Referent introductions in Spanish narratives as a function of contextual constraints: a crosslinguistic perspective

Abstract

This study investigates referent introductions in narratives produced by Spanish children of 6, 9 and 11 years and adults in two situations, where they either could assume mutual background knowledge of the narrated content (Situation MK) or could not make this assumption (Situation NMK), while holding this content constant by means of a picture book. Overall, situation NMK elicits more indefinite first mentions than situation MK and this effect is more marked for the main characters than for the secondary ones. The developmental pattern indicates that 9 years is the critical age at which Spanish children begin to use more indefinite first mentions in both situations. For all animate referents, Spanish children's and adults' introductions occur significantly more often in VN clause structures than in NV ones. 104 communicative device, and contextual, such as shared knowledge, with special attention to their interaction during development.

Character introduction in two languages: Its development in the stories of a Spanish-English bilingual child age 6;11–10;11

“…On the other hand, in Spanish casual speech, Bentivoglio and Weber (1986) and Bentivoglio (1993) show adult Spanish speakers' strong preference for introducing new referents in postverbal position. Furthermore, Kail and Sánchez y López (1997) have also found, at all ages, a strong preference to introduce characters in postverbal position in their study of narratives from Spanish monolingual subjects (ages 6, 9, 11 and adults).…”

“…(Mayer, 1969) was chosen as elicitation material due to the high number of different characters that need to be introduced in the story. This story has repeatedly been used in studies of narrative development in monolingual children (Bamberg, 1987;Kail and Hickmann, 1992;Berman and Slobin, 1994;Kail and Sánchez y López, 1997). The book contains 24 pictures in which a boy and his dog have a pet frog, which escapes one night from the jar where it was kept.…”

“…The context in which the material was collected is that of mutual knowledge, that is, both the child and the teacher share the information contained in the pictures. Some studies (Kail and Hickmann, 1992;Kail and Sánchez y López, 1997) have considered the impact that the situation of mutual knowledge (usually referred to as situation MK) has on the use of indefinite forms as compared with the situation of non-mutual knowledge (or NMK). Although the percentage of indefinite forms is higher in the NMK context, nevertheless, adults are able to distance themselves from the pictures, and to establish the narrative discourse as the new context in which referring expressions are anchored.…”

Does assumed knowledgeableness cause differences in stories told by children from different cultural groups?

“…We will refer to this form of common ground as established knowledgeableness (Lee : 41). A number of studies (Menig‐Peterson ; Hudson and Shapiro ; Kail and Hickmann ; Kail and Sanchez y Lopez ) have shown that even 6 year olds take this established knowledgeableness into account when telling stories. In addition to this personal common ground, storytellers may use communal common ground to tailor their stories.…”

The effect of a shared visual context during the presentation of elicitation stimuli on the narratives of young children with and without language impairment

“…Sonnenschein (1986:552) found that school-age children will provide more redundant information, in other words, additional explanations, to unfamiliar listeners to support listener understanding. Several studies indicated that referencing, in particular, will be influenced by shared knowledge with the listener (e.g., Kail and Hickmann 1992;Kail and Lopez 1997). It was found that when children and listeners could both see the picture, children were less likely to introduce referents.…”