L1 AND L2 NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT IN EMERGENT BILINGUALS
by
Sun Hwa Baek
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirementsfor the degree of Master of Arts
Graduate Department of Applied Psychology and Human DevelopmentOntario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto
© Copyright by Sun Hwa Baek (2015)
ii
L1 AND L2 NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT IN EMERGENT BILINGUALS
Master of Arts (2015)
Sun Hwa Baek
Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development
University of Toronto
Abstract
This study investigated the development of oral narrative production in L1 and L2 in
English-Hebrew emergent bilingual children and the associations between narrative abilities in
both languages. Participants included 33 younger cohort in JK and 24 older cohort in SK. The
children’s scripts (general descriptions about events) were elicited at two time points over one
year. The study included various measures of macro and micro dimensions of narratives that
reveal cognitive and linguistic development. Children were able to produce generalized scripts
in both languages. L1 narratives have been developing on various complexity indices of macro
and micro dimensions, while emergent L2 has been developing on narrative productivity. A
cross-linguistic association was noted at the end of grade1 with increased Hebrew language
proficiency. The findings suggest that cross-linguistic relations may be independent of
linguistic distance. Educational and clinical implications were discussed.
iii
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my wonderful supervisor, Dr. Esther
Geva, who provided careful guidance and endless encouragement throughout the thesis
progress. Although it took a long time for me to finish the thesis, she was patient and motivated
me continuously. Without her help, this thesis would not have been possible. I would also like
to thank my second reader, Dr. Becky Xi Chen for giving me invaluable comments which
helped to clarify my findings.
I owe my deepest gratitude to Dr. Monique Herbert, and my colleagues, Emiko Koyama
and Norman Himel, who shared their expertise and gave me suggestions when I was struggling
with statistics. In addition, I am grateful to Vaunam Venkadasalam for reading through my
thesis and editing when appropriate.
My sincere thanks go to my husband, Hoon, as well as my lovely daughter Sydney, who
endured this whole process and helped me focus on my work. I also would like to thank my
parents, who pray for me diligently.
Last but not the least, I thank the children who participated in the study for giving me an
opportunity to learn and write a thesis about narrative development in children.
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Table of Contents
Abstract .................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. iii
Table of Contents..................................................................................................................... iv
List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ v
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1
Methodology............................................................................................................................13
Participants...........................................................................................................................13
Measures ..............................................................................................................................14
Coding System .....................................................................................................................17
Results .....................................................................................................................................22
The pattern of change in L1 ..................................................................................................23
The pattern of change in L2 Narratives .................................................................................24
Qualitative investigations into the development of scripts.....................................................25
Cross-linguistic relations between narratives in L1 and L2 at Time 1 and Time 2 .................29
Discussion................................................................................................................................29
References ...............................................................................................................................38
v
List of Tables
Table 1. Descriptive statistics for participants by Age and Gender............................................43
Table 2. Variables name and an example for each measure.......................................................44
Table 3. Distributions and the McNemar test results for categorical variables in the L1 (English)
for both cohorts.................................................................................................................45
Table 4. Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon or the Sign test Results for continuous
variables in English for the younger cohort .......................................................................46
Table 5. Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon or the Sign test Results for continuous
variables in English for the older cohort ............................................................................47
Table 6. Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon or the sign test Results for continuous variables
in Hebrew for the younger cohort......................................................................................48
Table 7. Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon or the sign test Results for continuous variables
in Hebrew for the older cohort...........................................................................................49
Table 8. Intercorrelations among narrative measures in the L1 and L2 at Time 2 for the younger
cohort................................................................................................................................50
Table 9. Intercorrelations among narrative measures in the L1 and L2 at Time 2 for the older
cohort................................................................................................................................51
1
INTRODUCTION
Children’s narrative abilities not only provide rich information about cognitive and
linguistic development (Applebee, 1978; Berman, 1995, 1996; Berman & Slobin, 1994;
Bamberg, 1987), but they correlate with literacy skills, later academic success (e.g., Catts,
Hogan, & Fey, 2003; Feagans & Appelbaum, 1986; Geva & Olson, 1983; Griffin, Hemphill,
Camp, & Wolf, 2004; McCardle, Scarborough, & Catts, 2001; Scarborough, 2001; Snow,
Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Tabors, Snow, & Dickinson, 2001) and social skills (e.g., Berman &
Slobin, 1994; Richner & Nicolopolou, 2001; Snow & Dickinson, 1990).
Due to the significance of narrative abilities in children, there has been a great deal of
research into narrative development in monolingual children and there is now a growing
literature on narratives in bilingual children (e.g., Fiestas & Peña, 2004; Gutiérrez-Clellen, 2004;
Kupersmitt & Berman, 2001; Lanza, 2001; Montanari, 2004; Pearson, 2001, 2002; Pearson &
de Villiers, 2005; Schwartz & Shaul, 2013; Viberg 2001; Ucelli & Páez, 2007). Since narrative
is a universal practice that can be observed in different cultures and languages, it has been
proposed that it can be used as a parallel assessment tool across languages given the
disadvantages to standardized tests for bilingual young children (Simon-Cereijido & Gutiérrez-
Clellen, 2009).
Like the tip of an iceberg, underneath the narratives told by individuals, many kinds of
knowledge must be supported. A narrator is required to draw not only on higher-order thinking
skills such as planning discourse, organizing and monitoring it for coherence at a macro level,
but also linguistic knowledge such as vocabulary, morphology, and semantic and syntactic
skills at a micro level. Therefore, narratives are often analyzed in terms of the two levels: macro
and micro levels. Researchers address the importance of considering these two complementary
2
dimensions of narratives together in order to capture full understanding of narratives (Berman,
2001; Hickman, 2004).
The macro dimension of narratives refers to overall structure of narratives mapped on
narrative schema. The overall structure concerns the coherence and ‘orderly flow of
information’ (Hudson and Shapiro, 1991, p. 93). The macrostructure of a story can be captured
in story grammar, which consists of a setting, initiating events, a problem, a resolution, and an
ending (Geva & Olson, 1983; Mandler, 1983; Stein, 1988; Stein & Glenn, 1982). The micro
dimension of narratives refers to linguistic structure at the word, sentence and paragraph levels.
There is no ‘gold standard’ to characterize the microstructure of narratives (Justice et al., 2006),
but it is often analyzed in terms of language productivity (narrative length) and language
complexity (syntactic complexity) (Justice et al., 2006).
The present study addressed emergent bilinguals’ narrative development in their two
languages at the two dimensions by focusing on the script, which is one type of narrative genre.
A script is a general description about what typically occurs in 1an event” and ‘organized as
event schema’ (Hudson & Shapiro, 1991, p. 91).
A compelling reason for studying this genre is that event schema, which children’s
scripts are mapped on, has considerable importance for cognitive and linguistic development of
young children (Nelson, 1986). Event schema is constructed from experiences we have in our
daily lives (Schank & Abelson, 1977). For very young children before they learn to speak,
everyday experiences are almost an exclusive source to gain world knowledge (Nelson, 1986).
Thus, event schema in children is the earliest form of representation of the world around them
and it provides a crucial context for cognitive and linguistic development (Nelson, 1986;
French, 1986). Children’s cognitive systems develop through cognitive analysis such as pattern
1The term “event” used here is concerned with an event that involves people and acting on objects and interacting
with each other to achieve a certain goal. (Nelson, 1986, p.11)
3
analysis and categorization on event representation of repeated experiences over time (Nelson,
1986). For example, children learn to understand and appreciate the concepts of temporal,
clausal, conditional relationships that happen repeatedly within familiar events. Such everyday
routines provide children with a context to express those concepts in language (Farrar et al.,
1993; French, 1986).
These event schemas provide a basis for recalling and understanding personal narratives
and story constructions (Hudson & Nelson, 1983; Nelson, 1986, p. 40). It has been argued that
event schema functions as a framework to interpret and anticipate behaviour in a familiar
situation and they assist with recalling an episodic memory (e.g., Schank & Abelson, 1977) and
help comprehend other people’s narratives or organize their narratives (Slackman, Hudson &
Fivush, 1986, p. 49). That is, they influence the understanding of stories and the ability to
produce discourse (Nelson, 1986).
Because of the importance of event schema in young children, most previous studies
have investigated mainly event schema exhibited in children’s spoken scripts. In addition, little
is known about the development of bilingual children’s scripts relative to the development of a
story in bilingual children. Motivated by these limitations in past research, the present study
aimed to capture a full picture of the development of scripts in bilingual children by
investigating macro and micro dimensions of scripts. The second objective of this study was to
explore whether and how narrative abilities within the bilingual’s two languages are related.
Literature review
The script model theory
Schank and Abelson (1977) defined script as spatially and temporally organized event
representation. Children form scripts from every day real life experiences such as going grocery
shopping, getting dressed, or having dinner at a restaurant. The representation is a generalized
4
structure made of slots for variables such as actors, actions, and props that likely occur in a
particular event. For example, in the restaurant event, the actors are waiters and customers,
actions include entering the restaurant, ordering, eating and paying, and props include menus
and food. These variables can be filled with a range of probable alternatives, referred to as slot
fillers.
Scripts have two major features – it has “inferential power” and a causal structure
(Nelson & Gruendel, 1981). When we encounter a familiar event or situation, an event schema
is activated and one can predict all requirements and optional components even when only
partial information is explicitly provided. For example, when a Western person is talking about
scrambling eggs and cooking bacon, we can infer that they are talking about breakfast and we
can predict other components of the narrative within the breakfast context. This is the feature
that gives the scripts “inferential power”. The other characteristic of a script is its temporal and
causal structure, which distinguishes it from other schemta. Since events happen over time, acts
within an event are linked temporally or causally. For example, in the restaurant script, the food
ordering action precedes the eating or paying actions.
The development of scripts in monolingual children
Research on children’s scripts has shown that even young children have well-organized
event schema about every day routines. For example, Nelson (1978) asked 3-and 4-year-olds in
a daycare center about familiar eating events in three different settings; at the daycare center, at
home and McDonalds. The children at both ages were able to provide generalized descriptions
of the events and used the general pronoun “you” as actor and timeless present tense to describe
actions. Another important finding from this research was that the children sequenced acts2 in
the order that matches the event sequence in reality (e.g., “we eat and after the main course we
have dessert, usually ice cream”). The finding that children are capable of giving a well-
2The term of an‘act’ was defined as any action or change in state (Nelson, 1986, p. 26).
5
organized description about everyday routines has been documented in subsequent studies
(Gruendel, 1981; Fivush, 1984; Fivush & Slackman, 1986; Myler-Worsley et al., 1986; Nelson,
Fivush, Hudson & Lucariello, 1983).
Furthermore, research has shown that young children are able to apply a general
structure when recounting novel experiences such as an airplane trip, having a fire drill, or their
first day at school (Fivush, 1984; Hudson &Nelson 1984; Nelson & Gruendel, 1986). For
example, Fivush (1984) asked children at 5 years of age about their general school day routines
on four different occasions during the first three months of school. Even on the second day of
school, they already differentiated between the routine of nursery school and that of
kindergarten. For instance, children mentioned a new routine in kindergarten such as “putting
your stuff in your locker” (which did not occur in nursery school). Likewise, in a cross-
sectional study, Hudson and Nelson (1984) found that children ranging from 3 to 7 years in age
were able to provide general accounts of the first experience they had such as “going to
Disneyland, airplane trip, and a special class at school. These findings suggest that scripts are
formed as a generalized structure rather than reflecting episodic memories of specific events
from the outset.
Although young children have relatively well-developed scripts, children’s scripts
become more generalized, elaborate and complex with increased age and experience (Farrar &
Goodman, 1990; Fivush & Slackman, 1986; Gruendel, 1980; McCartney & Nelson, 1981; Price
& Goodman, 1990; Slackman & Nelson, 1984). The actions or props reported in the narratives
become more inclusive and schematized as the representations of an event become
hierarchically organized (Fivush & Slackman, 1986). For example, at preschool a child may say,
“you get a strawberry candy and potato chip” when describing a birthday party, but might use
more abstract language such as “you get treats” in subsequent years.
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On top of that, there is an age gap in the number of acts and the structure of act
sequences. For example, Gruendel (1980) examined the number of acts in an event and the
structure of act sequences with 4, 6 and 8 year olds with a cross-sectional design. Results
indicated that older children mentioned more main acts and sequenced them with more complex
structures. She categorized types of children’s act sequences into simple sequence, complex
sequences and hierarchical sequences. The complex sequences included sequences of acts
specifying preconditions for occurrence of acts, often marked by relative adverbs or
conjunctions such as “if-then” or “when” (For example, “When you go to the dentist, you have
to book an appointment first”), optional acts (e.g., “Sometimes they have three games”) and
optional orders of acts (e.g. “you open your presents before… or you can open it after…”).
Most children at age four sequenced acts in a simple way (e.g.,“ you eat cake and you go
home”). By contrast, one third of the narratives in older children were characterized as complex
sequences but the frequency of hierarchical sequences (e.g., “you get ready for the
party…putting balloons up…making a cake”) was still low. These age differences in the kind of
structures produced were also found when the children produced a script about a novel
experience. In an experiment designed in a laboratory setting (e.g., asking children about ‘a trip
to the wizard room’), older children reported more acts with more complex structure than
younger children (Farrar & Goodman, 1990; Price & Goodman, 1990). However, it should be
noted that age and experience are often confounded in research, as older children obviously
have more experience with various events (Slackman, Hudson & Fivush, 1986).
It is useful to distinguish between “weak” and “strong” scripts (Abelson, 1981). A
weak script specifies actions in an event but does not specify the order in which they can occur,
whereas a strong script specifies the order as well as the actions. For example, a‘ birthday party’
event generally includes actions such as ‘eating a cake’ and ‘playing games’, but these actions
can happen in any order. In contrast, ‘making cookies’ has a strong script in the sense that
7
actions such as ‘making dough’ or ‘putting the dough in the oven’ are expected to occur in a
specified order. Studies found that children and adults recall better logically ordered activities
(e.g., making cookies) than arbitrarily ordered activities such as playing with clay, or a birthday
party (Brown, 1975; Fivush, Kuebli & Clubb, 1992; Hudson & Nelson, 1983; Nelson &
Gruendel, 1986; Price & Goodman 1990; Ratner et al., 1986). Moreover, 5 year-old children
reported more acts and sequenced the acts more accurately in a weak script than 3 year-old
children (Fivush, Kuebli & Clubb, 1992; Price & Goodman, 1990). Fivush and his colleagues
(1992) suggested that young children might have more difficulty in organizing and recalling an
arbitrarily ordered weak script.
To summarize, English speaking monolingual children are able to produce a script at an
early age. Children’s script narratives are more generalized, elaborated and complex as they get
older. Furthermore, older children are more likely to report on weak sequences than younger
children.
The development of scripts in bilingual children
Whereas much is known about the development of scripts in monolingual children,
research on the development of scripts in bilinguals is in its initial stage. Two recent
longitudinal studies by Schwartz and Shaul (2013, 2014) examined the role of bilingual versus
monolingual preschool education in the development of scripts in two typologically different
languages: Russian and Hebrew. They investigated the developmental trajectory of knowledge
about slot fillers in Russian (L1) and Hebrew (L2), comparing 3 to 5 year-old bilingual children
attending bilingual (Hebrew-Russian) preschools, where language and early literacy are
fostered in both languages, and bilingual children attending monolingual (Hebrew) preschools
whose L1 literacy was not supported at school. The children’s knowledge about slot fillers was
analyzed by counting items about actors, actions and props in children’s narratives.
8
The two studies found that bilingual education does not hinder the acquisition of slot
fillers in both languages. In a study with 3-year-olds (Schwartz & Shaul, 2013), the children
were tested at three time points during an academic year. The bilingual children attending
bilingual preschools outperformed significantly on three items except for actors at Time 3 in L1
although at Time 1, both groups showed similar performance on three items except for actors in
L1. In L2, the bilingual children attending bilingual preschools showed an increase in the actors
and props categories such that significant gaps with the comparison group disappeared by
already at Time 2. Similar findings were reported in their other study (Schwartz & Shaul, 2014).
The other study (2014) found that at age four, the bilingual children attending bilingual
preschools had an advantage over bilingual children attending monolingual (Hebrew)
preschools on knowledge about slot fillers in their L1 (Russian). In addition, the bilingual
children attending bilingual preschools showed similar levels of the knowledge about slot fillers
in L2 to bilingual children attending monolingual (Hebrew) preschools just after two years of
L2 instruction.
In addition, the authors (2013) examined “interdependence” of knowledge about slot
fillers between L1 and L2 by counting the overlapping items between two languages (e.g.,
‘cake’ in L1 and L2). According to Linguistic Interdependence Hypothesis proposed by
Cummins (1981), underlying cognitive proficiency can transfer from one language to another
provided one has achieved a certain threshold of proficiency in the second language. The results
revealed that there was a significant difference between the two groups at Time 3 showing
superiority of the bilingual children attending bilingual preschools over the bilingual children
attending monolingual preschools, supporting the interdependence of knowledge about slot
fillers between two languages. These findings are interesting because interdependence between
L1 and L2 knowledge about slot fillers was found on the onset of its development and for the
9
bilingual children attending bilingual preschools in an educational setting, where instruction of
both languages is supported.
Of high relevance to the present study is the finding that continuous development of L1
language and literacy within a bilingual education context did not impede development of
knowledge about slot fillers in L2. On the other hand, lack of systematic L1 in the monolingual
school context seemed to hinder acquisition of knowledge about slot fillers in L1.
Development of stories in bilingual children
Research on L2 stories in bilingual children is limited. Thus, it is too early to draw a
conclusion about how different children’s L2 stories are from those produced by monolingual
children. However, the existing studies suggest that bilingual children show comparable
performance on story grammar (story schema) in L2 to monolingual children. The main
differences between L1 and L2 are noted on language indices such as morpho-syntactic
constructions and vocabulary (Berman, 2001; Gutiérrez-Clellen, 2002; Hipfner-Boucher, 2011;
Pearson, 2002). Berman (2001) argued that children rely on similar strategies for
conceptualization, planning, and organization of their narration regardless of whether they are
bilinguals or monolinguals, although bilingual or low SES children may be less proficient in
syntactic organization or vocabulary knowledge.
Research on stories within bilingual children’s two languages has focused largely on
three lines of research. The first line concerns differences and similarities in the development of
narratives in L1 and L2. For example, a one-year longitudinal study investigated developmental
change in L1 (Spanish) and L2 (English) narratives among 24 low SES bilingual kindergarten
children who received instruction in English (Uccelli & Páez, 2007). The mean age of the
participants at the onset, when children were in kindergarten was 5.58, and the second data
10
collection was done at the end of first grade. The authors examined narrative productivity (the
number of words and the number of different words) and narrative quality (story score and
language score) based on the measures Pearson (2002) devised. While the story score is a set of
measures to capture children’s ability to include the elements of story grammar, the language
score examined linguistic aspects of children’s narratives such as complex syntax, target nouns
of the story and morpho-syntactic accuracy. They found significant gains on all narrative
measures in English (i.e., lexical diversity, story score and language score) but not on narrative
length. In contrast, in Spanish, story score was the only measure that showed significant
improvement. In other words, children improved their story telling primarily in the language of
instruction. In a cross-sectional study, Kupersmitt and Berman (2001) studied the narrative
development of bilingual children ranging from 4 to 12 in age. The participants attended
Hebrew (L2) monolingual school and came from middle class homes where Spanish (L1) was
dominantly spoken. The authors found that the children showed similar story structure
development in Spanish and Hebrew while there were some differences in language expression
such as tense and aspect. In addition, they demonstrated that story grammar develops as a
function of age rather than the degree of mastery of the language. These findings suggest that
story structure is a general cognitive process that is less dependent on proficiency in L1 or L2.
This argument was also made by Viberg (2001) who investigated narrative development in
bilingual children from age 5 to 12 in Sweden on basis of data provided by various projects
studying the narratives of bilingual children. She also suggested that story grammar reflects
general domain knowledge which is available in L2 as well, and that can be expressed once a
certain linguistic threshold has been passed in L2.
A second line of research has examined cross-linguistic prediction. For instance, in a
study of Spanish English bilinguals in grades 2 and 5, Pearson (2002) examined whether
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narrative abilities in one language predict children’s narrative abilities in the other language.
She found that story score and complex syntax correlated significantly across the two languages.
However, subcomponent measures of language score such as morpho-syntactic accuracy and
lexical diversity were not correlated across languages. She explained that because story score
and complex syntax represent relatively general capabilities, they show cross-linguistic
correlations (i.e., transfer), whereas morpho-syntactic accuracy and vocabulary are language
specific and depend on proficiency in each. Similar cross-linguistic associations were found in
the study by Uccelli and Páez (2007). The authors examined the correlations among narrative
skills and vocabulary skills in English-Spanish bilinguals. Kindergarten Spanish story score
predicted English narrative quality (story score and language score) in grade1, even after
controlling for English vocabulary and English narrative productivity. However, cross-
linguistic relations in predicting Spanish narrative quality were not found.
Other researchers have investigated what can affect discrepancy in narrative production
in bilingual children’s stronger and weaker language. For instance, Fiestas and Peña (2004)
studied the effect of language on 4 to 6 year old children’s narratives elicited in two different
task conditions. The participants had similar proficiency in Spanish (L1) and English (L2).
Children’s narratives were generated in response to two different stimuli; a wordless book
“Frog, where are you?”(Mayer, 1969) and a picture depicting a family birthday party. Children
included more attempts and initiating events in Spanish but more consequences in English,
even though they told equally complex stories in both languages. In addition, task effects were
found in both languages. Children used more Spanish-influenced utterances in terms of
grammar in the book condition but for the picture condition, more English-influenced utterance.
The authors explained that children might be able to tell a complex story, which requires
12
greater cognitive linguistic load than a photo task by using their first language, which is the
stronger language.
To summarize, within the context where L2 instruction or exposure is supported, L2
narratives in bilingual children may be comparable to narratives in monolinguals. Less
exposure to the L1 appears to hinder L1 narrative development in bilingual children. A few
studies suggest cross-linguistic relations concerning macro components such as knowledge of
slot fillers, story grammar and complex syntax between L1 and L2 narratives. By contrast,
language specific features were not found for cross-linguistic relations.
The present study
Previous studies have focused primarily on the macro level of scripts such as the acts
sequences in an event and knowledge about slot fillers. Most research has investigated bilingual
children who have a similar proficiency in L2 with their L1 or are exposed to L2 as a societal
language. Less is known about the development of narratives in emergent bilingual who are just
starting to learn L2. Studying emergent bilinguals who have not had exposure to L2 outside
school provides a unique opportunity to observe the development of narrative skills in the home
language and the emergence of narrative skills in L2. With the exception of two studies
(Montanari, 2004; Ucelli & Páez, 2007), most of the research in this area has been based on
cross-sectional designs. The current study utilized a cross sequential design, which the oral
narrative ability of 4 year-old cohort and 5 year-old cohort whose home language is English and
who attended a bilingual English-Hebrew program was tested twice over a one year period.
With all of this in mind, the first objective of the present study was to characterize the
development of scripts in two languages in emergent bilingual children and compare the
development in the two languages at the macro and micro levels.
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The second objective of the study was to examine cross-linguistic relationships between
L1 (English) and L2 (Hebrew) narrative abilities. It is not known whether cross-linguistic
relation would be found in narratives in the two languages in emergent bilingual children.
Furthermore, available research into bilinguals’ narratives is limited to Spanish-English
bilinguals. Spanish and English are typologically similar as compared to Hebrew and English.
They share the Latin alphabet, many cognates (i.e., words with a common Latin root such as
information (English) and información (Spanish), and principles of word derivation (e.g.,
inform - information; informar - información). By comparison, English and Hebrew are more
dissimilar in terms of lexical structures, morphology, syntax, and orthography. Therefore, this
current study will shed light on whether cross-linguistic relations would be dependent on
language distance.
The following research questions guided the present study:
1) How do scripts in L1 (English) and L2 (Hebrew) develop in children from 4 to 7 years old in
terms of macrostructure and microstructure of scripts? How does the developmental pattern of
children’s narratives compare across English and Hebrew?
2) Are narrative abilities in the stronger language (L1) associated with those in the weaker
language (L2)?
METHODOLOGY
Participants
This thesis is part of a larger longitudinal study designed to investigate the development
of emergent language and literacy skills in young bilingual children. The participants were
recruited from a private English Hebrew bilingual school in a metropolitan area in Canada.
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Participants included fifty-seven children in Junior Kindergarten (JK) and Senior Kindergarten
(SK) at the beginning of the study. They were followed over one year and tested at two time
points: May of 2011, (i.e., end of JK and SK) (Time 1) and May 2012, (i.e., end of SK and Gr1)
(Time 2). The mean age of the 33 children in the younger cohort (Female 16 and male 17) was
4 years 10 months and the mean age of the 24 children in the older cohort (14 female 10 male)
was 5 years and 9 months at Time 1. It should be noted that the participants in the sample came
from middle to upper middle class families, with parents who had at least an undergraduate
degree, and spoke English at home. See the table 1 for distribution by gender and age for two
cohorts.
The children were first exposed to Hebrew in JK. In JK and SK, children at this school
learn Hebrew for 40 minutes per week, in two, 20-minute sessions. However, by Grade 1, they
spend half of their school day learning Hebrew, taught by native speakers of Hebrew, and the
other half learning English, taught by native speakers of English. In other words, by Time 2,
children in the older cohort were finishing Grade 1 and have had much more intensive exposure
to Hebrew than they had for the previous 2 years. The Hebrew program for children in SK
emphasized the acquisition of hidden person pronouns and more verbs, nouns and adjectives,
and, aimed for children in Grade 1 to have some reading and writing fluency in Hebrew.
Measures
In order to examine possible differences in general abilities between two cohorts, two
standardized tests were administered in English at Time 1: Receptive vocabulary and Rapid
Automized Naming. Children’s narratives were assessed in English and Hebrew at Time1 and
Time 2.
Standardized Tests
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Receptive Vocabulary. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test 4(PPVT-IV; Dunn &
Dunn, 2007) Form B was used to assess children’s receptive vocabulary. Children are required
to point to the picture that best illustrates the meaning of a word read aloud by the examiner.
The PPVT-4 consists of 228 items and items cover 20 categories of content (e.g., actions,
vegetables, tools) and part of speech (e.g., nouns, verbs, and adjectives) across all levels of
difficulty. The PPVT-4 is considered to be a reliable and valid test of receptive vocabulary.
Rapid automatized naming. Rapid automatized naming (RAN) was assessed using the
Objects Rapid Naming subtest from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing
(CTOPP; Wagner et al., 1999). This task measures the speed with which children can name a
series of objects on two pages. Each page contains pictures of 36 objects which are arranged
((i.e., pencil, star, fish, chair, boat, key). The pictures are presented to the child and the child
starts to name them as soon as possible until all of the objects have been named. The total
number of seconds to name all of the objects on both pages is taken. The test manual reports a
coefficient alpha of .82 for five year-old children, .81 for 6-year-old children and .79 for 7-year-
old children.
Narrative Assessment
Procedure and transcription
The children were individually tested in a quiet room at the children’s school. Oral
narratives in each language were elicited in two separate sessions that were 2-4 weeks apart.
The children were tested by trained research assistants who were either undergraduate or
graduate students. Each session was conducted in one language by a research assistant who was
a native speaker of the language. Children were tested first in English, their home language so
16
that they could familiarize themselves with the task and feel comfortable about all the tasks. All
sessions were audio recorded.
The task of describing a birthday party was chosen for eliciting narratives for several
reasons. First, birthday parties are a familiar and interesting event to all children. Second, it is
linguistically and culturally appropriate for children. Third, it was expected that because
birthday parties can be characterized as a weak script, the topic would provide a rich context in
which children can sequence acts in various ways.
Following the elicitation procedure described by Nelson and Gruendel (1986), the
introductory statement, “I know you know a lot about birthday parties. Can you tell me what
happens when there is a birthday party?” was first presented. If the child was silent or paused,
the examiner provided encouraging prompts such as “Can you tell me more?”. If a child needed
further prompting, the examiner would provide more specific prompts such as “‘what is the first
thing that happens when …”, “What happens next?”, and “What happens at the end?”. The
same procedure was followed in the Hebrew session and repeated a year later, at Time 2.
However, the instructions for the Hebrew task were provided in English because children’s
command of Hebrew was minimal and it was important to ensure that children understood what
was expected to them.
The children’s narrations in each language were transcribed verbatim and they were
then segmented into “Communication units” (C-Units; Loban, 1976) by research assistants who
were native speakers of each language. A C-Unit is defined as an independent clause plus
modifiers attached to it. Following Craig, Washington, and Thompson-Porter (1998),
successive main clauses linked by simple coordinating conjunctions (e.g., ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘or’)
were segmented into separate C-Units if the second clause included a subject. For example,
17
“You have a cake and play a game” was segmented into one C-Unit because the subject “you”
was omitted in the second clause.
In order to ensure accuracy of C-Unit segmentation and transcription in the two
languages, the second researcher assistant coded randomly selected 30% of the narrative
samples (n= 34, each language) and coded them independently. Item-by-item comparisons
were made to determine agreements. Inter-rater agreement scores were calculated by dividing
the number of agreements by the sum of the number of agreements and the number of
disagreements. Reliability of C-Unit segments between the first coder and the second coder was
96% for English samples and 95% for Hebrew samples. Reliability of transcription was 99%
for English and 97% for Hebrew. Any disagreements were resolved through discussion between
the two research assistants.
Acknowledging that a couple of prompts given to children in this study can structure
children’s narratives, the narratives produced before prompts such as “’What is the first thing
that happens when …’, ‘What happens next?’, and ‘What happens at the end?’ were analyzed.
In addition, if the structure of a more complex act sequence is present in a narrative, it was
coded as more complex structure.
Coding System
Children’s narratives were assessed in terms of both macrostructure and microstructure.
At the macro level, four measures were used: (1) type of output, (2) slot fillers, (3) act
sequences”, and (4) object grouping. Narrative micro level was coded on indices of language
productivity and complexity. Since the children were in the process of starting to learn to read
and speak Hebrew, their Hebrew narrative production was minimal. As a result, it was not
18
possible to assess ‘Type of Output’ and ‘Act Sequences’ for macrostructure in Hebrew. All
measures included were listed in Table 2 and were described more in detail below.
Coding for Macrostructure
Type of Output. Following Gruendel (1980), children’s narratives were coded as ‘script’,
‘script with episodic information’ or ‘total episode’. A narrative was rated as a script when it
was a general description marked with general pronouns (e.g. “You”, “They” and “It”) and
using the present tense. If episodic information is reported as the background to general account
whereas the foreground of the narrative is general, it is classified as a script (Hudson & Shapiro,
1991, p. 94). When a child talked about general birthday parties although he or she used
personal pronouns (e.g., “I” and “We”), it was coded as a script.
“They’re fun. You get to eat cake, you get to eat marshmallows and you get lots of
presents and you get to hand out loot bag.” (Child age 4; 10)
A narrative was rated as a script with episodic information when a child included particular
episodes representing personal experiences about birthday parties, and where a personal
pronoun “I” or “We” was used in the past tense:
“People come in. We play a little, then I blow out the candles. Then after that we could
play a little more. And when everyone is gone, I go back to my home. When it was my
birthday party, I went to a bowling place. I had so much bowling. Me then Lela then
Axel.”(Child age 4;9)
When a child talked about the event that happened in the past, the narrative was rated as
‘total episode’. For example, “I went to my friend’s birthday party. It was a trampoline party. I
gave my friend a small gift”.
Slot fillers. Proposed by Schank and Abelson (1977), a script is made of slots for
variables such as actors, actions, and props in an event. These variables can be filled with a
19
range of probable alternatives, which are slot fillers. That is, slot fillers are basic elements that
form macrostructure of a script.
Following Schwartz and Shaul (2013), slot fillers provided in the narrative were
classified into the following categories: actors, actions and props. The total frequency of each
category of slot fillers was analyzed. In the following example, two actors were mentioned: the
birthday girl and boy, as well as three actions: eating, singing, and getting a present. In addition,
four props were mentioned: present, cake, junk, and happy birthday song.
“When it’s your birthday, you get a present and then you have cake. You have junk and
play. They sing happy birthday to the birthday girl or boy.”
Object grouping. Nelson (1985) proposed that children develop knowledge of
taxonomic categories though abstraction of patterns of relationships in events. As noted by
Rosch et al. (1976), the category of object can be classified into superordinate, basic and
subordinate nouns according to inclusiveness of a category. Superordinate nouns (e.g.,
‘furniture’) reflect a high level of inclusiveness and represent a high level of abstraction
whereas subordinate nouns (e.g., ‘bunker bed’) represent a low level of inclusiveness and a low
level of abstraction. Based on the classification, we tracked how children’s use of object
category changed over time in the narratives. Slot fillers of actors and props in the narratives
were classified into superordinate nouns (e.g., ‘food’), basic nouns (e.g., ‘cake’) and
subordinate nouns (e.g., ‘chocolate cake’) and counted for the analyses.
Act Sequences. As Schank and Abelson (1977) defined, scripts are spatially and
temporally organized. The structure of a script is reflected in how a child sequences acts in an
event (Nelson & Gruendel, 1986, p.35). Act sequences in children’s narratives were coded into
one of four categories, which reflect complexity in act sequences based on Gruendel (1980)’s
classification. : 1) no sequences, 2) simple sequence, 3) complex sequence and 4) hierarchical
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act sequences.
Either when a child describes one act such as “You have a cake, juice and snack” or when
a child doesn’t sequence acts “You have a cake. You play. You go”, it would be coded as ‘no
sequences’. When a child links acts simply through temporal order, for example, “You eat a
cake and open the presents and then you get a loot bag and go home”, the narrative was coded
as ‘simple sequences’. A narrative was coded as complex acts sequence when (a) the child
employs subordinating conjunctions such as “if”, or “when” to qualify acts or 2) specifies
alternative acts or 3) describes acts can occur in an alternative order. In hierarchical act
sequences, which are the most complex, one or more acts are embedded in head acts that
subsume other acts. Two examples of complex, hierarchical acts sequences, produced by the
participants are presented below.
“You’re celebrating how old you turn, and if you didn’t have a birthday then you would
stay like a baby. People who you know can come to your birthday party, but if you don’t
want people to come to your birthday it’s okay because you can spend time with your
parents. Some people don’t really like want people to come to their birthdays but people
could come to their birthdays” (Child age 6; 3)
“When there's a birthday, you can play with your friends. There's lot of things to do at
birthday parties. In some birthday parties there is soccer. Some birthday parties are
sleepovers. Some birthday parties are playplaces at the playplaces. A birthday party is to
celebrate the day that someone was born. And they wanna celebrate it by having a lot a
lots a lot of fun.” (Child age 7; 3)
Coding for microstructure
Language Productivity. Language productivity is often measured by the number of
words (or morphemes) or utterance units used in the narratives. However, this metric is
problematic because Hebrew is a highly inflected language. This means that the same
21
information is presented in fewer words in Hebrew than in English. For example, in English,
the phrase “in the park” has three words but the Hebrew parallel, “בפארק” (ba/park) is one
highly inflected word. For this reason, the number of morphemes not the number of words was
calculated to enable comparison across the two languages. Thus, two measures were included:
Total number of morphemes and the total number of C-Units in the narratives.
Syntactic complexity. Syntactic complexity can be measured by various syntactic
indices such as ‘mean length of C-Units in morphemes’ and cohesion. Cohesion concerns
linguistic devices such as conjunctions indicating the semantic relationship between
prepositions (Cain, 2003; Geva & Ryan, 1985).
The narratives were analyzed in terms of four measures of syntactic complexity (Justice
et al., 2006): mean length of C-Units in morphemes, total number of complex C-Units, total
number of subordinate conjunctions, and proportion of complex C-Units. A complex C-Unit
refers to a C-Unit containing an independent clause and at least one dependent clause. For
instance, “You have a cake, which your mom bakes for you” is a complex C-Unit.
Inter-rater Reliability
In order to establish the level of agreement between two independent raters on all
measures, a doctoral student and a research assistant completed training for the coding systems
for English and Hebrew narratives respectively. Following the training, 30% (n=34, each
language) of narrative samples at the two time points were randomly selected for independent
coding by the two raters. The Kappa value for categorical measures was performed and the
Cronbach’s alpha score for continuous measures were calculated. The Kappa value was .892 for
Type of Output and .740 for Act Sequences for English narratives suggesting that the
agreements are considered substantial (Landis & Koch, 1977). Cronbach’s alpha for continuous
22
variables for English and Hebrew samples ranged from .93 to 1.00 and .98 to 1.00 respectively,
which indicate a high level of inter-rater agreement. All disagreements were resolved and
resulted in 100% agreement after discussion.
RESULTS
A series of independent sample t-tests were conducted to evaluate whether there were
differences in PPVT and RAN between the two cohorts. The results revealed no significant
difference in the standard scores of the PPVT, (t (55)=. 98, ns) and the standard scores (t (53)=.
69, ns) and raw scores (t (53)=1.20, ns) of RAN between two cohorts. It should also be noted
that the PPVT and RAN scores were within the average range.
Initial exploratory analyses revealed that the distributions of the majority of the
continuous dependant variables under study were positively skewed. Therefore, it was not
possible to conduct repeated measures ANOVA (analysis of variance) since ANOVA assumes
normal distributions of dependent variables in each cohort. As a result, non-parametric
procedures, which do not require a normal distribution, were performed for continuous
dependant variables as well as for categorical dependent variables. In order to test the effect of
time for the continuous dependent variables in each cohort, either the Wilcoxon test or the sign
test was used. Since the Wilcoxon test assumes that the distribution of the difference scores is
continuous and symmetrical in the population, for the variables that have not met the
assumption, sign tests were performed. Since it is not possible to perform mixed analyses in
nonparametric procedures in SPSS at a time, a series of analyses were run separately for each
cohort and each language.
The first purpose of this study was to characterize the development of scripts in L1 and
L2 in children from 4 to 7 years old. The results are divided into macrostructure and
23
microstructure of scripts in each language and are followed by qualitative observations of the
first research question.
The pattern of change in L1
Macrostructure of scripts in L1
As can be seen in Table 3, frequency distribution on type of output revealed that
children’s scripts in L1 were all either script or script with personal episode and there was no
‘total episode’ for either of the cohorts. As a result, the type of output variable was
dichotomized. Therefore, in order to determine if there are differences on type of output
between Time 1 and Time 2, the McNemar test was performed. The results suggested that there
is no significant change between the proportion of types of output in Time 1 and the proportion
of types of output in Time 2 for both cohorts.
The analyses on all four measures of slot fillers (i.e., actors, actions and props) showed
no significant improvement on any measures for the younger cohort. But, it is worth noting that
the change on props from Time 1 to Time 2 approached significance (z= 1.93, p=.054). The
results for the older cohort indicated no improvement on any of the slot filler categories. With
regard to the object grouping variable, both cohorts showed significant improvements from
Time 1 to Time 2 only on the superordinate class (see Table 4 and 5 for p values).
As the widely accepted rule of thumb, the frequency of one category should be greater
than five for adequate test approximation when calculating non-parametric statistics. As the
frequency in both a single act category and hierarchical sequences category was less than 5 for
both cohorts, a single act category was collapsed into simple sequence category and
hierarchical sequences into complex sequences category respectively. Using the McNemar test,
a significant tendency was found for the structure of act sequences to more likely be changed to
24
complex sequences over one year for the younger cohort (p= .001). In contrast, no significant
change was found for the older cohort (see Table 3).
Microstructure of scripts in L1
Descriptive statistics, test type and p value for the measures of language productivity
and complexity for each cohort are summarized in Table 4 and Table 5. In terms of productivity,
a significant improvement was found for the younger cohort in total number of C-Units (TNC-
U), total number of complex C-Units (TCC-U), and mean length of C-Units in morphemes
(MLC-UM) of complexity: TNC-U, z=2.25, p<.05; TCC-U z=2.45, p<.05; MLCU-M z=5.57,
p<.01. However, the older cohort improved significantly only in MLC-UM of complexity.
z=4.70, p<.01.
The pattern of change in L2 Narratives
At Time 1, there was very little variation on most of the continuous measures for both
cohorts. Most children scored 0 on the continuous variables and there were a few outliers in
each cohort. At Time 2, performance of both cohorts was still low on superordinate,
subordinate class measures of object grouping variable and all of the language complex
measures except for mean length of C-Units in morphemes. Therefore, it was impossible to
apply inferential statistical analyses on these measures. Descriptive statistics, and test type used
and p value for continuous variable for both cohorts are presented in Table 6 and Table 7.
Macrostructure of scripts in L2
The results showed that both cohorts improved significantly on slot filler categories: For
the younger cohort, Actors z=5.004, p=. 000; Actions z= 3.75, p=. 000 ; Props z= 3.064, p
=.001;Total sum of slot fillers z=4.619, p =.000. For the older cohort, Actors z=3.928, p =. 000;
25
Actions z=2.598, p =. 006; Props z=3.25, p =. 001; Total sum of slot fillers z=3.624, p =. 000.
In addition, significant improvement from Time 1 to Time 2 was found for both cohorts, with
both cohorts improving on basic class. (The younger cohort, z=3.32, p=. 001; the older cohort,
z=2.025, p=. 043)
Microstructure of scripts in L2
The results revealed significant gains for the younger cohort on TNM (z=3.336, p=. 000)
and on MLC-UM (z =3.73, p =. 000). Although no significant differences were found on the
two measures for the older cohort, the differences were almost significant on both measures for
the older cohort (z =1.75, p=. 078).
Qualitative investigations into the development of scripts
Qualitative examination of children’s narratives provides an in-depth understanding of
L1 narrative development by looking at some examples of narratives produced by children.
Given that statistical analyses on a lot of measures in Hebrew could not be conducted,
qualitative observation of Hebrew narratives provides complimentary insights into L2 narrative
development.
As shown in Table 3, although there was no significant improvement over time for both
cohorts on ‘Type of output’, most of children (75% of the younger cohort and 79.2% of the
older cohort) who were at age 4 and 5 at the first data collection were able to generate a script
quite well using neutral subjects “ you”, “they” and “it” and present tense verbs. A few children
in both cohorts used their episodic information as a background to their general account about a
26
birthday party, which is one of the characteristics of a script. For instance, Sydney in the
younger cohort reported her personal experience to support the foreground of her narrative.
“You can play, and you have pizza and you can play with your friends, you sometimes
fight… you take off your shoes sometimes, and sometimes you can hurt yourself, like
one time I hurt myself when it was one of my friends birthday parties, and whosever
birthday party you had you get, they get a lot of presents...”
The children who included a partial episode tended to report their personal experience
when a tester asked them more narration after they described a birthday party in general. The
pattern was found in 18 narrative samples out of 22 narrative samples with a partial episode.
Thus, it might not be the case that children who included a partial episode haven’t established a
script about a birthday party in mind. Rather, they seemed to lack genre awareness about a
script.
“There’s balloons, sometimes there’s piñatas. you have to put the presents somewhere.
… (Anything else you want to tell Ms. Bear about birthday parties?) My birthday party
was actually at the bowling club in front of this. Its this birthday party at the top that
you play games, and then on the two bottom floors.”
“you can have, you can have, loop bags, birthday presents, birthday cakes, sing songs,
people, people from Disney world. And you can have invitations, … (Can you tell me
anymore?) You say goodbye and then you have lots of stuff to do, then you go home,
you go home after birthday party. I couldn’t go to one, to some birthday parties for my
friends so I had skiing on one, and my dance recital at the same time. I missed three
birthday parties. I had a swimming party at the same day at the same time. At here at the
school. ”
With respect to the slot fillers variable, although no significant improvement was found
for either cohort, children’s knowledge about schema components has been developing between
Time 1 and Time 2. Slot fillers produced by children on the whole increased except for the
action category for the older cohort. Specifically, the knowledge about the props category was
improved for the both cohorts and these changes were almost significant, the younger cohort
27
p= .054; the older cohort p=. 078 (see Table 4). For instance, Andrew who was in the younger
cohort mentioned a few actions such as ‘eating’, ‘playing’ and ‘getting picked up’ but the
information about props was not produced at Time 1. However, at Time 2 Andrew included
more props which can be seen at a birthday party such as balloon, cake, pizza, game,
gymnastics, laser tag, a birthday present and so on.
“It’s a kinda party. You play. (Yes. And what happens next?). You eat. (Yes. And
then?). You go to play again. (Yes, and what happens at the end?). You get picked up.”
(Time 1)
“Birthday parties have balloons, cake, lots of people, sometimes it’s gymnastics or laser
tag, there’s a birthday present. You go into the room and you do what you have for your
birthday. Then after you do all the games and stuff and everything, then you go and
have cake, and pizza. (You get to do whatever you want sometimes, or sometimes you
play a little bit more.” (Time 2)
The significant development of object grouping over time was found for both cohorts
only on superordinate class category. At Time 2, children mentioned more superordinate class
nouns such as activities, food, people, vegetables, fruit, sports, place, staff, guest, family, arts
and crafts and drinks.
The significant change in the structure of act sequences was made for the younger
cohort. The structure of act sequences became more complex. In other words, linear temporal
structure of act sequences became complex by employing complex temporal structure or
conditional and clausal structure. As can be seen in Laura’s narrative below, at time 1 she
connected acts with ‘and’ or ‘and then’ reflecting a linear temporal structure. At time 2, she
mentioned optional paths of acts, e.g., “you can have one at your house or you can go
somewhere for it” and employed conditional structure in connecting acts with the use of ‘if’ or
‘when’ subordinating conjunctions.
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“You sing songs, then you blow out the candles, and you get a present and you eat cake
and you play party games, you can make stuff .you let everyone come in...You play
games… You eat the cake and then go back to your house.” (At Time 1)
“You can have any kind of birthday party, you can have one at your house or you can go
somewhere for it.…… it's not really fun when you don't invite anybody but if you invite
people it's more funnier because it's nice and you get to see your friends and you can be
nice and you have to be nice and you have to not, like if someone does something bad
you don't say that's not how you do it.” (Time 2)
Subordinating conjunctions produced in children’s L1 narratives were further analyzed
to identify their subtypes and categorized into temporal (e.g. before, after), causal (e.g. because,
as) and conditional (e.g. if, unless). Each category was coded as either present (1) or absent (0).
The McNemar test revealed no significant change on any subtype over time but improvement
for the older cohort on conditional subordinating conjunctions was almost significant (p=. 062).
At Time1, 18.2% of the younger cohort and 25% of the older cohort were able to include/use
temporal subordinating conjunctions (e.g. “when” “before”) but the use of other types of
conjunctions either had not appeared yet or were very rare in the narratives. At Time 2, both
cohorts started to use conditional and causal conjunctions. While the use of causal conjunctions
was still rare in both cohorts, conditional conjunctions were used often such that the difference
was almost significant for the older cohort as noted earlier.
The focus of the development of children’s emergent narrative abilities in Hebrew was
on building up slot fillers. As mentioned above, at time 1, both cohorts either scored 1 or 0 on
all categories of Slot fillers but at Time 2, they reported actors and props (e.g., “birthday” “cake”
“pizza” “candle”, “grandma”, “boys”, “girls” , “mom” and “dad”). At Time 2, children started
to mention main actions such as “eating” and “playing”. Although a few actions were
mentioned in children’s narratives, the structure of act sequences was still a single act. In other
words, children focused on describing each act rather than sequencing the acts, e.g. “The
29
children eat the cake. Children sing songs. Children play” or “I eat pizza. I open birthday
presents”. With respect to object grouping, children mentioned basic nouns such as ‘cake,
birthday pizza, song, balloon, yogurt, apple and present’ but only three children at Time 2 used
superordinate nouns such as ‘people’ and ‘food’ and two children reported subordinate nouns
such as ‘chocolate cake’ and ‘Tapuz’.
Cross-linguistic relations between narratives in L1 and L2 at Time 1 and Time 2
The second objective of the present study was to investigate cross-linguistic relations
among narrative measures across English and Hebrew. Since Hebrew narratives of both cohorts
were minimal at Time 1, narrative measures produced at Time 2 were chosen to examine the
relations. Spearman’s rho coefficients were estimated because most of the continuous variables
under study were not normally distributed and there were some outliers. For correlations
between categorical dichotomous variables, Phi coefficients were reported. Table 8 and Table 9
display cross-language correlations among narrative measures in English and Hebrew for each
cohort at Time 2. A cross language relation was found for the older cohort. The English
measure of the number of subordinating conjunctions was moderately associated with the
Hebrew measure of the total sum of slot fillers. (r=.405, p<.05). No other correlations were
significant.
DISCUSSION
L1 and L2 narrative development in emergent bilinguals
The first objective of this study was to investigate the development of scripts in L1 and
L2 at the macro and micro levels in 4 to 7 year-old emergent bilingual children. Previous
research has only targeted the macro level in studying a script. This study incorporated two
30
dimensions of narrative to provide a global picture about the development of scripts. The results
from this study indicated that children at age 4 have established a generalized macrostructure of
script in L1. L1 narratives have been developing specifically in terms of complexity in macro
and microstructure of the narratives. In their emergent L2, children have been developing both
macro and microstructure of scripts.
Macrostructure of scripts in L1 and L2
Generalized and abstracted macrostructure of scripts in L1
The findings from this study suggest that the children as young as 4 years old have the
ability to generalize their narratives in L1 about birthday parties based on their past experiences,
as suggested in previous studies that involved monolingual middle class children (e.g.,
Gruendel, 1981; Nelson, 1978; Nelson & Gruendel, 1986). The children at this age do not
merely “rely on their perception of the here and now, but do create an abstract generalisation
about the event” (Schwartz & Shaul, 2013, p. 37). This was evident by the findings that no one
in this study produced ‘total episodes’ about personal occurrences and the children in this study
were able to use a particular episode which occurred to them in the past as the background or
commentary information to back up their general foreground case of the event.
Furthermore, the results suggest that children’s knowledge about slot fillers related to
the event become abstract over a year. In L1, the children’s knowledge about objects at basic
class was well established, so not much improvement was noted. An area in which one noted
improvement was in their familiarity with superordinate categories. Producing more terms in
superordinate class at Time 2 may indicate that as children learn more basic classes over
different occurrences of the event, children are involved in abstraction of alternative fillers for
the slots (Lucariello & Rifkin, 1986). These results confirm that objects at basic class are
31
generally acquired before objects at other classes of hierarchy are acquired as suggested in
other studies (Anglin, 1977; Mervis & Crisafi, 1982; Rosch et al., 1976).
In their emerging L2, although it was not possible to carry out parallel analysis with L1
narrative, qualitative observation showed that at Time 2 when the children obtained some
proficiency in Hebrew, they provided a general description about the event but not particular
episodes that happened in the past. One can assume that as the children have established a
generalized event representation in L1, emergent L2 narratives might be created in general
forms rather than particular episodes. Familiarity with basic objects was developing while
familiarity with superordinate and subordinate objects has not developed yet.
Knowledge about slot fillers and act sequences in L1 and L2
The results indicate that the younger cohort showed a significant improvement on the
structure of act sequences in L1 and on slot fillers in L2. In L1, when they were 4 years old, 30%
of the children were able to display complex act sequences. However, this percentage increased
to 82% by the time they reached the end of SK. Although there was no significant change for
the older cohort, the children’s ability to represent acts hierarchically at Time 2 emerged in the
older cohort. These results are consistent with the findings by Gruendel (1981) that major
change in the structure of act sequences occurred between four and six years with the
appearance of more complex structure.
Qualitative observations revealed that even though the children were not able yet to
produce full grammatical sentences in their L2, they attempted to mention relevant actions after
being exposed to more extensive Hebrew instruction at school for a year or two. Explicit
sequencing was not evident yet and instead listing concrete actions was apparent. A possible
32
explanation for this tendency in L2 is that without an array of language devices at their disposal,
it makes a cognitive load when they sequence the acts (Viberg, 2001).
On the other hand, with respect to the development of knowledge about slot fillers,
while the knowledge in L1 has plateaued, the knowledge in L2 has progressed significantly on
all the categories of slot fillers. This indicates that knowledge about slot filler in L1 has
developed well enough given that slot fillers about birthday parties are, to some degree, fixed
(Schwartz & Shaul, 2013), while the significant development in acquiring basic class words of
slot fillers has been made in L2 narratives.
Microstructure of scripts in L1 and L2
Microstructure of narratives in both languages was tracked in terms of both language
productivity and syntactic complexity. The findings suggest that in both L1 and L2, mean
length of C-Units in morphemes can be a robust measure that captures growth in syntactic
complexity in both children’s L1 and L2 narrative. Moreover, the results suggest that in
emergent L2 narratives, productivity indices such as total number of morphemes can be a
sensitive developmental measure. Past research (Muñoz et al., 2003; Ucelli & Paez, 2007)
proposed that the total number of words or morphemes (TNW or TNM) has been found to be
less robust as an indicator of developmental change in L2 narrative in bilingual children
compared to complexity measures. However, given that past studies investigated children with
proficiency in L2 as a societal language, their findings may not be applicable to emergent
bilingual children. Therefore, a sensitive measure to capture developmental growth in L2
narrative would be dependent on level of language proficiency in L2.
Although the use of subordinating conjunctions in L1 such as when, because and if in
the utterances of the both cohorts didn’t change significantly over one year, different types of
33
subordinating conjunctions increased from ‘temporal’ at Time 1 to ‘causal and conditional
subordinations’ at Time2. However, children in this study tended to use temporal coordinating
conjunctions such as ‘and’ and ‘and then’ as a main means of connecting two prepositions
(Berman, 2009; Geva, 2007; Geva & Olson 1983; Shapiro & Hudson, 1991). Clearly,
subordinating conjunctions are more challenging for young children to master than coordinating
conjunctions (McClure & Geva, 1983). In L2, the children were not yet able to make use of
coordinating conjunctions (e.g.,‘and’) or connect two propositions.
To summarize, the overall picture emerging from this study is that the L1 narratives, of
4 to 7 year olds have developed in terms of complexity at both the macro level and micro level.
Given that the children have well established event representation about birthday parties in L1,
the development of both dimensions in children’s L2 script is dependent on L2 language
proficiency. According to Slackman, Hudson and Fivush (1986), there are three levels of
representation for scripts. The first level refers to the actual event in the real world, and the
second level is event representation in memory. In the third level, verbal description of the
event knowledge takes place. Accordingly, the ‘birthday party’ script is stably established in
their mental representation through their L1, and the third level, that is, verbal expression in L2
has been developing through exposure to L2 at school.
The Association between narrative abilities in emergent bilinguals
The second aim of this study was to examine cross-language relationships among
narrative abilities in the L1 and L2. A cross-language relation was observed at Time 2 when the
children were a year older. Interestingly, the children who could use more subordinating
conjunctions in their L1 were more likely to construct slot fillers in L2 for the event than were
children who used fewer subordinating conjunctions in their L1. It could be said that the ability
to understand semantic relations between two different propositions and the ability to construct
34
basic elements of event representation reflect general domain abilities across languages. This
observation is in line with previous studies (Pearson, 2002; Ucelli & Páez, 2007). However,
given that unlike the children in the previous studies, the children in this sample had much less
proficiency in L2, the knowledge of slot fillers in L2 would be more dependent on language
proficiency. In other words, it would be difficult to say that the knowledge of slot fillers was
expressed as a function of general cognitive ability. Instead, this relationship suggests that
individual differences in the ability to use subordinate conjunctions in the stronger language is a
reflection of language ability which is related to familiarity with vocabulary, and in particular,
nouns in the emerging language.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that despite differences between English and Hebrew in
language typology, the cross-linguistic association between narrative abilities was detected. As
previous studies have focused on English and Spanish, which have similarity in common, this
finding suggests that correlations between narrative abilities may be independent of linguistic
distance.
Interestingly, the cross-language association was found only in the older cohort at the
end of Grade 1, at a time when they were exposed to 2.5 hours of instruction in Hebrew for a
whole year, but not at an earlier time when exposure was limited to 30 minutes a week. With
this more extensive exposure to Hebrew, the children in the older cohort gained more language
proficiency in Hebrew. It was only at that time that cross-linguistic relation began to emerge
between narratives in L1 and L2. In other words, proficiency in the L2 has to pass a certain
threshold before it is possible to note more consistently cross-language associations. One may
expect more cross-language correlations later on as children continue receive more L2
instruction at school (Pearson, 2002; Uccelli & Páez, 2007).
Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research
35
Although this study provides insights into development of a script in emerging bilingual
children, it is important to address several limitations for future research directions. First, the
present study has a small sample size for each cohort. Since statistical testing results are
dependent on sample sizes, the limited sample may have obscured some significant results. A
larger sample is required to confirm the pattern found in this study.
The participants in this study were recruited within one private school and came from
upper middle SES families with parents who had at least an undergraduate degree. Given that
school curriculum and SES are factors impacting narrative development, it is possible that the
population in this study might not be generalized to other populations though they may be to
other day schools. Therefore, it is necessary to take these factors into account when comparing
the results in this study to those of other studies. Research has indicated that SES is one of
important factors impacting narrative development. That is, children from low SES homes have
difficulty using decontextualized language (i.e., narrative) because they are less exposed to this
type of language with their parents compared to middle SES homes (Hart & Risley, 1992;
Heath, 1994). Thus, as the population in this study might be advantaged in language
development, resulting in better narrative abilities in L1 than broader populations. Studies with
multiple cohorts from various schools are needed for more powerful results that can be
generalized to other populations.
The present study was conducted on a cross sequential design following two cohorts for
one year to characterize development of a script in children from 4 to 7 years old. Although
there were no differences in their PPVT and RAN between two cohorts, the findings in this
study need to be interpreted with caution having possible cohort effects in mind. Although it is
true there are difficulties such as time constraints and administrative restrictions in conducting a
36
longitudinal study, in the future research, more efforts should be made to follow the same
children from 4 to 7 for powerful findings.
Further limitation relates to the tool of assessing children’s script narrative at macro
level. The present study attempted to provide a suggestion of accessing macrostructure of a
script. As noted earlier, various assessment tools for a story retelling has been developed at both
levels. One can apply the tools for microstructure developed for a story retelling to a script but
not for macrostructure of a script. Thus, more efforts should be made to devise and refine the
scalable tool for macrostructure of a script.
The present study investigated narrative development in emerging English Hebrew
bilinguals who just began to learn Hebrew as their second language. Since proficiency in the
second language is minimal, there were limitations in statistical analyses. For example,
correlation analyses couldn’t be estimated because their L2 production was so minimal at Time
1. However, at Time 2 when they had more time to develop their L2, a significant cross-
linguistic relation for older cohort was found at this early stage of L2 development. Thus, in the
future research, it would be interesting to see how cross language relationships change as
children progress in L2 proficiency. At the same time, it would be meaningful to see if there is
an interaction between the two languages at both levels as a function of L2 proficiency.
Implications
The findings of this study could include key messages delivered to educators and
clinicians. First, scripts can be a good clinical tool to measure cognition and language
development in young children. As noted earlier, scripts in children are of great importance in
their cognitive and language development. This suggests that clinicians should make use of
scripts as well as story telling or retelling as an assessment tool. Second, the indices of language
37
complexity can capture more nuanced and sensitive growth in 4 to 7 years old in L1 than
language productivity measures. When assessing narratives in children ranging from 4 to 7 in
age, clinicians should put more attention to complexity in the language than length of narratives.
Third, lack of oral proficiency in L2 might prevent bilingual children from constructing
a coherent and cohesive narrative although they may possess the cognitive underlying abilities
for producing well-formed narratives. Therefore, in particular, in the case of bilingual children
who moved to other countries and are learning a societal language as a second language, it is
possible that educators might view them ‘at risk for language disability’ or ‘incapable of
organizing planning a narrative discourse’ (e.g., Limbos & Geva, 2001; Montanari, 2007), due
to their failure to successfully produce a narrative discourse in a classroom. The findings from
this study suggest that educators first need to look at a narrative in their stronger language (L1)
with other cognitive and linguistic tests before identifying them as cognitively deficient through
L2 narrative.
Finally, the cross-linguistic association found in the study suggests that cross-linguistic
relationships can be detected already at an early stage of L2 development. From this finding,
the key message delivered to parents or educators would be that at the early stage of learning
L2, exposure to two languages could be mutually facilitating.
38
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Table 1. Descriptive statistics for participants by Age and Gender
The younger cohort (n=33) The older cohort (n=24)
Time 1 Time 2 Time 1 Time 2
Age M (SD) Range M (SD) Range M (SD) Range M (SD) Range
57.73(3.29) 51-63 69.97(3.80) 60-75 69.33(3.58) 64-76 82.08(3.87) 77-92
Gender Female Male Female Male
16 17 14 10
44
Table 2. Variables name and an example for each measure
Domain Variable name (type) (included language) Example/Description in English narrativesMacrostructure
Type of Output (Categorical) (E)Script
Script with partial episode:
Total episode:
“You invite people to your house or some place. You can bring agift or you can make something for a birthday boy or girl:“ You have a cake and Juice. When I turned 5, I had a bigbirthday party. There was Ariel cake”“My mom baked a cake for me and gave me a bracelet”
Slot fillers (Continuous) (E, H)ActorActionPropsTotal number of Slot fillers
Object Grouping (Continuous) (E, H)Superordinate class:Basic classSubordinate class
Mom, Friends, Cousin, Crown, Birthday boyEating, Singing, DancingGift, Cake, Juice, loot bag, Trampoline, Birthday hat
Food, Family, Activity, Sports, PeopleCake, Mommy, Daddy, Friends, BaseballChocolate cake, Kids Zone, Scavenger game, Piñata
Type of act sequences (Categorical) (E)A single actSimple act sequencesComplex act sequencesHierarchical act sequences
“You play games”“You sing a song and have a cake”“ After parties are over, your daddy come to pick you up”“Birthday parties can have themes. Some birthday parties aresports parties and some are music parties”
Microstructure
Productivity (Continuous) (E, H)Total number of morphemes (NM)Total number of C-Units (NCU)
Complexity (Continuous)Mean length of C-Units in morphemes (MLC-UM) (E, H)
Total number of complex C-Units (TCC-U) (E)
Total number of subordinate conjunctions (TNSC) (E)
Proportion of complex C-units (PCC-U) (E)
The total number of words in the child’s oral narrativeThe raw number of C-Units in the child’s oral narrative.A C-Unit is defined as an independent clause with its modifiers
The average length of C-Units in morphemes in the child’s oralnarrative.The total number of C-Units containing an independent clauseand at least one dependent clause in the child’s oral narrative.The raw frequency for use of subordinating conjunctions. (e.g.,since, when, while, because, as, although, though, because, where,that and so on)Calculated by dividing the number of complex C-Units by thetotal number of C-Units.
45
Table 3. Distributions and the McNemar test results for categorical variables in the L1 (English) for both cohorts
Variables The younger cohort (n=33) The older cohort (n=24)
Time 1 (%) Time 2 (%) p Time 1(%) Time 2 (%) p
Type of output
Scripts 25 (75.8) 28 (84.8).549
19 (79.2) 20 (83.3)1.00
Partial episode 8 (23.2) 5 (15.2) 5 (20.8) 4 (16.7)
Act sequences
Simple 23 (69.7) 6 (18.2)
.001
12 (50) 11 (45.8%)
1.00Complex 10 (30.3) 27 (81.8) 12 (50) 13 (54.2%)
46
Table 4. Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon or the Sign test Results for continuous variables in English for the younger cohort
Variables The younger cohort(n=33)
Time 1 Time 2 Significance Test
M(SD) Md Range M(SD) Md Range z pSlot fillers
ActorsActionsPropsTNSF
.6 (.93)4.40(2.15)4.88(2.72)9.97(4.50)
.004.004.009.00
0-30-110-281-25
1.12(1.47)5.88(2.87)6.30(3.35)
13.30(6.29)
1.005.005.0011.00
0-52-132-156-31
SSSS
.831.541.931.79
.405
.124
.054
.072
Object grouping
SuperordinateBasicSubordinate
.33(.65)3.36(2.46)1.58(1.12)
.003.001.00
0-30-120-4
1.39(1.12)3.67(2.00)2.03(2.01)
1.003.001.00
0-51-90-10
SSS
4.051.32.189
.000
.186.85
Productivity
TNC-UTNM
6.64(2.97)44.61(24.28)
6.0040.00
1-123-91
9.58(7.76)77.42(68.27)
8.0054.00
2-4922-369
WS
2.251.04
.02.296
Structural Complexity
TCC-UMLC-UMTNSCPCC-U
.55(.97)6.58(2.86).61(1.39).06(.11)
.006.110.000.00
0-32.33-17.00
0-6.000-.38
1.55(1.86)7.90(4.07)1.03(1.63).14(.14)
1.006.551.00.13
0-74-25.17
0-7.00-.50
WSSS
2.445.571.491.77
.01.000.134.078
Note: W = Wilcoxon test, S= Sign test, TNC-U= Total number of C-Units, TNM= Total number of morphemes, TCC-U= Total number of complex C-Units, PCC-U =
Proportion of complex C-Units, MLC-UM= Mean length of C-Units in morphemes, TNSC= Total number of subordinate conjunctions
47
Table 5. Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon or the Sign test Results for continuous variables in English for the older cohort
Note: W = Wilcoxon test, S= Sign test, TNC-U= Total number of C-Units, TNM= Total number of morphemes, TCC-U= Total number of complex C-Units, PCC-U =
Proportion of complex C-Units, MLC-UM= Mean length of C-Units in morphemes, TNSC= Total number of subordinate conjunctions
Variables The older cohort(n=24)
Time 1 Time 2 Significance Test
M(SD) Md Range M(SD) Md Range z pSlot fillers
ActorsActionsPropsTotal number of Slotfillers
.83(.70)6.17(1.99)6.5 (5.32)
13.50(6.47)
1.006.005.008.50
0-22-101-284-37
2(2.38)4.83(2.26)7.67(4.38)
14.50(6.04)
1.004.006.5013.00
0-102-101-195-29
SWSS
.24-2.181.75.83
.815
.018
.078
.405
Object grouping
SuperordinateBasicSubordinate
.83(1.09)4.54(3.24)1.83(2.14)
1.004.001.00
0-40-170-10
1.54(1.10)4.75(2.51)2.29(2.76)
1.005.001.00
0-41-90-11
SSS
2.07.83.00
.035
.4051.00
Productivity
TNC-UTNM
9.50(4.48)70.08(49.86)
8.5053.00
3-2418-256
9.29(4.97)86.92(52.40)
8.0075.50
3-2115-228
SS
-1.251.43
.210
.152
Structural Complexity
TCC-UMLC-UM
TNSCPCC-U
1.21(1.38)7.15(1.89)
.71(1.16).15(.17)
1.007.33
.00
.12
0-43.60-10.780-4
0-.57
1.92(1.80)9.20(3.85)
1.04(1.46).19(.19)
1.509.08
.00
.15
0-53-19
0-5.00-.67
SS
SS
.674.7
0.29.00
.503
.000
.7741.00
48
Table 6. Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon or the sign test Results for continuous variables in Hebrew for the younger cohort
VariablesThe Younger cohort
(n=33)Time 1 Time 2 Significance Test
M(SD) Md Range M(SD) Md Range z p
Slot fillersActorsActionsPropsTotal number of Slot fillers
.06(.24)
.03(.17)
.30(.47)
.39(.56)
.00
.00
.00
.00
0-10-10-10-2
2.67(3.29).79(.99).94(.90)
4.40(4.74)
2.00.001.004.00
0-170-30-40-23
SSSS
5.003.753.064.62
.000
.000
.001
.000
Object groupingSuperordinateBasicSubordinate
0.70(1.29)
.03
.00
.00
.00
0-00-60-1
.06(.24)1.82(2.66)
.03(.17)
.001.00.00
0-10-140-1
W 3.32 001
ProductivityTNC-UTNM
.36 (.82)2.76(7.74)
.00
.000-40-37
.58 (1.62)6.82(16.89)
.002.00
0-0-670-92
SS
.323.34
.75.000
Structural ComplexityTCC-UMLCUMTNSCPCCU
01.23(2.91)
00
.00
.00
.00
.00
0-00-13.50
0-00-0
.09 (.52)1.81(3.34)
0.05(.13)
.00
.00
.00
.00
0-30-10
00-.38
S 3.73 .000
Note: W = Wilcoxon test, S= Sign test, TNC-U= Total number of C-Units, TNM= Total number of morphemes, TCC-U= Total number of complex C-Units, PCC-U =
Proportion of complex C-Units, MLC-UM= Mean length of C-Units in morphemes, TNSC= Total number of subordinate conjunctions
49
Table 7. Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon or the sign test Results for continuous variables in Hebrew for the older cohort
Note: W = Wilcoxon test, S= Sign test, TNC-U= Total number of C-Units, TNM= Total number of morphemes, TCC-U= Total number of complex C-Units, PCC-U =
Proportion of complex C-Units, MLC-UM= Mean length of C-Units in morphemes, TNSC= Total number of subordinate conjunctions
Variables The Older Cohort(n=24)
Time 1 Time 2 Significance Test
M(SD) Md Range M(SD) Md Range z p
Slot fillers
ActorsActionsPropsTotal number of Slot fillers
.50(1.25).04(.20).42(.58).96(1.63)
.00
.00
.00
.00
0-40-10-20-5
3.88(3.35)1.17(1.79)1.63(1.28)6.67(5.95)
3.000.001.005.00
0-120-60-5
0-23
SSSS
3.932.603.253.62
.000
.006
.001
.000
Object grouping
SuperordinateBasicSubordinate
01.67(2.12)
0
0.001.000.00
0-00-70-0
.04(.20)2.86(2.80)
.08(.41)
.002.00.00
0-10-110-2
W 2.03 .043
Productivity
TNC-UTNM
.42(.50)2.79(3.48)
.001.50
0-10-12
.79(.98)6.71(8.14)
1.004.00
0-40-38
SS
.0001.75
1.00.078
Structural Complexity
TCC-UMLCUMTNSCPCCU
.002.38(3.60)
00
.00
.000-00-12
04.41(4.75)
00
.004.00
00
0-15 S 1.75 .078
50
Table 8. Intercorrelations among narrative measures in the L1 and L2 at Time 2 for the younger cohort
Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
English measures1. Type of output2. TNSF .1113. Act sequences -.020 .2944. TNC-U .237 .570** .390*5. TNM .369* .683** .433* .777**6. TNCC-U .437* .410** .329 .665** .767**7. PCC-U .338 .234 .289 .373* .597** .906**8. MLC-UM .213 .383* .342 .191 .688** .559** .617**9. TNSC .301 .451** .460** .429* .544** .748** .705 .456**Hebrew measures10. TNSF -.139 -.056 -.067 -.073 -.200 -.002 -.051 -.258 .02911. TNC-U .155 .034 -.100 .101 .111 .144 .015 -.004 .158 .685**12. TNM .000 -.057 -.225 -.115 -.129 .118 .069 -.111 .105 .832** .713**13. MLC-UM .153 .071 -.104 .103 .115 .141 -.008 -.012 .149 .684** .988* 725**Note: TNSF= Total number of Slot fillers, TNC-U= Total number of C-Units, TNM= Total number of morphemes, TNCC-U= Total number of complex C-Units, PCC-U = Proportion of complex C-Units, MLC-UM= Mean length of C-Units in morphemes, TNSC= Total number of subordinate conjunctions. **p < .01, *p < .05
51
Table 9. Intercorrelations among narrative measures in the L1 and L2 at Time 2 for the older cohort
Variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
English measures1. Type of output2. TNSF .1393. Act sequences -.262 .488*4. TNC-U -.130 .631** .468*5. TNM .113 .721** .483* .734**6. TNCC-U -.116 .539** .645** .684** .759**7. PCC-U -.156 .397 .535** .409* .558** .901**8. MLC-UM .194 .347 .356 -.022 .558** .402 .487*9. TNSC -.177 .432* .575** .422* .507* .638** .624** .357Hebrew measures10. TNSF -.171 .159 .225 -.183 .012 -.079 .022 .192 .405*11. TNC-U -.302 -.018 .072 -.080 -.140 -.213 -.212 -.098 .134 .455*12. TNM -.284 .123 .134 -.029 -.031 -.070 -.035 -.044 .375 .759** .835**13. MLC-UM -.277 .170 .176 .080 .077 .020 .027 -.011 .319 .626** .888** .911**Note: TNSF= Total number of Slot fillers, TNC-U= Total number of C-Units, TNM= Total number of morphemes, TNCC-U= Total number of complex C-Units, PCC-U = Proportion of complex C-Units, MLC-UM= Mean length of C-Units in morphemes, TNSC= Total number of subordinate conjunctions. **p < .01, *p < .05