Anaphoric reference in oral narratives of 6- and 7-year-old children

The present study investigates 6- to 7-year-old children's ability to use anaphoric pronominal reference in oral narratives. For frequency of anaphoric pronoun use, there appears to be a significant difference between child and adult performance. Although children and adults generally refer to the same categories of noun referents, children evidence a greater number of noun referents in their narratives. Age was found to be a significant factor for appropriate use of nominals and pronominals with respect to their function within narratives. Children tend to rely heavily on using pronominals to serve both in maintaining reference (correct usage) as well as switching reference (incorrect usage) to characters and objects in stories. Children are significantly better at appropriate usage of nominals and pronominals for the unstructured conversational narrative than for the structured narrative of story retelling. Within-group comparison of child subjects according to their scores on the Peabody Individual Achievement Test indicate that even small differences in reading ability were significantly related to increases in appropriate functional usage of nominals and pronominals in narratives.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Speech and Hearing Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Wiley, Harolynn Marie Okita

Contributors dc:contributor

• Johnson, Cynthia J.

• Health Sciences, Speech Pathology
• Psychology, Developmental

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1991 Wiley, Harolynn Marie Okita

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9211035
(UMI)AAI9211035

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/23447