Ruth A. Berman

Comparing Narrative and Expository Text Construction across Adolescence: A Developmental Paradox.

Abstract In this study we argue that narrative storytelling and expository discussion, as 2 distinct discourse genres, differ both in linguistic expression and in their underlying principles of organization—schema-based in narratives and category-based in exposition. Innovative analyses applied to 160 personal-experience narratives and expository essays written by schoolchildren, adolescents, and adults on the shared topic of interpersonal conflict point to certain apparently contradictory facts about developing discourse abilities in the 2 genres. For example, genre differentiation is established early on (even the youngest children distinguish between the 2 types of discourse), but with age, participants tend to diverge from genre-typical content (by including expository-type generalizations in narratives and narrative-like incidents in expository texts). Also, across age groups, in local linguistic expression, participants use more advanced vocabulary and grammar in expository than in narrative texts, but in global-level discourse organization, they achieve command of expository text construction only in adolescence, whereas the principles governing narratives are established by middle childhood. We suggest that this apparent paradox can be accounted for by several interlocking factors: cognitive and linguistic development, increased experience with different varieties of discourse, and the communicative context in which a piece of discourse is produced.

On the ability to relate events in narrative

The study concerns how children of different ages talk about events that form part of an ongoing narrative. The data base is a set of stories told by 112 Hebrew speakers—preschoolers aged 3 to 5, schoolchildren aged 7 to 12, and a group of adults—relating the contents of a picture booklet depicting the adventures of a boy and a dog in search of their missing frog. Analysis of text length, number of references to plot‐advancing events and of plot summations, types of connectivity markers, and use of verb tense revealed that most 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds and some 5‐year‐olds described each picture in isolation, whereas older children chained the events sequentially in relation to an overall plot line. Descriptions at the micro‐level of a single scene show similar developmental trends to those found at the macro‐level of the overall story line. A major cutoff point emerges between the narratives of preschoolers and those of children from age 7 up. Narrators at the two extremes—immature 3‐year‐olds and fully mature...

The psycholinguistics of developing text construction

This paper outlines functionally motivated quantifiable criteria for characterizing different facets of discourse--global-level principles, categories of referential content, clause-linking complex syntax, local linguistic expression and overall discourse stance--in relation to the variables of development, genre and modality. Concern is with later, school-age language development, in the conviction that the long developmental route of language acquisition can profitably be examined in the context of extended discourse. Findings are reviewed from a cross-linguistic project that elicited narrative and expository texts in both speech and writing at four age groups: (9-10 years, 12-13, 16-17 and adults). Clear developmental patterns emerge from middle childhood to adulthood, with significant shifts in adolescence; global-level text organization is mastered earlier in narratives than in expository essays, but the latter promote more advanced use of local-level lexicon and syntax; and spoken texts are more spread out than their denser written counterparts in clause-linkage, referential content and lexical usage. These and other findings are discussed in terms of the growth and reorganization of knowledge about types of discourse and text-embedded language use.

Types of linguistic knowledge: interpreting and producing compound nouns *

The present study examined the types of linguistic knowledge that affect childrens ability to understand and produce novel compounds in Hebrew. Sixty children aged 3;0–9;0, and 12 adults, were asked to interpret and to produce novel Noun + Noun compounds. Their comprehension was in advance of their production. In comprehension, morphological form of head nouns had little effect: from age four, children did equally well on all the compound forms tested; they identified head nouns and also possible relations between heads and their modifiers. In production, though, knowledge of morphological form was crucial. The fewer the changes children had to make in the forms of head nouns, the earlier they mastered that compound pattern. Finally, children who produced novel compounds correctly were also able to interpret novel compounds, but not vice versa.

Verb-pattern alternation: the interface of morphology, syntax, and semantics in Hebrew child language

Verb-pattern alternation in Hebrew is characterized in terms of consonantal roots associated with a fixed set of morphological patterns in the lexicalized expression of categories such as causative, reflexive, inchoative and passive. It is assumed that at first Hebrew-speaking children will use a verb-root in one invariant pattern, and hence may also neutralize required morpho-semantic distinctions. Observational and experimental data from children aged 2; 6 to 5; 6 reveal a development in linguistic control of the system from non-alternation to near-mastery, with the concepts of causativity and distinctions in transitivity being lexicalized earlier than others. These findings are discussed in terms of the interplay between linguistic and conceptual development, and the evidence from language acquisition for linguistic theory.

Linguistic indicators of inter-genre differentiation in later language development

The paper examines two types of texts, personal experience narratives and expository discussions, dealing with the shared theme of interpersonal conflict. Both were produced by the same 80 subjects, participants in a crosslinguistic study on developing literacy: gradeschoolers aged 9.0 to 10.0, twelve-to-thirteen-year-old junior high school students, sixteen-to-seventeen-year-old high school students, and graduate-level university students. The study reported here aims to demonstrate that inter-genre differentiation is evident from an early age and is reflected by distinct forms of expression across different interlocking linguistic systems. In keeping with the focus on relations between linguistic forms and discourse functions that motivates our study, we further aim to show how particular grammatical elements can fulfil different discourse functions across development. To this end, we analysed several different lexical and morphosyntactic constructions in 160 Hebrew-language texts as diagnostic of inter-genre distinctiveness: subjectless constructions; verbless copular clauses; verb types and the temporal categories of verb tense and mood, including lexical expressions of modality in the two genres. Results show that narratives are clearly distinguished from expository texts along all these dimensions; these distinctions are evident from the youngest age group we considered; and with age, inter-genre differentiation emerges as more moderately dichotomous. We concluded from this that maturely proficient text construction is able to combine expository-type generalizations with narrative event-description and to intersperse narrative-type illustrative episodes with expository formulation of ideas.

Developing Noun Phrase Complexity at School Age: A Text-Embedded Cross-Linguistic Analysis

Development of noun phrase structure and use is analyzed as an important facet of syntactic acquisition from middle childhood to adolescence. Noun phrases occurring in narrative and expository texts produced in both speech and writing by 96 native speakers of English and Hebrew were identified and examined by a set of specially devised criteria including length in words, syntactic depth, abstractness of head nouns, and nature of modifiers. Results reveal a clear and consistent developmental increment in NP complexity from age 9 to 12, and particularly from age 16 years; written expository texts emerge as a favored site for use of syntactically complex constructions; and nominal elements play a more central role in the discursive syntax of Hebrew than English. Findings are discussed in terms of the interplay between psycholinguistic factors of cognitive processing constraints and the impact of increased literacy in later language development.

Form and Function in Introducing Narrative and Expository Texts: A Developmental Perspective

This article considers how children and young people conceptualize and construct different types of texts. The initial parts of narrative and expository texts written by grade-schoolers, adolescents, and adults were analyzed, on the assumption that the opening to a piece of discourse serves as a window on the text as a whole. Analysis was conducted on 3 dimensions: discourse functions—providing background in narratives and introducing the topic in expository texts; organizational pivot—temporality in narratives and generality in expository texts; and linguistic forms—verb tense and semantics in narratives and nominal structure and content in expository texts. The openings to narrative texts emerge as better constructed at an earlier age than in expository texts, but fully proficient openings are a late development in both cases. We attribute this to the fact that, for younger children, the spoken modality and narrative mode of discourse predominate; however, with age and greater literacy, expository discussion increasingly shapes the way people think and give written expression to their thoughts.

Information Density in the Development of Spoken and Written Narratives in English and Hebrew

This study compares what we term information density in spoken versus written discourse by distinguishing between 2 broad classes of material in narrative texts: narrative information as conveyed through three types of propositional content—events, descriptions, and interpretations (Berman, 1997)—and ancillary information as conveyed by nonnovel, nonreferential, or nonnarrative material. One hundred sixty texts were analyzed across the variables of modality (writing, speech), development (4th-, 7th-, and 11th-grade students compared with adults), and language (English, Hebrew). Calculation of information density revealed no significant differences between languages, indicating that the analysis has general applicability. Increase in narrative information proved to be a function of modality rather than age, because, across the population, spoken texts contained far more ancillary material than written. By contrast, the nature of narrative content changed as a function of development, with interpretive material increasing with age. The study thus underscores 2 key features of narrative text construction: Modality has a distinct effect on information density, and, with age, the core of narrative information (events and descriptions) becomes fleshed out by interpretive and story-external elements.

The emergence of grammar: early verbs and beyond

The paper examines the first twenty verb-forms recorded for six Hebrew-speaking children aged between 1;2 and 2;1, and how they evolve into fully inflected verbs for three of these children. Discussion focuses first on what word-forms children initially select for the verbs they produce, what role these forms play in childrens emergent grammar, and how emergent grammar is reflected in the acquisition of fully inflected forms of verbs. Childrens early verb repertoire indicates that they possess a strong basis for moving into the expression of a variety of semantic roles and the syntax of a range of different verb-argument structures. On the other hand, childrens initial use of verbs demonstrates that they still need to acquire considerable language-particular grammatical knowledge in order to encode such relations explicitly. This language-particular knowledge demonstrates a clear pattern of acquisition, in which aspect precedes inflectional marking for gender, followed by tense, and then by person.