than their English narrator counterparts.
63
In general, the 3-year-old and 5-year-old speakers in both languages preferred to
assign ‘the boy’ as the main referent. Adult English speakers also specified ‘the boy’ as the
main referent. In contrast, Romanian adult speakers preferentially designated ‘the boy and
the dog’ as the main character. The data suggest that the adult Romanians saw ‘the boy and
the dog’ together as the main characters of the story. In the following sections an analysis of
each type of referent used for the main characters (‘the boy’, ‘the dog’, ‘the boy and the
dog’) and the peripheral characters (e.g. ‘owl’, ‘frog’, ‘deer’, ‘gopher’, ‘bees’) by Romanian
and English speakers are analyzed by age groups.
6.1.1 References in the Subject Position by 3-year-oldsand 5-year-olds in Romanian Narratives
Tables 6.3 and 6.4 illustrate that the main referent assigned to the subject position by
3-year-old and 5-year-old Romanian children is ‘the boy’, the central character of the story.
‘The boy’ was employed 35% and 32% of the time by 3 and 5-year-old speakers
respectively, (Tables 6.3 and 6.4). The dog represents the second character of the story for
both age groups. ‘The dog’ as a single referent was mentioned 28% and 30% of the time
whereas ‘the boy and the dog’ was employed 9% and 18% of the time by 3 and 5- year- old
speakers, respectively.
For Romanian speakers the percent usage of the ‘other’ referential choices was the
same for both age groups, 14%. ‘Other’ characters consisted of references to ‘the frog’, ‘the
bees’, and ‘the deer’. The bees in many cases were referred to as ‘wasps’ or ‘hornets’. It was
found that in a few narratives ‘the gopher’ was substituted with a squirrel. The frog was the
most ubiquitous ‘other’ referent. It was referred to in many cases as ‘baby frog’ and the
‘mother frog’. One notable item was that unknown animals such as the owl were substituted
with the general term ‘animal’. The 5-year-olds ‘other’ category was extended to include ‘the
owl’, ‘gopher’, ‘frogs’, ‘boy and dog’ and ‘deer’, and ‘boy and dog and frog’.
Romanian narratives by 3 and 5-year-olds revealed the presence of ambiguous
referents. The ambiguity stems from pronouns whose antecedent could not be deduced from
the discourse. The proportion of ambiguous pronoun usage decreased from 14% (age 3) to 6
% (age 5). One reason for the decrease in ambiguous pronoun usage may be a more coherent
continuation of the prior clause in terms of maintaining the theme by the 5-year-olds.
64
Examples (11) and (12) compare narratives of the two age groups. Example (11) was
produced by a 3-year-old Romanian describing picture #8.
(11) R/3yrs-Pic#8: Baiatul cu cîinele în padure. El se uita dupa broasca.
The boy and the dog in the forest. He looks for the frog.
In this discourse the pronoun el ‘he’ was ambiguously used. The listener would not be
able to discern if el ‘he’ referred to ‘the boy’ or ‘the dog’ or the two characters together.
Next, consider example (12) which was produced by a 5-year-old describing picture #11 and
#12.
(12) R/5yrs-Pic#11 &12:Şi băiatul se urca in copac să caute broasca. Şi apoi el a cazut căØ a văzut o bufniţă.
And the boy is climbing in the tree to find the frog. And then he fell
because Ø saw an owl in the tree.
In the second clause, el ‘he’ clearly refers to ‘the boy’ from the previous clause. In
Romanian the null subject ‘Ø’ aligns with the same subject mentioned in the immediate prior
or subsequent clause. Thus, in the example (12) the null pronoun can only refer to the boy,
being the only character mentioned in the immediately preceding clause.
6.1.2. References in the Subject Position by Adults inRomanian Narratives
Table 6.5 illustrates that for the Romanian adults the dominant main characters were
‘the boy and the dog’ together used (37%) of the time. The data suggested a linear increase in
the frequency of usage of ‘the boy and the dog’ from 3-year-olds (9%) to 5-year-olds (18%)
to adults (37%). One explanation may be that the adults consider ‘the boy and the dog’ as the
main referents of the story because the two characters embarked on a journey together to find
their common friend, the frog.
‘The boy’ was also a prevalent referential choice for adults used (30%) of the time
although it was chosen less often than ‘the boy and the dog’. ‘The dog’ was the third most
frequently used main character (16.9%) of the time. In contrast, the 3 and 5-year-old speakers
perceived ‘the boy’ as the main character (35% and 32%, of the time respectively) and ‘the
dog’ was the second most-frequently cited character (28% and 30%, respectively).
The adult Romanian data showed that ambiguous pronouns accounted for only 1.1%
of the total pronouns used. One reason for the near absence of pronoun ambiguity in adults
65
may be that the adults know which structure to employ in order to avoid ambiguity. In
example 35 the adult narrator described picture #22.
In picture #21 the narrator had described that the boy and the dog decided to see what
was behind the log located by the edge of the lake. Thus, the referents of ‘they’ in example
(13) can fully be recovered.
(13) R/Ad-Pic#22: Mare le fu mirarea cind ei sau intilnit.
Their excitement was big when they reunite.
In the next two sections the referential choices in English narratives are presented.
6.1.3. References in the Subject Position by 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds in English Narratives
Overall, the patterns found in the English children’s narratives were similar to those
of the Romanian children summarized above. The most dominant main referent for English 3
and 5-year-old speakers was ‘the boy’ in both age groups (Tables 6.6 and 6.7, respectively).
The percentage usage of ‘the boy’ as protagonist increased from 32% (age 3) to 39.7% (age
5). The second most-prominent protagonist of the story for English speakers was ‘the dog’ in
both age groups. The level of references to ‘the dog’ also increased slightly from 25% (age 3)
to 28.3% (age 5). This finding was similar to Romanian 3 and 5-year-old speakers wherein
the level of references to the dog increased slightly from 28% (age 3) to 30% (age 5). The
English speaking children apparently perceived the dog and his actions as having human-like
characteristics as can be seen in the examples (14) through (17) that describe pictures #5,
#12, #14 and #19.
(14) E/3yrs-Pic#5: The dog has a glass over his head and I hope he doesn’t fall down.
(15) E/3yrs-Pic#12: The dog is running away.
(16) E/3yrs-Pic#14: The dog is hiding.
(17) E/3yrs-Pic#19: I guess the dog cannot swim.
Reference to the ‘other characters’ was quite frequent in 3-and-5-year olds (23% and
21.5%, respectively). The ‘other characters’ consisted of ‘the bees’, ‘the owl’, ‘the frog’ and
‘the deer’ in the narrations of the 3-year-old. The 5-year-olds extended the category to
include ‘the boy the dog and the deer’, and ‘the frogs’. In example (18) the 3-year-old
66
Table 6.6. Percentages of Referential Choices by 3-year-old English Speakers
Subject
Position
Boy Dog Boy and
Dog
Other
Characters
Ambiguous Total
NPs 34 27 8 46 5 120
Pronouns 31 24 4 0 23 82
Null
subjects
0 0 0 0 0 0
Total subject
slots
65
(100%)
51
(100%)
12
(100%)
46
(100%)
28
(100%)
202
Total
percent
(32%) (25%) (6%) (23%) (14%) 100%
Table 6.7. Percentages of Referential Choices by 5-year-old English Speakers
Subject
Position
Boy Dog Boy and
Dog
Other
Characters
Ambiguous Total
NPs 61 49 3 54 0 167
Pronouns 42 23 15 5 11 96
Null Subject 6 5 0 0 0 11
Total subject
slots
109
(100%)
77
(100%)
18
(100%)
59
(100%)
11
(100%)
274
Total
percent
(39.7%) (28.3%) (6.5%) (21.5%) (4.0%) 100%
speaker described what the bees were doing, making the bees to be the subject of the
sentence. In contrast in picture #11 the 5-year-olds described that ‘the dog’ was looking at
the bees and perceive ‘the bees’ to be the direct object of the sentence.
(18) E/3yrs-Pic#9: The bees flying out of the hive.
(19) E/5yrs-Pic#11: The boy is looking down the hollow of the tree and calling for thefrog, and the dog is looking at the bees.
The children’s narratives in English revealed similar proportions of ambiguous
referents by 3 and 5-year-old speakers (14% vs. 4%) compared to Romanian children’s
narratives (14% vs. 6% for the same corresponding age groups). Example (20) was narrated
by a 3-year-old English speaker describing pictures #1 and #2.
(20) E/3yrs-Pic#1 and 2: Looking in the jar and then they were going to sleep.
67
In this clause the listener has not yet been introduced to any characters of the story.
The characters were identified only in pictures # 4 and #5. Thus, the referents of ‘they’ were
not recoverable.
In the English narratives ‘the boy and the dog’ were referred to as main characters by
3- and 5-year-olds 6% and 6.5% of the time, respectively (see Tables 6.6 and 6.7). This can
be contrasted somewhat with 9% and 18% in the Romanian narratives for the same
corresponding age groups (see Tables 6.3 and 6.4).
6.1.4. References in the Subject Position by Adults inEnglish Narratives
The adult English narratives indicate that ‘the boy’ was employed as the dominant
main character (43.5%) whereas ‘the dog’ was the second most prominent character of the
story (27%) as shown in Table 6.8. The third most prominent protagonist for English
narratives was ‘other referential choice’. In the English narratives’ the boy and the dog’ was
the least frequently used (10%). This was in contrast with the Romanian adult narrators who
viewed ‘the boy and the dog’ as the dominant main character 37% of the time (see Table
6.5). This suggests that Romanian adults considered the main characters to be ‘the boy and
the dog’ duo because of their common effort to find the frog whereas English speakers
viewed the two characters to be independent of each other. The percentage of usage by adult
English speakers for ‘the boy’ and ‘the dog’ as separate main characters was 43.5% and 27%,
respectively (Table 6.8) whereas for Romanian adult speakers the percentages were
considerably lower (30% and 16.9%) as shown in Table 6.5.
6.2 PRONOUN AND NOUN PHRASE REFERENCES IN THE
SUBJECT POSITION
The usage of pronouns in comparison to the noun phrases differed depending on the
age group for both Romanian and English speakers. Table 6.9 shows the frequency of usage
of pronouns and noun phrases for ‘the boy’ in the subject position by age group and by
language. As the narrators matured (become more skilled) there was a shift in usage from
pronouns to noun phrases. In both Romanian and English the frequency of pronoun usage
decreased as children grew older whereas the usage of noun phrases increased. For
68
Table 6.8. Percentages of Referential Choices by Adult English Speakers
Subject
Position
Boy Dog Boy and
Dog
Other
Reference
Ambiguous Total for
each
Nr. of Full
NP
166 109 23 90 0 388
Nr. of
Pronouns
52 31 19 11 6 119
Null Subject 22 13 9 0 0 44
Total subject
slots
240 153 51 101 6 551
Total
percent
(43.5%) (27%) (10%) (18.4%) (1.1%) 100%
Table 6.9. Percentages of Pronoun and Noun Phrase (NP) References to ‘the Boy’ inEnglish and Romanian
Language English Romanian
Subject
Position
Age 3yrs. Age 5yrs. Adult Age 3yrs. Age 5yrs. Adult
Pronoun 48% 40% 24% 41% 30% 29%
NP 52% 60% 76% 59% 70% 71%
Romanians the frequency of pronoun usage decreased from 41% (age 3) to 29% (adults) and
in English it decreased was from 48% (age 3) to 24% (adults).
One explanation as to why the 3-year-old children employed pronouns more
frequently than adults may be that they use pronouns as deixes (i.e. devices that point to the
characters in the pictures). It is also possible that young children highlight the main character
by using pronouns as often as NPs in discourse. Furthermore, young children may find using
pronouns less cognitively taxing than using full NPs. As previously mentioned, however, in
many circumstances pronouns were employed ambiguously. See example (21), a narration by
a 3-year-old describing picture #5.
(21) R/3yrs-Pic#5: Şi copilul si ciinele si el se uita pe geam.
69
And the child and the dog and he is looking on the window.
As children matured their sophistication in the use of pronouns became more
selective based on the prior referent and as a result the frequency of pronoun usage
decreased. Table 6.9 reveals that adults employed the highest frequency of noun phrases
(NPs) in the subject position to refer to ‘the boy’ (71% for Romanian and 76% for English).
Noun phrases were used in order to clarify ‘the boy’ as the reference, as adults used several
different characters in the subject position. Pronouns were used by adults in order only to
avoid an unnecessary reiteration of the same character.
6.3 DISTRIBUTION OF PRONOUNS VERSUS NOUN
PHRASES IN THE SUBJECT POSITION
In this section the distribution of pronoun usage compared to noun phrases usage is
analyzed picture-by-picture.
6.3.1 Romanian Narratives
Table 6.10 shows the distribution of both pronoun and noun phrase usage for each
type of character (boy, dog, boy and dog, other) for each picture in the three age groups of
Romanian speakers.
There are several types of developments to scrutinize across the three age groups with
regards to the use of pronoun. To examine pronoun usage more closely, the data on pronouns
are broken down into four separate Tables (Tables 6.11 through Table 6.14). Each Table
presented in separate section shows the use of pronouns for each type of character (‘the boy’,
‘the dog’, ‘the boy and the dog’, ‘other characters’) for selected pictures in order to highlight
major findings and developmental changes.
6.3.1.1 ‘ THE BOY’AS SUBJECT
Table 6.11 shows the occurrences of pronoun, ‘the boy’, in the subject position. One
noticeable pattern is that for pictures #9, #10, #16 and #17 ‘the boy’ was referred to by a
pronoun by the Romanian 3-year-olds but not by the Romanian 5-year-olds and adults. In
pictures #9 and #10 the boy was bitten by a gopher. In example (22) a 3-year-old Romanian
speaker refers to picture #10 using the pronoun ‘he’ to refer to the boy.
70
Table 6.10. Distribution of Noun Phrases versus Pronouns per Picture: RomanianNarratives
Age 3yrs. 5yrs. Adults
Boy Dog Boy/
Dog
Other
s
Boy Dog Boy/
Dog
Other
s
Boy Dog Boy/
Dog
Others
NR. NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP Pro NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP Pro
1 5 - 2 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 4 - 3 - 5 4 1 - 11 - 7 -
2 2 - - - 1 1 4 - 3 2 - 2 1 1 3 1 1 - 2 - 9 5 6 -
3 1 - 2 - - 1 2 - 2 - - - 3 1 - - 2 4 - - 7 5 - -
4 3 1 2 - 1 1 - - 2 - - 6 2 1 - - 3 - 1 2 6 3 4 -
5 1 1 - - 1 1 - - 2 - - 3 - 1 - - 8 3 2 2 8 3 3 -
6 - - 4 11 - - - - 2 - 12 9 - - - - - - 1 5 - 1 - -
7 3 1 2 - - 1 - - 7 2 - - - 1 - - 5 4 4 2 - 3 - -
8 - - - - 1 1 - - 1 - - - 2 1 - - - - - - 13 8 - -
9 1 1 6 - - 1 - - 5 - 4 5 - 1 2 1 8 - 1 1 - 3 - -
10 1 2 2 - - - 3 - 3 - 4 3 - - 4 - 4 - 3 - - - 6 -
11 3 6 5 2 - - - - 4 7 - 4 - - 2 1 12 4 1 1 - 1 - -
12 3 5 - 3 - - - - 4 3 7 5 - - 4 1 6 6 4 - - 2 11 2
13 2 1 - 1 - - - - - 3 - - - 1 4 - 5 3 1 - 6 - 2 -
14 2 1 - - - - - - 5 2 - - - - - - 6 3 2 1 - - 3 -
15 - 1 - - 1 - 4 - 2 2 - - - - 5 - 5 3 2 1 - - 4 -
16 1 1 - - 1 - 4 - - - 5 - - - 4 - 2 - 3 1 4 - 5 4
17 - 1 2 - - 1 - - 1 - - - 3 1 3 - - - 1 2 5 2 4 -
18 3 - 1 1 - 1 - - 3 - - - 3 1 - - - - 1 1 6 2 - -
19 - 1 1 1 - - - - - - 4 - - 1 - - 6 - 2 - 4 1 - -
20 2 - - - - - - - 3 - - - 1 - - - 7 5 - - - 1 - -
21 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 1 6 1 - -
22 - - - - - - 3 - - - - - 5 - - - - - - - 9 3 4 -
23 1 - - - - - 4 - - - - - 3 - - - 5 - 2 1 7 - 4 -
24 1 1 - - - - - - 3 2 - - - - - - 7 - - - 3 3 5 4
T.Nr 35 24 29 19 7 9 25 - 54 23 37 37 27 11 34 4 97 39 35 21
104
47 68 10
(table notes continue)
71
Table 6.10. (notes continued)
a. Nr. is defined as the picture number in the narrative.b. T. Nr is defined as total number of occurrences for each column. Age 3-Table 6.3, Age 5-Table 6.4, Adults
Table 6.5.c. NP is defined as a noun phrase and PRO is defined as pronoun.d. Others is defined as other referential choices in the subject position which referred to other peripheral
characters such as owl, the deer, the frog, the gopher, the bees.e. NP, Pro is defined as the total number of occurrences for the entire member of an age group.f. 0 occurrences are defined with a ‘-‘.
Table 6.11. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (TheBoy) in Romanian Narratives
Story character Pronoun
(The boy-See Table 6.10.)
Picture # 3yrs 5yrs Adult
9 1 - -
10 2 - -
11 6 7 4
12 5 3 6
13 1 3 3
14 1 2 3
15 1 2 3
16 1 - -
17 1 - -
a. 0 occurrences is defined as ‘-‘.
Example (22) R/3yrs-Pic#10: Baiatul a fost muscat.
Si el se tine de nas ca a fost muscat.
The boy was bitten. And he holds his nose because he was bitten on his nose.
For pictures # 11, #12, #13, #14 and #15, all of the three age groups employed
pronouns to refer to the boy. For these pictures, there was an incremental preference (except
for Picture #11) from 5-year-olds to adults to use a pronoun for ‘the boy’ (Table 6.11). In
picture #11 the boy was looking into a hole in the tree to find the frog (while the bees came
out of their fallen hive and were flying toward the dog). The pictures from # 11 to # 15
showed the boy in some form of action; whether climbing the tree (Picture #11), falling out
of the tree (Picture #12), hiding behind a rock (Picture #13) or climbing on a rock (Picture
#14) or getting entangled in the antlers of the deer (Picture #15). Overall, the 5-year-olds and
72
Table 6.12. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (Thedog) in Romanian Narratives
Story character Pronoun
(The dog-See Table 6.10.)
Picture #. 3yrs 5yrs Adult
4 - 6 2
5 - 3 2
6 11 9 5
9 - 5 1
10 - 3 -
11 2 4 1
12 3 5 -
14 - - 1
15 - - 1
16 - - 1
17 - - 2
18 1 - 1
19 1 - -
a. 0 occurrences are defined as ‘-‘.
Table 6.13. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (TheBoy and the Dog) in Romanian Narratives
Story character Pronoun
(The boy and the dog-See Table 6.10.)
Picture #. 3yrs 5yrs Adult
2 1 1 5
3 1 1 5
4 1 1 3
5 1 1 3
7 1 1 3
8 1 1 8
9 1 1 3
18 1 1 2
73
Table 6.14. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (The OtherReferential Choices) in Romanian Narratives
Story character Pronoun
(The Other Referential Choices-See Table 6.10.)
Picture #. 3yrs 5yrs Adult
2 - 1 -
9 - 1 -
11 - 1 -
12 - 1 2
16 - - 4
24 - - 4
a. 0 occurrences are defined as ‘-‘.
adults used more pronouns for the boy in those picture because they use more complex
sentences as can be seen in Example (23).Example (23) describes Picture #14 in which the
boy climbed up onto the large rocks, and called for his frog.
Example (23) R/Ad-Pic#14: Baiatul ajuns la niste stinci se catara pe ele. Ajuns in
virful el se sprijina de niste crengi uscate si Ø incepu sa strige dupa broasca.
The boy approached a few rocks and climbed up. Upon reaching the top he grabbed a
branch and he yelled for his frog.
6.3.1.2 ‘THE DOG’AS SUBJECT
The dog’ was increasingly referred to by a pronoun as the Romanian speakers became
older. Table 6.12 shows the occurrences of the pronoun, ‘it’ ‘he’ for ‘the dog’, in the subject
position.
The 3-year-old Romanian children referred to the dog with a pronoun when
describing pictures #6, #11, #12, #18 and #19 (Table 6.12). These were all scenes where the
boy and the dog are the initiators of the actions. Both of them were participants in the frog
search endeavor. In example (24) a 3-year-old Romanian child uses the pronoun ‘he’ to refer
to the dog in Picture #11.
Example (24) R/3yrs-Pic#11: Ciinele fuge. Aici el latra la albine.
The dog runs. Here he barks at bees.
Table 6.12 shows that the 5-year-old children and adults employed pronouns for a
series of pictures in sequence, whereas the 3-year-olds used pronouns to describe individual
74
pictures. For example, the 5-year-old children and adults used a pronoun for the dog in
pictures #4, #5, and #6, whereas the 3-year-ols used a pronoun only for Picture #6. The three
pictures (#4, #5 and #6) show both the boy and the dog in action but the dog was the one
attracting attention with a sequence of actions. The dog was the one who got his head stuck
in the glass jar in picture #4. Pictures #5 and #6 show scenes where the dog was sitting on the
window and then fell out of the window. Older children may have seen more substantial
connections between pictures #4 through #6 than younger children and therefore used the
pronoun to refer to the dog.
There were differences between the 5-year-old children and adults. The 5-year-old
children used a pronoun for the dog in pictures #9, #10, #11 and #12 whereas the adults used
a pronoun for the dog in pictures #14, #15, #16, #17 and #18. Furthermore, linking pictures
with pronouns was more extensive for the 5-year-olds than for the adults. Pictures #9 through
#12 show both the boy being bitten by a gopher and the dog being chased by bees. The dog
was in every picture and it was prominent in the action sequence. Several 5-year-olds
captured the dog’s prominent role by using a pronoun. The data suggest that adults did not
use pronouns as much as the 5-year-olds because the character ‘dog’ attracts children more
than adults.
Both the Romanian 5-year-olds and adults employed pronouns for a series of pictures
in sequence (Picture #4 through #9) to refer to ‘the dog’ because older children and adults
perceive the connection among these pictures and saw the dog as being actively involved in
this adventure.
6.3.1.3 ‘THE BOY AND THE DOG’AS
SUBJECT
Table 6.13 shows pronoun occurrences of ‘the boy and the dog’ for the three age
groups. The data suggests that references to ‘the boy and dog’ by pronouns increased with
age. All of the age groups used pronouns for the two characters in pictures #2, #3, #4, #5, #7,
#8, #9, #18 (Table 6.13). All of these pictures represent a set of events. In pictures #2
through #7 both the boy and the dog search for their friend the frog with the culminating
point of the dog falling out of the window and finding compassion in the boy arms. Pronoun
usage to refer to ‘the boy and the dog’ increased from 5-year-olds to adults as result of a
more complex narrative style.
75
In example (25) a Romanian adult speaker describes picture #8, using the pronoun ei
‘they’ which refers to ‘the boy and the dog’.
Example (25) R/Ad-Pic#8: Baiatul si catelul se indreapta spre padure. Ei isi continua
cautarea indreptinduse de casa sa caute broasca.
The boy and the dog go toward the forest. They continue their search, going away
from the house to look for the frog.
6.3.1.4 THE ‘OTHER REFERENTIAL
CHOICES’AS SUBJECT
Table 6.14 shows the use of pronouns for ‘other’ characters in the subject position.
Reference to ‘other’ characters with pronouns was never made for any of the pictures by the
3-year-old children. One possible explanation could be that at this early age the children did
not possess the sophistication to use pronouns appropriately to refer to peripheral characters.
In contrast, the 5-year-old children employed pronouns to refer to other entities in the
pictures #2, #9, #11 and #12 (Table 6.14). In pictures #9, #11 and #12 the 5-year-old children
used the pronoun “they” to refer to the swarm of bees. These three pictures (#9, #11 and #
12) each included the swarm of bees.
The adults employed the pronoun “they” to describe picture #12, #16 and #24 (Table
6.14). These three pictures shared one thing in common: three characters were present in the
picture. The characters in picture #12 were the boy, the dog and an owl. The characters in
picture #16 were the boy, the dog and a deer. The characters in picture #24 were the boy, the
dog and a frog. The adults employed the same narrative technique as the 5-year-old children,
referring to the swarm of bees by using the pronoun “they” in picture #12. The adults also
used the pronoun ‘he’ for picture 16 to refer to the deer and the pronoun ‘they’ for picture
#24 to refer to ‘the three friends’ the boy, dog and frog. In example (26) an adult Romanian
speaker describes pictures #23 and #24. He uses the pronoun ‘they’ to refer to the three
characters, ‘the boy, the dog and the frog’.
Example (26) R/Ad-Pic#24: Dup ce exuberanta intilnirii se incheie, baiatul si cinele
impreuna cu prietenul lor broasca isi iau ramas bun de la familia broastei. Cei trei
prieteni sint bucurosi ca ei sint impreuna iara.
76
After the exuberance of reuniting, the boy and the dog together with their friend the
frog wave good bye to the frog family. The three friends are happy because they are
reunited again.
In conclusion the pronoun references to ‘the dog’ increased from 5-year-olds to
adults. The same pattern was noticed for ‘the boy and the dog’ and the ‘other’ characters.
One explanation is that older children and adults tried to use a pronoun in order to avoid a
reiteration of the same noun phrase.
6.3.2 Comparison between English and RomanianNarratives
In this section the use of pronouns and noun phrases by English narrators is analyzed.
In addition, a comparison between English and Romanian narratives is made based on the
use of pronouns.
Table 6.15 shows the distribution of pronoun and noun phrases in the subject position
for each picture in the English narratives. Tables 6.16 through Table 6.19 were extracted
from the Table 6.15 to provide a more-focused analysis on the use of pronouns.
6.3.2.1 ‘THE BOY’AS SUBJECT
Table 6.16 shows the occurrences of the pronoun ‘he’ in the subject position referring
to ‘the boy’ for Pictures #6, #8 and #23.
Similar to Romanian, in the English narratives there was an increase in the usage of
pronouns for ‘the boy’ from 3-year-olds to adults. In the English narratives the increase was
particular noticeable in the description of pictures #6, #8 and #23 by the 5-year-old and adult
speakers. This varied from the Romanian narratives in that ‘the boy’ was never referred to by
a pronoun in these particular pictures by any age group. Picture # 6 reveals the dog falling
out of the window with the “frog” jar over his head while the boy is looking with amazement
at the dog. Interestingly, in Romanian narratives the boy and the dog in picture # 6 were seen
as a cause and an effect. The boy looked out the window while the dog fell, astounding the
boy. In the English counterpart, however, the dog was seen in this picture as the main
character since he is falling and therefore active whereas the child passively watches the dog
fall. Thus the dog was treated as the main character in these pictures by the English speakers
but not by the Romanian speakers.
77
Table 6.15. Distribution of Noun Phrases versus Pronouns per Picture: EnglishNarratives
Age 3yrs. 5yrs. Adults
Boy Dog Boy/
Dog
Other
s
Boy Dog Boy/
Dog
Other
s
Boy Dog Boy/
Dog
Other
s
NR. NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP Pro NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
NP
Pro
1 4 - 1 6 2 - 4 - 2 - 2 - 1 1 - - 10 4 3 1 2 1 5 -
2 5 - 3 - - - 1 - 2 4 1 - - 1 5 1 - 3 - - 4 1 12 2
3 3 2 2 - - - 3 - 3 4 1 - - 1 3 - 8 4 2 - 2 1 7 2
4 3 2 3 1 - - - - 5 4 6 9 - 1 - - 7 3 6 3 2 2 2 -
5 - - 2 1 - - - - 4 2 3 9 - 1 - - 6 2 9 3 1 1 - -
6 - - 2 4 - - - - - 3 7 4 - - - - 8 2 19 4 - - - -
7 3 - 1 2 - - - - 6 2 1 - - - - - 9 3 6 3 - 1 - -
8 - 1 2 - - - 2 - 4 1 2 - - 1 2 - 8 2 5 - 3 1 3 -
9 - - - - 1 - 4 - 4 3 6 - - - 1 1 9 2 9 - - 1 - -
10 1 - - 2 1 - 4 - 1 1 3 - - 1 5 - 6 4 8 1 - - 4 -
11 6 3 2 2 1 - - - 3 - 6 - - - 7 1 13 3 9 1 1 - 5 -
12 - 9 2 - - - 7 - 6 3 3 - - 1 5 1 9 - 9 1 - - 7 -
13 - 1 1 1 - - - - 2 2 2 1 - 1 1 - 12 5 - - - - 10 1
14 - - 2 1 - - - - 5 4 - - - 1 4 - 9 2 4 1 1 - - -
15 2 3 - - - - 4 - 3 2 1 - - - 4 - 8 3 - - - - 7 1
16 4 - - - - - 4 - 2 - 1 - - 1 6 - - 1 8 2 1 1 6 1
17 - 3 - - 3 - - - - - - - 1 1 2 - 7 - 6 1 2 1 6 -
18 - 5 - - - - - - - 2 1 - 1 1 1 - 5 - 3 1 1 1 4 -
19 - - - 2 - 2 - - 1 3 1 - - 1 - - 7 3 3 1 1 2 - -
20 - - 3 - - - - - 2 - - - - 1 - - 5 2 - - - - - -
21 - 1 1 2 - - - - 1 - - - - - - - - - - - 1 1 2 1
22 1 - - - - 2 4 - - - 1 - - - 2 - 4 - - - 1 2 6 1
23 - - - - - - 7 - - 1 - - - - 3 1 8 3 - - - 1 2 1
24 2 1 - - - - 2 - 5 1 1 - - - 3 - 8 1 - - - 1 2 1
T.Nr
.
34
31
27
24
8
4
46
-
61
42
49
23
3
15
54
5
166
52
109
23
23
19
90
11
(table notes continue)
78
Table 6.15. (notes continued)
a. Nr. is defined as the picture number in the narrative.b. T. Nr is defined as total number of occurrences for each column. Age 3-Table 6.6, Age 5-Table 6.7, Adults
Table 6.8.c. NP is defined as a noun phrase and PRO is defined as pronoun.
d. Others is defined as other referential choices in the subject position which referred to other peripheralcharacters such as owl, the deer, the frog, the gopher, the bees.e. NP, Pro is defined as the total number of occurrences for all members of an age group.f. 0 occurrences are defined with a ‘-‘.
Table 6.16. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (TheBoy) in English Narratives
Story character Pronoun
(The boy-See Table 6.15.)
Picture #. 3yrs 5yrs Adult
6 - 3 2
8 1 1 2
23 - 1 3
a. 0 occurrences are defined as ‘-‘.
Table 6.17. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (TheDog) in English Narratives
Story character Pronoun
(The dog-See Table 6.15.)
Picture #. 3yrs 5yrs Adult
4 1 9 3
5 1 9 3
6 4 4 4
13 1 1 -
14 1 - 1
16 - - 2
17 - - 1
18 - - 1
a. 0 occurrences are defined as ‘-‘.
79
Table 6.18. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (Theboy and The Dog) in English Narratives
Story character Pronoun
(The boy and the dog-See Table 6.15.)
Picture # 3yrs 5yrs Adult
3 - 1 1
4 - 1 2
5 - 1 1
16 - 1 1
17 - 1 1
18 - 1 1
19 2 1 2
22 2 - 2
a. 0 occurrences are defined as ‘-‘.
Table 6.19. Distribution of Pronouns Referring to (TheOther Referential Choices) in English Narratives
Story character Pronoun
(The Other Referential Choices-See Table 6.15.)
Picture # 3yrs 5yrs Adult
2 - 1 2
3 - - 2
9 - 1 -
11 - 1 -
12 - 1 -
13 - - 1
15 - - 1
16 - - 1
22 - - 1
23 - 1 1
24 - - 1
a. 0 occurrences are defined as ‘-‘.
80
Picture #8 shows the boy and the dog in the woods. The boy is calling for the frog
and there is a swarm of bees nearby. In example (27) an adult English speaker describes
pictures #8. The narrator uses the pronoun ‘he’ to refer to the boy.
Example (27) E/Ad-Pic#8: The boy decided to start looking around for the frog so he
goes outside and takes a look in the direction of the woods and starts calling out the name of
the frog while the dog seems very much interested in bees from the nearby hive.
Picture #23 shows that the boy and the dog crawled over the log and they are
watching as a group of baby frogs came out from behind a plant. The pictures #8 and #23
have one thing in common the boy and the dog are involved in the action equally.
The use of the pronoun ‘he’ in the subject position to refer to the boy increased from
3-year-olds to adults in English narratives.
6.3.2.2 ‘THE DOG’AS SUBJECT’
Table 6.17 shows the number of occurrences of the pronoun ‘he/it’ for ‘the dog’ in
the subject position in selected pictures. In the English narrations the pronominal reference to
‘the dog’ was employed in pictures #4, #5, #6 by all three age groups (Table 6.17). In these
three pictures the dog undertakes more interesting activities. In picture #4 the dog gets his
head stuck in the jar culminating with picture #6 where the dog falls from the window with
the jar still on his head. These results were similar with Romanian results presented in Table
6.12. 5-year-olds used a pronoun for ‘the dog’ for these pictures more than 3-year-olds and
adults. On the other hand, pronominal references decreased in pictures #13 and #14 in
English for all three age groups.
English adult speakers, but not the 3 and 5-year-olds, employed a pronoun to refer to
the dog in pictures #16, #17 and #18. Picture #16 shows the deer taking the boy to the edge
of a cliff. Picture #17 shows how the deer tossed the boy off the cliff and the dog fell with the
boy into a pond surrounded by a forest scene. Picture #18 shows the boy and the dog landing
in the pond. English adult speakers perceived the dog as a “loyal” dog following the owner
and as result referred to him by a pronominal form. Only 1 or 2 adults used a pronoun to refer
to ‘the dog’ in those pictures because adults view the boy as the main character of the
actions. In example (28) an adult English speaker describes pictures #17. The pronoun ‘he’
was employed to refer to the dog.
81
Example (28) E/Ad-Pic#17: The buck runs over and throws the boy into the pond and
the dog was running along the side. He didn’t pay too much attention. Seems like
that dog runs and he falls in that pond with the boy.
6.3.2.3 ‘THE BOY AND THE DOG’AS
SUBJECT
Table 6.18 shows occurrences of pronouns for ‘the boy and the dog’ in the subject
position in selected pictures. There was a substantial increase of the use of pronouns for the
pair of characters from 3 to 5 years of age. Reference to ‘the boy and dog’ with pronoun
occurred only in pictures #19 and #22 by the 3-year-old English speakers. In contrast, 5-year-
old children and adults used pronouns for the two characters in the pictures # 3, # 4, #5, #16,
#17, #18 and #19 (Table 6.18).
A similar increase occurred in the corresponding Romanian narratives with the
exception of picture #16 (see section 6.3.1.3). For picture #16 no Romanian narrators in any
age groups used pronouns for the two characters. One difference between the two narrations
was that Romanian speakers saw the dog as the rescuer of its owner whereas in English
narrations the dog and the boy belong to each other. More specifically, Romanian speakers
perceived this picture as showing that the deer was disturbed by the unwanted load and ran
away with the child in his antlers. In the meantime the dog ran in front of the deer barking
and jumping, trying to save his owner. English speakers perceived this picture as the deer
running off with the little boy and the dog running along the side of the deer. They did not
want to become separated from each other. In example (29) an adult English speaker
describes pictures # 16 and #17. The pronoun ‘they’ was utilized to refer to ‘the boy and the
dog’. Thus, the referents of ‘they’ in example (29) were fully restated through the reiteration
‘the boy and dog both’.
Example (29) E/Ad-Pic#16 and 17: The elk is angry so he carries the boy and it looks
like they’re headed to the edge of a cliff and the dog runs after the elk trying to
persuade him to let go of his master. The boy yells for help and the dog barks they
look at each other. Well it was of no use because the dog ran off the edge of the cliff
while the boy was thrown off by the elk and they’re both falling off the little cliff
into what seemed to be a pond. Well the boy and dog both fell into the pond.
In example (30) an adult Romanian describes picture #16. Similar with previous
82
example ‘they’ refers to ‘the boy and the dog’.
Example (30) R/Ad-Pic#16: Cerbul la luat in coarne pe copil fiind suparat. Copilul se
uita la ciine si ei sint disperati.
The buck took the child on his antlers being mad. The boy looks at the dog and they
seem desperate.
Overall, in both language the occurrences of pronouns for ‘the boy and the dog’ in the
subject position increased from 3-year-olds to adults.
6.3.2.4 THE ‘OTHER REFERENTIAL
CHOICES’AS SUBJECT
Table 6.19 shows occurrences of pronouns in the subject position for ‘other’
characters. The 3-year-old English speakers did not use pronouns for ‘other’ characters at all.
This was the same with Romanian 3-year-olds.
The 5-year-old English speakers employed pronouns to refer to ‘other’ characters in
pictures # 2, #9, #11, #12 and #23 (Table 6.19). In the case of pictures #2 and #23 the
pronoun referred to the frog or frogs. The 5-year-old English speakers employed similar
patterns with the 5-year-old Romanian speakers, using a pronoun to refer to ‘other’
characters in pictures #9, #11 and #12. In these pictures the pronouns referred to the bee hive,
the gopher or the owl. This suggests that in these pictures the narrators highlighted the other
characters, diminishing the importance of the boy and the dog. In picture #11 the child is
looking into a hole in a tree but the bees came out of their fallen hive toward the dog. The
bees distracted the narrator from focusing on the boy and the dog. Similarly in picture #12
the bees chased the dog and an owl flew out of the hole in the tree, causing the boy to fall
from the tree. In this picture, the narrators of both languages were more focused on the owl
(which appeared unexpectedly).
Adult narrators in English used pronouns for the ‘other’ characters in pictures #2, # 3,
#13, #15, #16, #22, #23 and #24 (Table 6.19). The same usage occurs with Romanian
speakers in Pictures #12, #16 and #24 (see Table 6.14). In pictures #22, #23 and #24, adult
narrators of English used the pronoun ‘they’ to refer to the family of frogs.
In example (31) an adult English speaker describes picture # 24. The pronoun ‘they’
was utilized to refer to ‘the frog family’.
83
Example (31) E/Ad-Pic#24: The family of frogs seems very happy. They smiled as
the boy and the dog left with a baby frog waving good-bye.
As a result of cognitive development the usage of pronouns to refer to ‘other’
characters increased from childhood to adulthood in both languages.
6.4 SUMMARY OF PRONOUN AND NOUN PHRASE USAGE
Pronoun usage decreased while the usage of noun phrases increased from childhood
to adulthood in both languages. It is possible that young children find using pronouns less
cognitively taxing than using full noun phrases. Moreover, young children use pronouns as
pointing devices (rather than as discourse devices) to the characters in the pictures. This
resulted in ambiguous usage of pronouns at the discourse level. As age increased, the usage
of ambiguous pronouns decreased in both languages.
In the English narratives, in all the three age groups, the main character of the story
was perceived to be ‘the boy’. In contrast, in the adult Romanian narratives ‘the boy and the
dog’ were the dual main characters although ‘the boy’ was still involved by reference as a
main protagonist. When ‘the boy’ was in the subject location there was an increase in
predisposition for mentioning ‘the boy’ by a noun phrase rather than a pronoun as children
grew older in both languages.
Pronoun usage decreased from childhood to adulthood. When compared with ‘other’
characters pronouns were used less often to refer to the boy as children grow older. In
contrast, adult narrators in Romanian and English highlighted ‘other’ characters by using
more pronouns to refer to ‘other’ characters. The 3-year-old Romanian and English speakers
did not use pronouns for ‘other’ character at all.
The pictures which evoked the use of pronouns more than noun phrases in the subject
position differed depending on the language group. The data suggested a few similarities
between the two languages in this regard. Both Romanian and English 5-year-olds and adult
speakers show the highest frequencies of pronoun usage to refer to ‘the dog’ in pictures #4,
#5 and #6 (Table 6.10 and 6.15). Similarly, the boy was referred to predominantly by
pronoun by all three age groups in both languages particularly in pictures #13 and #15. The
5-year-old and adult speakers in both languages referred to ‘the boy and the dog’ with a
pronoun for pictures #3, #4 and #5.
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CHAPTER 7
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS OF EVALUATIVE
COMMENTS
In this chapter the findings on the evaluative comments are discussed in order to
compare developmental patterns in English and Romanian narratives.
7.1 EVALUATIVE COMMENTS
Evaluative comments embody the narrator’s perspective on the characters and the
events of the story. Evaluative comments convey the roles that different events play in the
story and they express the narrator’s outlook on the characters and events that comprise a
story.
In the present study the usage of the following types of evaluative comments were
investigated: causal connectors, negative qualifiers, distancing devices, frame of mind and
character of speech.
7.1.1 General Developmental Patterns
Table 7.1. presents the frequency of usage of all types of evaluative comments by
English and Romanian speakers based on the total number of clauses. There was a linear
increase in the frequency of usage of evaluative comments as a function of age for both
languages.
The frequency of usage of evaluative comments employed by English speakers in the
three age groups were 17% (35/202 total clauses) by 3-year olds, 22% (62/274 total clauses)
by 5-year-olds and 36% by adults (198/551 total clauses). For the corresponding age groups
of Romanian speaker, the overall frequency of usage increase was more prominent, ranging
from 23% (42/178 total clauses) to 32% (86/269 total clauses) to 45% (240/532 total
clauses).
It should be noted that in both languages the increases of frequency of usage with age
were comparable. The increases between the 3-year-old and 5-year-old groups were
somewhat similar; 5% (17% vs. 22%) in the English narrations and 9 % (23 vs. 32%) in the
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Table 7.1. Percentages of Evaluative Comments Based on Total Number of Clauses
Language English Romanian
Age 3yrs. 5yrs. Adult 3yrs. 5yrs. Adult
Total # of
Occurrences
35 62 198 42 86 240
Total # of
Clauses
202 274 551 178 269 532
Frequency 17% 22% 36% 23% 32% 45%
Romanian narrations. In the English adult narrations it was found that the relative increase
between 5-year-olds and adults was 14% (22%vs.36%) whereas in Romanian narrations the
relative increase was 13 % (32% vs. 45%) for the corresponding age groups. In general it can
be said that the Romanian speakers provided more evaluative comments than the English
speakers.
Table 7.2. presents the frequency of occurrence of the five types of evaluative
comments investigated in this study. Each category is discussed bellow along with and
appropriate example from the narrative data set.
(I) Causal connectors. This category included interclausal connectors such as
‘because (or cause)’, ‘since’, ‘that’, ‘that’s why’, ‘so’ and ‘to’. For example:
(1) E/Ad.-Pic.# 12: The boy falls from the tree because the owl came out of the hollowpart of a tree.
(II) Negative qualifiers. This category was comprised of any direct negation (e.g. ‘no’,
‘not’), as well as negative prefixes (e.g. ‘un’-). For example:
(2) E/Ad.-Pic # 14: The boy did not give up his search and called to the frog while on topof a rock.
(III) Distancing devices. This category included any lexical marker that suggested
non-commitment to the truth assessment of the proposition (e.g. ‘seems like’, ‘basically’,
‘looks like’, ‘kind of’, ‘probably’, etc. (see Lakoff, 1972, 1987; Kay 1983). For example:
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Table 7.2. Percentages of Evaluative Comments in English and Romanian
Language English Romanian
Type of
Connectives
3 yrs. 5 yrs. Adult 3 yrs. 5 yrs. Adult
Causal
Connectors
7(20%) 8(12.9%) 24(12%) 9(22%) 14(16.2%) 21(8.8%)
Negative
Qualifiers
10(28.5%) 13(20.9%) 27(13.6%) 13(30.1%) 20(23.2%) 28(11.6%)
Distancing
Devices
0 13(20.9%) 52(26.4%) 0 11(12.7%) 34(14.1%)
Frames of
Mind
10(28.5%) 19(30.6%) 79(40%) 13(31.9%) 28(32.5%) 109(45.5%)
Character of
Speech
8(23%) 9(14.5%) 16(8%) 7(16%) 16(18.6%) 48(20%)
Total 35(100%) 62 (100%) 198(100%) 42(100%) 89(100%) 240(100%)
(3) E/Ad.-Pic#5: The dog put his head in the jar as the little boy seems like he’s callingthe frog’s name.
(IV) Frames of mind. This category consisted of references to emotional states such as
‘being sad’, ‘happy’, ‘scared’, ‘curious’, ‘amazed’, ‘perturbed’, etc. Emotion verbs that
convey transitive actions which initiate emotion in others (e.g. ‘scare’, ‘frighten’) were also
included in this category.
(4) E/Ad.-Pic # 21: The boy looks over a log and sees the frog with a mate and he’shappy.
(V) Character of speech. Two types of character of speech were investigated in this
study. The first type was the direct statement of any character (e.g. the boy said: Where are
you Mr. Frog?). The second type was indirect speech as can be seen in the following
example:
(5) E/Ad.-Pic#20: The boy told his dog to be quiet and to listen.
Overall, as shown in Table 7.2, in both languages and across the three age groups the
usage of causal connectors and negative qualifier comments decreased as children grew
older. In contrast the frequency of usage of distancing devices and frames of mind evaluative
comments increased as age increased. The two languages revealed differences in the
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frequency of usage of character of speech comments. With English speakers the frequency of
usage of character of speech comments decreased from 3-year-olds to adults whereas with
Romanian speakers the opposite trend was found.
In the next section we explore discourse functions of each type of evaluative
comment and discuss their developmental patterns in more detail.
7.1.2 Discourse Functions of Evaluative Commentsand their Development
Evaluative comments contribute to the flow of the narration. Evaluative comments
incorporate the narrators’ point of how the characters are entangled within the sequence of
events that comprise a story. The evaluative comments allow the listener to understand what
role each event plays in the story plot line.
(I) Causal connectors. Explicit specification of cause and effect enables the narrator totell a more- flowing story. Cause and effect (that are not visible in the picture,therefore considered ‘evaluative’) can involve a character’s emotion. For example,the dog getting stuck in the jar can cause the boy to get mad.
In example (6), an adult English narrator specifies that the action of the boy climbing
(the cause) resulted in the buck becoming mad (the effect). The buck became irritated after
the boy climbed on his head and later the buck threw the child over the edge of the cliff.
(6) E/Ad. Pic# 15: Since the boy climbed on the buck’s head the buck got mad and threwthe boy off the cliff.
In example (7) the child’s emotion is an effect of the dog falling from the window
with the frog jar on his head.
(7) E/Ad. Pic# 6: The child got mad because the dog falls out of the window with the
‘frog’ jar over his head.
The use of causal connectors decreased from 3-year-olds to adults. One reason may
be because adults employed more diverse types of evaluative comments, i.e. distancing
devices were added to the types of evaluative comments by adults. Or, perhaps, children tried
harder to specify causes and effects that are not explicitly shown in the pictures. It is worth
mentioning that the use of causal connectors increased (Table 7.2.) from 3-year-olds to
adults. However the proportion of causal connectors decreased in relation to other types of
evaluative comments.
(II) Negative qualifiers. Comments with negative qualifiers experienced a decrease inboth languages and amongst the three age groups. With English speakers the
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frequency of usage of negative qualifiers decreased by 14.9% (28.5% vs. 13.6%)from 3-year-olds to adults. A similar trend was found with Romanian speakers inwhich the frequency of usage of negative qualifiers decreased by 18.5% (30.1% vs.11.6%) for the corresponding age groups. A plausible explanation is that at a veryearly age both Romanian and English speakers addressed the gamut of emotions byincluding what the characters do not feel. For example, in both languages 3-year-oldsused ‘not happy, not pleased, not satisfied’ instead of using ‘sad, mad, angry, anddiscontented’. This is the age when children acquire syntactic negation and thus usethe construction frequently. Moreover, the usage of negative qualifiers increased(Table 7.2.) from 3 years to adults. Only the proportion of negative qualifiersdecreased in relation to the other types of evaluative comments.
The decrease in the usage frequency of negative qualifiers in both languages as
children grew older may be ascribed to the fact that older children and adults became more
adept at identifying negative emotions that the characters were feeling. In example (8) the
boy is depicted as being ‘not happy’ because the dog fell. For example, an adult might use
‘sad’ instead of ‘not happy’.
(8) R/3yrs-Pic#7: Baiatul nu este fericit ca ciinele a cazut.
The boy is not happy because the dog fell.
(III) Distancing devices. Distancing devices were not used at all by 3-year-olds in eitherEnglish or Romanian. It was at 5 years of age that distancing devices began to appearand the frequency of usage increased from 5-year-olds to adults in both languages.With English speakers the frequency of usage of distancing devices increased by5.5% (20.9% vs. 26.4%) from the 5-year-olds to adults whereas with Romanianspeakers the increase was 1.4% (12.7% vs. 14.1%). The use of distancing devicesincreased from 5-year-olds to adults because of the development of cognitiveunderstanding of distancing with age.
In example (9), an adult English speaker employed the word ‘probably’ to describe
what the frog was doing in the pond. In this example ‘probably’ was a distancing device.
Example (9) E/Ad-Pic# 22: The boy is in the pond and he heard something, probably
the frog singing, and he’s all happy.
In example (10), ‘the dog seems to be friendly’ from the perspective of an adult
English speaker.
Example (10) E/Ad-Pic#6 and 7: The dog falls out of the window with the jar on his
head and the little boy just watches him fall still wondering where the frog is. The
little boy goes after the dog and he looks angry at the dog because he put that jar on
his head and fell out of the window but the dog seems to be friendly.
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(IV) Frames of mind. In both languages the data showed an increase from children toadults in the frequency of usage of comments on frames of mind. The Englishspeakers revealed an increase in the frequency of usage of frames of mind by 11.5%(28.5% vs. 40%) from 3-year-olds to adults whereas the corresponding Romanianspeakers showed an increase of 13.6% (31.9% vs. 45.5%). The usage of frame ofmind references increased with age. At a very early age children convey thenarratives based on a picture-by-picture description (without linking between thepictures) but as they grow older they tell stories that are coherent and flowing. Theydo so by employing different types of connectives to link the pictures.
Older children and adults expanded their awareness to emotion and thus employed a
vast range of frames of mind evaluative comments. Another plausible explanation is
cognitive development. Adults were able to distinguish how the frames of mind evaluative
remarks can be employed to link events.
In example (11) an adult English speaker asserts: ‘The dog is happy’ because he was
liberated from the weight of the jar which was stuck on his head.
Example (11) E/Ad-Pic#6: The dog is happy. He licks the boy and he finally got the
jar off his head.
In example (12) an adult Romanian speaker states: ‘the boy and the dog were happy’
because they were alive after being thrown in a pond.
Example (12) R/Ad-Pic# 19: Cind au cazut in riu catelul si baiatul erau fericiti ca
au scapat cu viata si cind vroiau sa iasa din riu au auzit un zgomot.
The boy and the dog were happy after they fell in the pond because they were alive
and when they wanted to come out of the pond they heard a sound.
The frequency of usage of frames of mind references increased as the style of
narration become more sophisticated and complex.
(V) Character of speech. Based on the empirical data it was found that with Englishspeakers the frequency of usage of character of speech comments decreased by 15%(23% vs. 8%) from the 3-year-olds to adults whereas with Romanian speakers therewas an increase of 4% (16% vs. 20%). It may be the case that the character of speechwas ubiquitous in Romanian narratives because the story was about an ‘investigation-look for’ the frog which required frequent calling and searching. In addition, the storyprovided a number of possibilities for dialogue between the boy and the dog indifferent pictures within the story. With the Romanian narrations it was found that thedog ‘said’ for example ‘ham-ham barking’ which imbued the dog withanthropomorphic characteristics.
In example (13) a Romanian adult describes picture #20. The boy attributes to the dog
anthropomorphic characteristics, telling him to be quiet and to look for the frog.
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Example (13) R/Ad-Pic#20 Copilul ia spus ciinelui sa fie linisiti si sa se uite si sa
gaseasca broasca.The child told the dog to be quiet and to look and find the frog.
Example (14) was narrated by a Romanian adult describing picture #19. An
interesting dialogue occurred between the boy and the dog. The boy told the dog to listen and
the dog in return responded that from a higher elevation he does not see anything.
Example (14) R/Ad-Pic# 19: Si copilul ia spus ciinelui sa asculte
Ciinele a raspuns: chiar de la inaltime nu vad nimic.
And the boy told the dog to listen The dog answer: even from a high elevation I don’t
see anything.
7.2 SUMMARY OF EVALUATIVE COMMENTS
The frequency of evaluative comments usage increased as children grew older,
reaching a pinnacle in the adult narrations in both languages (see Table 7.1.). Of the five
types of evaluative comments the usage of ‘frames of mind’ increased and reached the
highest level in adult narrations. The frequency of usage of ‘distancing devices’ also
increased as a function of age. The frames of mind references increase because as children
grew older their style of narration became more sophisticated and complex, changing from
telling a story picture- by-picture to a description that is fluid with links among the pictures.
As the story became more complex the older children and adults developed a cognitive
understanding of distancing themselves from the story.
On another hand, the frequency of usage of ‘negative qualifiers’ decreased in both
languages as children grew older and attained the lowest frequency of usage in adults. A
similar pattern was seen with ‘causal connector’ frequency of usage which decreased as
children grew older in both languages. The decrease in frequency of usage of ‘causal
connector’ from 3 years to adults is attributed to the fact that adults had more diverse types of
evaluative comments (i.e. distancing devices). The decrease in the frequency of usage of
‘negative qualifiers’’ as a function of age is ascribed to an increased awareness of the need to
be concise in story telling; to say ‘sad’ rather than ‘not happy’. In addition, older children and
adults became more adept at identifying positive emotions that the characters were feeling.
In contrast with these crosslinguistic similarities one difference between Romanian
and English narrations was that the ‘character of speech’ comments frequency of usage
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decreased in the English narrations as children grew older whereas in Romanian narrations
the opposite result was found. As pointed out earlier, the story depicted by pictures provided
a number of possibilities for dialogue and the data suggest that Romanian speakers exercised
these opportunities more than English speakers.
The overall increase of frequency of usage of evaluative comments suggests that there
arecognitive development changes from childhood to adulthood that are the result of a more
complex understanding of the relationship between emotion and events. The child’s
knowledge is gradually integrated into a more complex hierarchical relationship as she/he
ages.
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CHAPTER 8
CONCLUSION
In this final chapter the present findings on connectives, pronouns and evaluative
comments by Romanian and English speakers are discussed in terms of how they relate to the
findings from prior studies. Future areas of research are also discussed.
8.1 CONNECTIVES
According to Silva (1991), Berman and Slobin (1994) and Hickmann (2003) the
frequency of usage of connectives as cohesive devices increased as children grow older.
Cross-linguistic studies of child and adult discourse across different languages (Berman
1996, 1998; Berman and Slobin 1994; Hickman 2003) illustrated a more-complex use of
connectives from childhood through adulthood even for languages that display different
‘typological properties’. The results from the current study support these findings. The
present data indicate that overall usage of connectives as cohesive devices increased from 3-
year-olds to adults for both Romanian and English speakers. One notable difference between
the two languages was in the selection of the types of connectives. Romanian speakers
employed a greater repertoire of sequential connectives than English speakers. This can be
attributed to the larger variety of connectives for sequential events available in Romanian
compared to English. Below each of three categories of connectives (sequential,
simultaneous and listing) is discussed.
8.1.1 Connectives Employed for Sequential Events
The work of Bennett-Kastor (1986), Fletcher (1979) and Levy and Nelson (1994)
showed that the frequency of use of sequential connectives in discourse evolved gradually
with age. A study by Berman and Slobin (1994) that focused on five languages (English,
German, Spanish, Hebrew and Turkish) also found that the use of connectives employed for
sequential events increased as children grew older and reached maturity. The present study
supports these findings based on the empirical data acquired in Romanian and English. In the
Romanian narratives there was a net increase of 8.7% (57.6% vs. 66.3%) from the 3-years-
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old to adults in the frequency of use of temporal connectives whereas in the English
narratives the increase was 16.7% (52.3% vs. 69%) (Table 5.1).
Berman and Slobin (1994, p. 451) contend that the general development trend from 3-
year-olds to adults involved a change in the type of discourse from a picture-to-picture
description to a coherent narration. “This is correlated with a change in the type of cohesion
established in the text from local (clause-per-clause) to global organization. This in turn
implies the development of the ability to conceptualize a number of single states and events
as part of one complex overall event on the basis of their temporal relationships”.
According to Berman and Slobin (1994) 3-year-olds used the spatial deictic ‘here’
together with the marker of sequentiality ‘and’. It was suggested that by the age of 5 the
usage of sequentiality marker ‘and then’ was evident. Reinhart (1984) and Renner (1988)
found that around the age of 5 the spatial deictic ‘here/there’ are replaced with ‘and then’.
The results of the present study were consistent with the above findings. The data showed a
high frequency of usage of the sequential marker ‘and/si’ by the 3-year-olds in both
languages. Interestingly, both the 3-year-old and 5-year-old age groups intensively employed
the spatial deictic ‘here’ aici to indicate sequence (5.3). In the current study the highest
frequency of usage of the sequential marker ‘and then’ si atunci occurred in the 5-years-old
in both languages. The frequency of usage of ‘and then’ si atunci then decreased
dramatically from 5-year-olds to adults (by 36.3% for English narrations and 20.4% for
Romanian narrations as shown in Table 5.2). The reason for this decrease may be that adult
speakers of both languages avoided the usage of a redundant form ‘and then’ si atunci. These
findings were also consistent with Berman and Slobin (1994), Reinhart (1984), and Renner
(1988) studies.
The current study not only revealed a frequency increase in the use of sequential
markers but also a frequency increase in the use of lexical variety. The variety of markers
available in the ‘other’ category increased from 3-year-olds to adults in the Romanian
narratives (Table 5.2). Of particular interest was the large variety of sequential markers
employed in the Romanian narratives. In the Romanian adult narratives 14 markers of
sequentiality were employed with a very high dispersion among these forms. On the other
hand, in the English adult narratives nine markers of sequentiality were used but with a low
dispersion among these forms. Of the nine markers six were used only once (Table 5.3). The
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increase in the lexical variety of sequential markers with age indicated that the range of
available sequential marker developed with age and that the preference for a particular
connective changed over time. For example at an early age ‘and then’ was used but as
children grew older ‘after’ and ‘meanwhile’ became more prevalent.
Overall the frequency of usage of sequential markers in narrations increased over
time in both languages across the three age groups. This is always the case for other
connectives. For example, the corresponding frequency of usage of listing connectives
decreased in both languages from 3-year-olds to adults (Section 5.4).
8.1.2 Connectives Employed for Simultaneous Events
Expressions of simultaneity in discourse, for example by means of conjunctions such
as the English ‘when’ and ‘while’, are rarely employed prior to the age of 5 (e.g. Clancy,
Jacbobsen, & Silva, 1976; Feagans 1980; Silva, 1991). Silva (1991) found that with
increasing age English speakers marked simultaneity with different conjunctions. For
example, children showed a clear preference for ‘when’ in discourse whereas adults used
additional conjunctions (while and as). According to Berman and Slobin (1994, p. 449) the
first explicit marker of simultaneity employed by 3-year-old English speakers was the
subordinate conjunction ‘when’. The usage of ‘while’ by adults increased noticeably from
only a few occurrences by children to 24 occurrences by seven adults. Berman and Slobin
found that in Spanish and Turkish narrations the first explicit temporal marker pertinent to
simultaneity ‘when’ occurred in the narratives by 3-to-4-year-olds whereas in German and
Hebrew the 3-to-4-year-olds did not use ‘when’. The Silva (1991) study suggested that in
English the simultaneous marker ‘while’ was rare in the children’s narratives but that this
form was dominant in adult narrations.
The results of the present study supported the above findings in the previous research.
In the current study ‘when’ cind was also the first marker to express simultaneity that was
used by the 3-year-olds in both languages. In Romanian the first overt simultaneous marker
used is ‘when’ cind , similar to the finding for Spanish and Turkish 3-year-olds. English
speaking 3-year-olds also used ‘when’ to express simultaneity. At five years of age, children
expressed simultaneity with a new form ‘while’ in timp ce but used it only at a the rate of
2% in both languages (Table 5.4).This finding supports Silva’s (1991) assertion that ‘while’
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is rare in children narratives. In contrast ‘while’ in timp ce usage became predominant in both
the Romanian and English adult narrations. In both languages the frequency of usage of
‘while’ in timp ce was almost the same in adult narratives (54.2% in Romanian vs. 53.2% in
English as shown in Table 5.4). Berman and Slobin (1994) found 24 occurrences of ‘while’
in the seven adults’ English narratives with an average of 3.4 occurrences per narration. The
results from the current study were similar with those of Berman and Slobin (1994). There
were 33 occurrences of ‘while’ in ten adult English narrations with an average of 3.3 ‘while’
usages per narration. Interestingly, Romanian older children and adults not only employed
‘when’, and ‘while’ as simultaneous markers but also used a new form ‘at the same time’ in
acelas timp. As discussed in Chapter 5 Romanian speakers have a larger range of lexical
markers to select from than English speakers. In general, however, in both languages new
sequential markers were added as children grew older and reached a maximum number of
forms in adulthood.
8.1.3. Connectives Employed for Listing Events
Hickmann (2003) studied the usage of listing connectives such as ‘and’ and ‘or’ in
English, French, German and Chinese narrations. Berman and Slobin (1994) studied the use
of ‘and’ and ‘or’ in English, German, Spanish and Hebrew narrations. The data of Berman
and Slobin (1994) suggested that the usage of listing connectives by children were infrequent
and that the children who employed them did not acquire a sophisticated narrative flow. In
contrast, Hickmann’s (2003) data suggested that listing connectives occurred frequently
among different age groups (4, 7, 10 and adults). From a crosslinguistic perspective listing
connectives were used more frequently in English than in the other languages.
The results from the present study indicate that the frequency of usage of listing
connectives decreased from childhood to adulthood by both Romanian and English speakers
(Chapter 5), similar to the findings of Berman and Slobin (1994). It should be noted that the
data from this study provided at least partial support for Hickmann’s findings. The narrations
of the story utilized in this study required extensive usage of various sequential and
simultaneous connectives. As a result there was a decrease in the frequency of listing
connectives. Hickmann (2003) found that the usage of listening connectives was higher in
English narrations compared to the French and German narrations. The results of the present
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study also show that the English speakers used listing connectives more frequently than the
Romanian speakers with the exception of the 5-year-olds. In particular, adult English
narrations used listing connectives much more frequently than adult Romanian narrations.
The data from the present study indicated that in the case of the frequency of usage of listing
connectives the Romanian results are similar with the French and German results. An
additional study should be conducted to confirm this assertion.
8.2 PRONOUNS
Bamberg (1987) found that German 3-year-old and 5-year-old children rely on noun
phrases (NP) and pronoun forms to an equal extent whereas 9-years-olds and adults show a
radical drop in pronouns usage. Bamberg also found that the frequency of usage of nouns in
the subject position increased slightly from childhood to adulthood. In addition there was a
definite increase with age in the use of a null subject for the main story characters. The 3-
year-old German children used the null subject in 5% of all clauses that have a main story
character in the subject position whereas German adults used the null subject in 22% of such
cases. According to Berman and Slobin (1994) null subject usage in English narratives was
not as frequent as the usage in other languages researched in their study. Berman and Slobin
(1994, p. 182) suggested that English speakers used the “null subject as a local grammatical
device, whereas mature narrators in other languages employ it as a means of organizing
chunks of discourse with a shared topic”.
The results from the present study support the previous findings of both Bamberg
(1987) and Berman and Slobin (1994). Frequency of usage of noun phrases increased with
age whereas usage of pronouns decreased with age from childhood to adulthood in both
Romanian and English.
The current study showed an increase in the frequency of usage of nouns in the
subject position from 53.9% by 3-year-old speakers to 58.4% by adults in the Romanian
narratives and from 59.5% to 71% by the same corresponding age groups in the English
narratives (Table 6.2). It should be noted that the increase in the frequency of usage of nouns
as subjects is much higher in the English narratives (an increase of 11.5%) than in the
Romanian narratives (an increase of 4.5%). One explanation for the difference is that there is
an increase of null subjects in the Romanian narratives. The 3-year-old Romanian children
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used null subjects in 6.1% of all clauses that have a main character in the subject position.
The percentage of null subjects leaped to 20% in the narratives by Romanian adults (Table
6.2). These results are comparable with Bamberg’s (1987) data for German narratives.
Interestingly, the usage of null subjects decreased from childhood to adulthood in English
narratives. This result supported the findings of Berman and Slobin (1994) that the usage of
null subjects found in the English stories were not as frequent as in the other languages
researched in their study.
As Bamberg (1987) asserted, the null forms can be employed if a character has been
clearly established in the immediate preceding clause. The high frequency of null subject
employed in the narratives of German adults (22%) and in the narratives of Romanian adults
(20%) suggest that such a discourse function for null subject is more salient and thus more
widely utilized in German and Romanian than in English.
Berman and Slobin (1994) and Bamberg (1997) maintained that younger children
prefer to use pronoun for the protagonist of a story. However, the results of the present study
differed from those of their studies. In both the Romanian and English narratives the 3-year-
old speakers employed nouns with a higher frequency than pronouns (53.9% vs. 39.8% for
the Romanian narrative and 59.5% vs. 40.5% for the English narrative as shown in Table 6.2)
in the subject position. Moreover the adults in both languages employed a higher frequency
of nouns than pronouns to refer to the boy (71% vs. 59% for the Romanian narrative and
76% vs. 52% for the English narratives as shown in Table 6.9). One explanation may be that
full nouns were used not only to reintroduce a character that had been temporally out of focus
but also to maintain the identity of that character throughout the discourse. In the ‘frog’ story
many other characters were mentioned such as an owl, a gopher, and a buck depending on
which picture was being described. As a result the main character had to be reintroduced in
order to maintain its identity in the discourse. In the present study the protagonist was mainly
referred to by a noun. The main character had to be reintroduced not only after being
temporally out of focus but also at any time when the main character was replaced in the
foreground by other characters. The main protagonist of the story was perceived to be the
‘boy’ by all age groups of English speakers and 3-year-old and 5-year-old Romanian
speakers whereas the dual ‘the boy and the dog’ was viewed as the main character by
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Romanian adult speakers. The older Romanian speakers may have ascribed anthropomorphic
characteristics to the dog whereas the 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds did not.
Beliavsky (2003) found that as children grow older the usage of pronominal
references becomes more cohesive and as result less ambiguous. Berman and Slobin (1994)
asserted that only the adult narrators present complex events without ambiguity because
adults can cope more successfully with the cognitive, communicative and linguistic systems
that are required to maintain cohesion in discourse. The data from this study supported these
findings entirely. It was found that the frequency of usage of ambiguous referents decreased
in both languages from early childhood to adulthood. The frequency of usage of ambiguous
referents in the Romanian narratives decreased from 14% by 3-year-olds to 1.1% by adults
(Table 6.3 and Table 6.5). In the English narratives ambiguity decreased from 14% to 4% for
the corresponding age groups (Table 6.6 and Table 6.8). Thus, as was show in previous
studies, as children grow older the usage of pronominal references becomes more cohesive.
The highest level of cohesion and coherence was achieved in the adult narratives.
Overall the pronoun usage decreased while the usage of noun phrases increased with
age in both languages. It is likely that young children realized that using pronouns was less
cognitively taxing than using full noun phrases. Moreover, young children use pronouns as
pointing devices rather than as discourse devices to a character in the picture. Adult
narratives became more sophisticated and complex.
8.3 EVALUATIVE COMMENTS
Studies conducted by Bamberg and Damrad-Frye (1991) indicated that there were
developmental patterns in the frequency of usage of evaluative comments. Their results
showed that 5-year-old English speakers used the five categories of evaluative comments
(casual connectors, distancing devices, negative qualifiers, character of speech and frames of
mind) almost evenly. In contrast, adults revealed a distinctive preference for the frames of
mind evaluations. The results of the present study supported the findings of Bamberg and
Damrad-Frye (1991) only partially.
The Bamberg and Damrad-Frye’s (1991) data set did not include 3-year-old speakers.
Therefore, no comparison could be made between Bamberg and Damrad-Frye’s results and
the current findings for 3-year-old Romanian and English children. However, the data from
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the 5-year-old narrators in this study could be compared to Bamberg and Damrad-Frye’s
findings, and the present data did not support the view that all five categories are used
evenly. Although 5-year-olds employed all five lexical categories they clearly showed a
preference for frames of mind, followed by negative qualifiers. Bamberg and Damrad-Frye
(1991) did find a preference in the usage of ‘frames of mind’ in adult speakers. The results of
Romanian and English narratives confirmed this finding in that the highest frequency of
usage in adults’ narrations was the ‘frames of mind’ category (45% in Romanian vs. 40% in
English as shown in Table 7.2).
There was a crosslinguistic difference in the category employed with the second
highest frequency. The second highest frequency category was ‘character of speech’ in the
Romanian adult narratives whereas it was ‘distancing devices’ in the English adult narratives.
As discussed in Chapter 7 the ‘character of speech’ usage was prevalent in the adult
Romanian narratives because the story was about a search, which required frequent calling.
In addition many pictures appeared to allow a dialogue between the boy and the dog. The
adult narrations in English, on the other hand utilized more ‘distancing devices’. Distancing
devices (such as ‘seems, probably, looks like’) were frequently employed in English
narratives. Use of such devices allows listeners to make their own decision concerning what
they should think.
Bamberg and Damrad-Frye (1991) found that adults employed the evaluative
comments three times more often than 5-year-olds. This was generally supported by the
present data in both the Romanian and English narratives. The use of evaluative comments
by Romanian speakers increased from 89 instances by 5-year-olds to 240 instances by the
adults. The use of evaluative comments by English speakers increased from 62 to 198
instances for the corresponding age groups (Table 7.2).
The frequency of evaluative comments usage increased as children grew older,
reaching a pinnacle in the adult narrations in both languages. Of the five types of evaluative
comments the usage of ‘frames of mind’ increased because as children grew older their
manner of narrations became more refined and intricate, changing from telling a story
picture-by-picture to a narrative that is fluid with links among the pictures. Thus, the
frequency of usage of ‘negative qualifiers’ decreased as a function of age because the older
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children and adults became more skilled at employing alternative words to express what the
characters were feeling.
8.4 IMPLICATIONS
The results of the current study have demonstrated that Romanian and English, which
are both Indo-European languages, shared both similarities and differences with regard to
how cohesive devices are employed in narration.
This research effort revealed that the choice of cohesive devices changed as the
linguistic capabilities of the native speakers progressed with age. From early childhood to
adulthood the first simultaneous marker acquired in both languages was ‘when’ which later
was expanded to include ‘while’. The use of listing connectives decreased in both languages
from childhood to adulthood as the narrative structure became more complex and
sophisticated. Romanian and English speakers, developed along similar lines with respect to
the same linguistic elements.
As stated previously the use of the full noun phrase in the subject position increased
from childhood to adulthood in both languages. Consequently the frequency of pronoun used
in the subject position decreased as children grew older. The previously cited literature
repeatedly reported that the frequency of ambiguous use of pronouns decreased from
childhood to adulthood. Older children and adults are able to cope more successfully with the
cognitive, communicative and linguistic systems that are required to maintain cohesion in
narratives.
A very crucial finding is that for both the Romanian and English speakers the
cohesive devices employed in the narrations changed from early childhood to adulthood.
Only adults possessed a level of sophistication sufficient to deal with the complex entangled
connections among cognitive, communicative and linguistic systems. As an example the
current study found that the ‘frame of mind’ evaluative comments were employed three times
more often by adults than by 5-year-olds in both Romanian and English languages.
Berman and Slobin (1994) suggested that cognitive development precedes linguistic
development in all languages. In the present study this finding was evident since sequential
and simultaneous connectives were acquired in a linear manner. The usage of ‘and’ in place
of ‘and then’ increased as children matured in both language. A change in the preferred form
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for a particular function (e.g. simultaneity) was also observed when new forms were acquired
for the same function. The use of new linguistic markers activated cognitive development
because they facilitated different ways of expressing the same function.
There are several recommendations for future studies. Although the data set acquired
for this study was comparable to that of previous published studies nonetheless larger sample
populations are needed to reduce statistical uncertainties. It would be preferable to sample
like-populations in terms of not only comparable age groups but also comparable
environmental background (education level for example).
Future studies should also investigate the cognitive processes involved in oral
narrative production versus written text production within the same group. This could
provide insights in relation to the textual constraints (for example how to take into account
the availability of the referent’s trace in short-term-memory).
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