Dissertation Research: The Development of the Expression ofTime and Event in Narrative

摘要 当孩子们五岁的时候，他们会使用许多 和成年人一样的语言和手势 在故事中标出事件之间的关系。 这一事实 导致许多研究叙事技巧的研究者假设 事件的概念。 目前的研究提出的问题是， 不骗人，孩子和大人的语言是否相似 意味着以完全不同的方式运作。 在研究的第一阶段， 4-5，7-8和10-11将观看一个简短的卡通，然后叙述 把故事讲给同龄的听众听 分析了口头和 手势转录将集中在语言手段， 在叙事中传达时间结构，以及使用非 成年人在他们的大脑中 介绍和评论叙事事件。 在第二 阶段，相同的主题将与剧照从 刺激漫画，并要求“组的图片属于 一起”。 事件分组将与帧进行比较- 按帧分析的刺激卡通，并与每个 受试者对时间连接词的选择和 节拍和指示手势。 通过这种方式，本研究开始探索儿童如何 在叙述中传达事件的相互关系， 语言和手势手段，并有助于 理解认知能力和 和语言技能在叙事能力的发展。

ABSTRACT By the time children are five years old, they are using many of the same linguistic and gestural devices that adults do to mark the relationship between events in a story. This fact has lead many researchers on narrative skills to presuppose the notion of event. The present study asks whether appearances may not be deceiving; whether children and adult's similar linguistic means function in fundamentally different ways. In the first phase of the study adults and children aged 4-5, 7-8, and 10-11 will watch a short cartoon and then narrate the story to a same-age listener. Analyses of verbal and gestural transcripts will focus on the linguistic devices for conveying temporal structure in narrative, and on the use of non- representational gestures which adults produce when they are introducing and commenting on narrative events. In the second phase, the same subjects will be presented with stills from the stimulus cartoon and asked to "group the pictures that belong together". Event groupings will be compared with a frame- by-frame analysis of the stimulus cartoon, and with each subject's choice of temporal conjunctions and placement of beats and deictic gestures. In this way, this study begins to find out how children convey the interrelationship of events in narrative with the linguistic and gestural means at their disposal, and contributes to an understanding of the interaction between cognitive ability and linguistic skills in the development of narrative competence.