Growth in syntactic complexity between four years and adulthood: evidence from a narrative task

Abstract

Studies examining productive syntax have used varying elicitation methods and have tended to focus on either young children or adolescents/adults, so we lack an account of syntactic development throughout middle childhood. We describe here the results of an analysis of clause complexity in narratives produced by 354 speakers aged from four years to adulthood using the Expressive, Receptive, and Recall of Narrative Instrument (ERRNI). We show that the number of clauses per utterance increased steadily through this age range. However, the distribution of clause types depended on which of two stories was narrated, even though both stories were designed to have a similar story structure. In addition, clausal complexity was remarkably similar regardless of whether the speaker described a narrative from pictures, or whether the same narrative was recalled from memory. Finally, our findings with the youngest children showed that the task of generating a narrative from pictures may underestimate syntactic competence in those aged below five years.

Does the Use of Complex Sentences Differentiate Between Bilinguals With and Without DLD? Evidence From Conversation and Narrative Tasks

“…These school-age L2 children, with an average of 17 months of L2 exposure in school, used more complex sentences in their language production than monolingual four-year-olds, as reported in Diessel (2004) and Vasilyeva et al (2008): 18% of all complete sentences were complex in the language samples of these L2 children (Paradis et al, 2017, p. 9). In Frizelle et al (2018), English L1 children in the age bands from 5 to 7 years produced complex sentences as approximately 22-30% of all utterances, which is more than the L2 children in Paradis et al (2017). But, considering the gap in length of exposure to English between these bilinguals and monolinguals (less than 2 years vs. 5-7 years), the sequential bilinguals are not lagging far behind.…”

“…Use of complex sentences in conversation or narrative production can be measured using clausal density: how many clauses per sentence on average (Frizelle et al, 2018) or by comparing the proportion of simple vs. complex sentences used (Paradis et al, 2017). In either case, this measure of growth in complex syntax is focused on use of multi-clause sentences specifically.…”

“…MLU consists of the average number of words or morphemes per utterance in a language sample; therefore, MLU is a more general measure in that it captures the addition of adjective or adverb phrases and grammatical morphology to lengthen utterances/sentences, rather than measuring the use of multiple clauses in particular (cf. Frizelle et al, 2018;Cahill et al, 2020).…”

“…This relative frequency also corresponds to the distribution in caregiver speech in the preschool years (Diessel, 2004). Frizelle et al (2018) conducted a large-scale study on the production of complex sentences in language samples from school age English L1 children from 4 years to adolescence. They found that simple or single clause sentences were the most common type across all ages, with use of multi-clausal sentences, as measured by clausal density, growing after the ages of 4-5 years, with growth stabilizing after age seven until about 10 years of age.…”

Education and Input as Predictors of Second Language Attainment in Naturalistic Contexts

“…For this variable, length of residence accounts for 14% of the variance and there is no effect of education, and no interaction. This is surprising: it is well established that in literate speakers, clausal density increases steadily throughout childhood and adolescence (Frizelle et al 2018;Nippold et al 2005;Scott 1988). This increase is most likely attributable to exposure to written texts (Dąbrowska forthcoming).…”