1. NARRATIVE ABILITIES OF TWO BILINGUAL SIBLING PAIRS IN THEIR WEAK LANGUAGE
Stefan Rathert
Kahramanmaras Sutcu Imam University, Turkey
Introduction
Data Preparation and Analysis
Narrative ability:
requires global level organisation to produce stretches of language in coherent sequence;
indicates literacy level of speaker;
is acquired from early childhood up to adulthood (Berman, 2001)
Analysis of narratives focuses on:
microstructure (productivity, lexical diversity, syntactic complexity) (Sjolander, Trautman & Wetherby, 2003);
macrostructure (organisation beyond utterance level, inclusion of episodes and story grammar components) (Westby, 1992).
Bilingual first language acquisition is characterized by:
emergence of a weak language/areas of slower development, particular in morphosyntax, due to contextual factors (language pair, reduced exposition to non-dominant language) (Guttiérrez-Clellen, 2002);
crosslinguistic influence at syntax-pragmatics interface (Hulk & Müller, 2000)
Transcription and preparation of narrative data for analysis:
transcription without pseudo-phonetic characterization;
exclusion of mazes (nonlinguistic vocalization, false starts, speech disruptions);
segmentation into T-units;
establishing of number of T-units and number of words with omission of T-unit initial co-ordinating conjunctions; counting of complex sentences (consisting of one main clause and at least one subordinate clause).
Data analysis:
syntactic complexity: calculation of number of words per T-unit and number of complex sentences per T-units;
deviant language: identification of target deviant verb forms and noun phrases and calculation of frequency per T-unit.
Results
Syntactic complexity
Figure 1: Number of words per T-unit Figure 2: Number of complex sentences per T-unit
Figures 1 and 2 show that the children in sibling pair 1 display a higher degree of syntactic complexity. Remarkably, the younger sibling in pair 1 uses complex sentences more frequently than the older sibling in pair 2. The siblings in pair 1 produce remarkably more words (KP: 529; EJ: 559) than those in sibling pair 2 (CK: 365; BA: 335).
Deviant verb forms and noun phrases
Figure 3: Number of deviant verb forms per T-unit Figure 4: Number of deviant noun phrases per T-unit
Figures 3 and 4 show that sibling pair 2 is more accurate in morphosyntax, particularly in avoiding target-deviant noun phrases.
Objectives
This study aims to investigate the narrative ability of two Turkish-German bilingual sibling pairs retelling a story in their weak language (German) with a focus on microstructure. It seeks to answer the following research questions:
What are the participants’ narrative abilities as evidenced by syntactic complexity (number of words per T-unit and number of complex sentences based on T-units);
How many target-deviant verb forms and noun phrases per T-unit are produced by the participants?
Participants
Table 1: Participants of the study
All participants live in the same city in the southeast of Turkey. The children’s fathers are German native speakers, and their mothers are Turkish native speakers. The environmental language is Turkish. German has been acquired from birth on mainly through language contact with their fathers (one person-one language strategy) and siblings, and exposition to German TV, books and Internet sites.
Sibling pair 1
Sibling pair 2
Name
Age
Sex KP
8;4
male CK
8;3
female EJ
12;2 BA
12;3
Narration Elicitation Task
Conclusions
Participants are shown a video containing a short film (duration: 8:10 minutes) telling the tale Frau Holle (Mother Hulda) in German. The video consists of a sequence of single static images. A voice-over narrator tells the story and direct speech of the characters is given by separate speakers.
Immediately after showing the video, the participants retell the story in German. The retells are audio-recorded.
The results reveal that
differences in narrative abilities exist rather between sibling pairs than age groups;
sibling pair 1 displays a higher level of syntactic complexity;
sibling pair 2 produces more accurate, however remarkably less language.
The results suggest that
individual differences and home context might be more crucial for development of narrative ability than age (Aksu-Koç, 2005);
linguistic deficiency in morphosyntax is an expectable profile effect of bilinguals (Oller, Pearson & Cobo-Lewis, 2007), which, however, can be compensated in narration when other abilities are more developed.
References:
Aksu-Koç, A. (2005) Role of the home context in relations between narrative abilities and literacy practices. In: Ravid, D. & Bat-Zeev Shyldkrot, H. (Eds.), Perspectives on Language and Language Development. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Berman, R. A. (2001). Crosslinguistic perspectives on narrative development. Epilogue. In L. Verhoeven & S. Strömqvist, (Eds.) Narrative development in a multilingual context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins,
Guttiérrez-Clellen, V. (2002). Narratives in two languages: Assessing performance of bilingual children. Linguistics and Education, 13,
Hulk, A. & Müller, N. (2000). Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3(3),
Sjolander, M. L., Trautman, L. S., & Wetherby, A. M. (2003). A comparison of narrative structure between Swedish-speaking and English-speaking preschoolers. Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders 30,
Westby, C. (1992). Narrative analysis. In Secord, W. A., & Damico, J. S. (Eds.) Best practices in school speech-language pathology: Descriptive/nonstandardized language assessment, San Antonio, TX: Psychological.