This volume represents the culmination of an extensive research
project that studied the development of linguistic form/function
relations in narrative discourse. It is unique in the extent of
data which it analyzes-more than 250 texts from children and adults
speaking five different languages-and in its crosslinguistic,
typological focus. It is the first book to address the issue of how
the structural properties and rhetorical preferences of different
native languages-English, German, Spanish, Hebrew, and
Turkish-impinge on narrative abilities across different phases of
development. The work of Berman and Slobin and their colleagues
provides insight into the interplay between shared, possibly
universal, patterns in the developing ability to create
well-constructed, globally organized narratives among preschoolers
Contact Susan Barker at (201) 258-2282 for more information. from
three years of age compared with school children and adults,
contrasted against the impact of typological and rhetorical
features of particular native languages on how speakers express
these abilities in the process of "relating events in narrative."
This volume also makes a special contribution to the field of
language acquisition and development by providing detailed analyses
of how linguistic forms come to be used in the service of narrative
functions, such as the expression of temporal relations of
simultaneity and retrospection, perspective-taking on events, and
textual connectivity. To present this information, the authors
prepared in-depth analyses of a wide range of linguistic systems,
including tense-aspect marking, passive and middle voice, locative
and directional predications, connectivity markers,null subjects,
and relative clause constructions. In contrast to most work in the
field of language acquisition, this book focuses on developments in
the use of these early forms in extended discourse-beyond the
initial phase of early language development. The book offers a
pioneering approach to the interactions between form and function
in the development and use of language, from a typological
linguistic perspective. The study is based on a large
crosslinguistic corpus of narratives, elicited from preschool,
school-age, and adult subjects. All of the narratives were elicited
by the same picture storybook, Frog, Where Are You?, by Mercer
Mayer. (An appendix lists related studies using the same storybook
in 50 languages.) The findings illuminate both universal and
language-specific patterns of development, providing new insights
into questions of language and thought.
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