漢語兒童在敘事中的連接性 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學語言學研究所碩士論文. National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of Linguistics Master Thesis. 指導教授：黃瓊之博士 Advisor: Dr. Chiung-Chih Huang. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學 ‧. 漢語兒童在敘事中的連接性 Connectivity in Mandarin-speaking Children’s Narratives. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. 研究生：高惟珍撰 Student: Wei-Chen Kao 中華民國一○三年七月 July, 2014. v.

(2) CONNECTIVITY IN MANDARIN-SPEAKING CHILDREN’S NARRATIVES. BY Wei-Chen Kao. 立. 政治大. n. y. sit. er. io. al. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Nat. A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Institute of Linguistics in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. Ch. engchi. July 2014. i n U. v.

(3) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. ii. i n U. v.

(4) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. Copyright © 2014 Wei-Chen Kao All Rights Reserved iii. i n U. v.

(5) Acknowledgements 完成這篇論文之前的產出過程，絕不是從開始搜集資料或定題目的那一刻算起。在這個世界上，我受了多少滋養、多少栽培、多少教導、多少關懷，那是數也數不盡的，我成長的歷程上所遇到的每個人、事、物，都是這篇論文誕生的養分，都是「causally related」。當然，最關鍵的人物，還是我親愛的指導教授——黃瓊之老師。感謝老師一路的教導以及針對論文不辭勞苦的指導！在老師的語言習得工作室裡，我學到好多知識與技巧，我就像一個保溫箱裡的嬰兒，在這裡成長茁壯。說是嬰兒，因為知也無涯，即便拿到了碩士學位，於語言學浩瀚的領域裡，我還是個稚嫩的學習者。我能夠進入這個有趣的領域，感謝大一時詹惠珍老師於語言學概論的啟蒙，也特別感謝大三時鍾曉芳老師將我引進門，開啟我的修行之路。. 政治大. 在政大語言所修行的日子，感謝曾惠鈴助教學姐的照顧。感謝語言習得工作室的養育，侃彧學姊及宇涵等人對我的論文完成功不可沒。感謝萬依萍老師的語音暨心理語言實驗室的培育，感謝涵絜學姐的提攜，感謝心怡、聖瑋等助理同伴。感謝戴智偉老師於我助教工作的指導，感謝親愛的同事們。感謝所有政大課程老師給我的滋養。感謝一路上，宇彤等等同班好同學的陪伴與互相扶持，感謝許多好朋友們的關心與激勵，你們除了陪我完成這項學業的結晶，還陪我走過喜樂、悲傷，陪我經歷許多重要的日子，見證了我生命中的幾個特別的事件，陪我刻劃人生。你們成就了我，你們都是我完成論文的必要養分。. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Nat. y. sit. n. al. er. io. 論文能完成，特別感謝徐嘉慧老師、薩文惠老師、張鑑如老師擔任我的口試委員、給予專業的建議。感謝 Twila Tardif 博士提供語料，感謝 Rob Squizzero 及 Colleen Lippert 等人協助潤稿。. Ch. i n U. v. 最後，深深感謝這土地上我最愛的女人老媽大人、感謝這土地上我最愛的男人瀚興、感謝我珍愛的家人親人們。最後，謹以此篇論文獻給在天上的我最愛的男人老爸大人。. engchi. iv.

(6) Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. iv Chinese Abstract .................................................................................................................... vii English Abstract .................................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 1.1 General background ..................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Research gap and the present study ............................................................................. 3 1.3 Organization of the thesis ............................................................................................ 5 Chapter 2 Literature Review .................................................................................................. 6. 政治大 2.1.1 Coherence and connectivity .............................................................................. 7 立 2.1.2 Cognitive abilities and linguistic capacities ...................................................... 8. 2.1 Connectivity ................................................................................................................. 7. ‧ 國. 學. 2.1.3 Linguistic devices for connectivity ................................................................. 11 2.2 Connectivity in narratives .......................................................................................... 14. ‧. 2.2.1 Narrative connectivity and narrative structure ................................................ 14 2.2.2 Developmental path of narrative connectivity ................................................ 18. y. Nat. sit. 2.2.3 Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic studies on narrative connectivity............. 21. er. io. 2.3 Mechanisms marking connectivity in Mandarin Chinese .......................................... 23. al. v i n Ch 2.3.2 Causality markers............................................................................................ 26 U i e h ngc 2.3.3 Connectivity markers ...................................................................................... 26 n. 2.3.1 Temporality markers ....................................................................................... 23. 2.4 Mandarin-speaking children’s acquisition of narrative connectivity ......................... 28 2.4.1 Forms marking narrative connectivity ............................................................ 28 2.4.2 Recognition and expression of event relations ............................................... 31 Chapter 3 Method .................................................................................................................. 35 3.1 Data collection ........................................................................................................... 35 3.2 Analytical frameworks ............................................................................................... 36 3.2.1 Communication units ...................................................................................... 37 3.2.2 Causal connections ......................................................................................... 38 3.2.3 Connection types ............................................................................................. 40 3.2.4 Linguistic devices ........................................................................................... 43 v.

(7) Chapter 4 Results ................................................................................................................... 46 4.1 Narrative length and event connectedness ................................................................. 46 4.2 Connection types ........................................................................................................ 57 4.3 Linguistic devices for connectivity ............................................................................ 59 4.4 Connection types and linguistic devices .................................................................... 62 Chapter 5 Discussion ............................................................................................................. 66 5.1 Developmental differences in narrative connectedness ............................................. 66 5.2 Four-year-old’s cognitive state and language preference........................................... 68 5.3 Cultural- and language-specific factors ..................................................................... 72 Chapter 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 74 6.1 Summary .................................................................................................................... 74. 政治大 References .......................................................................................................................................78 立 6.2 Limitations and suggestions for future research ........................................................ 75. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vi. i n U. v.

(8) 國. 立. 政. 治. 大. 學. 研. 研究所別：. 語言學研究所. 論文名稱：. 漢語兒童在敘事中的連接性. 指導教授：. 黃瓊之博士. 研究生：. 高惟珍. 究. 所. 碩. 士. 論. 文. 題. 要. 論文提要內容：本研究旨在探討以中文為母語之四歲兒童其表現在故事敘述中之連接性。研究語料來自兒童語言資料交換系統（CHILDES）。根據 Trabasso and Sperry (1985)、Chang (2004)等學者提出之分析方法，對四歲兒童的故事連接性及因果關係的語言標記進行分析之後，本研究發現在四歲的孩子的故事敘述中，往往包含了約 35.89 個事件，而每一個事件常. 政治大（enablement）及動機關係（motivation）立；最常被使用的語言標記是時序連接詞（temporal 有與其他僅一個事件有相互的因果關係，最常出現的事件關係類型是賦予能力關係. ‧ 國. 學. connectives）及零連接詞（zero connectives）。本研究之發現為兒童敘事連接性議題提供了中文的研究結果及證據。. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vii. i n U. v.

(9) Abstract This study investigates Mandarin-speaking four-year-old preschoolers’ performance of story narrating by examining narrative connectivity. Thirty pieces of Mandarin Chinese data provided by children aged 4;0 to 4;11 were collected from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). Data was analyzed following several frameworks (e.g., Trabasso and Sperry, 1985; Chang, 2004). Results show that the four-year-old children tended to produce 35.89 events when depicting a story, and each narrative event usually had one. 政治大 types were enablement and motivation; the most frequently observed linguistic devices 立. connection to or from other events. Among the events, the most frequently found connection. ‧ 國. 學. marking connectivity were temporal connectives and zero connectives. The findings provide Mandarin Chinese results and evidence under the topic of children’s narrative connectivity.. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. viii. i n U. v.

(10) Chapter 1 Introduction. 1.1 General background Connectivity, a notion referring to the relatedness and connection between linguistic units, is a specific feature in narratives (Berman & Slobin, 1994). The necessary concept in. 政治大. establishing narrative connectivity consists of temporality and causality (Shapiro & Hudson,. 立. 1991). Earlier researchers have suggested that causal relation is the basic foundation of. ‧ 國. 學. argumentation and explanation (Byrnes, 1991; Wu & Tsai, 2006). Accordingly, story-telling. ‧. ability, including temporal ordering of story events, connecting events, and explaining the. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. connections, seems to relate directly to the development of causal concepts (Peterson & McCabe, 1991; Berman & Slobin, 1994).. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. The concept of causality emerges at the age of two (Hood & Bloom, 1979). Hood and Bloom found that two- to three-year-old children can put sentences together that include both cause and effect, without applying explicit linguistic devices to mark the relationship between cause and effect. They observed that the connective “and” gradually emerges in children’s sentences, and children further use many more connectives to mark the interrelationship between events. Most researchers agree that four- to five-year-old children understand the. 1.

(11) mechanism of causality, and they have the ability to describe the interrelationship between events and give explanations (e.g., Kemper, 1984; Peterson & McCabe, 1991; Berman & Slobin, 1994). Over the past four decades, researchers have investigated narrators’ performance of establishing narrative connectivity. Among them, some adopted Labov’s (1972) high point analysis to assess narrative structure (e.g., Chang, 2004); some proposed story grammar. 政治大. models to evaluate narratives, for example, the GAO structure (e.g., Trabasso et al., 1992);. 立. and others analyzed narratives through the examination of linguistic forms with the aid of a. ‧ 國. 學. coding scheme (e.g., Chang, 2004; To et al., 2010; Young, 2011).. ‧. Coding schemes have enabled researchers to measure narrative elements. For example,. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. the cohesive devices proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976) have been adopted in many. v. studies (e.g., Young, 2011) to measure narrative coherences. Among the cohesive devices, the. Ch. engchi. i n U. one called “conjunction” marks connectivity. The investigation of conjunctions has facilitated Berman and Slobin (1994) to cross-linguistically study the temporality dimension in narratives, Chang (2004) to conduct a study on Mandarin-speaking children’s narratives, and To et al. (2010) to conduct a similar study on Cantonese-speaking children’s narratives. In terms of the interrelationship between narrative events, Trabasso and Sperry (1985) proposed an alternative procedure in their investigation. They identified connections between. 2.

(12) narrative events through examining causal relationship criteria rather than through identifying connectives. They further developed a causal network based on the connections between events to visualize the connectivity in a narrative. Diehl (2006) proposed a method for calculating connections between narrative events, in which, quantitatively speaking, the degree of narrative connectivity was more precisely discussed. This method was adopted in Sah’s (2013) study on five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children’s and adults’ narratives.. 政治大. Later researchers mostly modified or integrated the above methods in studying narrative. 立. connectivity.. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. 1.2 Research gap and the present study. sit. y. Nat. io. al. er. Earlier researchers found that assessing narrative connectivity via examining connectives. v. n. did not precisely reflect a narrator’s narrative performance (e.g., To et al., 2010). Some studies. Ch. engchi. i n U. showed that both children and adults juxtaposed two sentences to show their temporal relation (Gride, 1979; Peterson & McCabe, 1991), and explicit linguistic devices were omitted. Therefore, the present study first aims to identify related linguistic units (e.g., sentences or clauses), and then investigate whether any linguistic devices are applied. Using this method, a better interpretation of children’s performance of narratives is expected. In terms of Mandarin-speaking children, studies on the interrelationship between. 3.

(13) narrative events are still limited. Among these studies, Wu and Tsai (2006) and Sah (2007, 2013) presented children’s cognitive and verbal development in describing event relations. Sah (2013) also investigated five-year-old preschoolers, older children, and adults following earlier researchers’ procedures and methods (Trabasso & Sperry, 1985; Diehl, et al., 2006). Other studies found that, generally, five-year-old children were regarded as having a better and steadier narrating ability among preschoolers (Kemper, 1984; Peterson & McCabe, 1991;. 政治大. Berman & Slobin, 1994). Narrating ability that has been investigated through various methods. 立. (e.g., Applebee, 1978; Berman & Slobin, 1994; Chang, 2004; Wu & Tsai, 2006) also found. ‧ 國. 學. that, as children’s concept of causality begins to develop at the age of two, the difference. ‧. among children ages two to five was regarded as significant in the developmental process. In. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. particular, compared with the five year olds, four-year-old preschoolers were regarded as. v. having a worse and unsteady narrating ability. This one-year gap between abilities sparked the. Ch. engchi. i n U. present study’s curiosity: Why is the four-year-old children’s performance of narratives in terms of connectivity so different from that of the five-year-old children? The present study aims to investigate the four-year-old children’s narrative connectivity following earlier researchers’ procedures and methods (Trabasso & Sperry, 1985; Diehl, et al., 2006). To sum up, the present study intends to integrate several methods in analyzing Mandarin-speaking four-year-old preschoolers’ narratives. The connectivity among narrative. 4.

(14) events will be discussed by examining their connectedness, types of connections, and markers for connectivity. Finally, the present study expects to answer the following research questions:. (1) How are events in the four-year-old children’s narratives connected? (2) How do four-year-old children mark narrative connectivity with linguistic devices?. 1.3 Organization of the thesis. 立. 政治大. The present study will investigate the connectivity in narratives produced by. ‧ 國. 學. Mandarin-speaking four-year-old children. The thesis is organized as follows: Chapter 2 will. ‧. present a review of related studies; Chapter 3 will describe the analytical framework and. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. methodology of the present study; Chapter 4 will display research results; Chapter 5 will. v. discuss the findings; and Chapter 6 will conclude the thesis with a summary, limitations, and suggestions for further research.. Ch. engchi. 5. i n U.

(15) Chapter 2 Literature Review. Research has established fundamental features of connectivity (e.g., Ellis, 1983; Berman & Slobin, 1994). Cross-linguistic studies have revealed similarities and differences in the way linguistic units in texts connect among various languages, especially in narratives (e.g.,. 政治大. Berman & Slobin, 1987, 1994; Bamberg & Marchman, 1990, 1991; Slobin, 1993). A number. 立. of these studies have investigated children’s acquisition and development of connectivity in. ‧ 國. 學. narratives (e.g., Peterson & McCabe, 1991; Berman & Slobin, 1994; Sah, 2013).. ‧. This chapter will review and present related studies on connectivity in the following. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. order. Section 2.1 defines what connectivity is and introduces cognitive abilities of. v. connectivity and the linguistic realization of connectivity. Section 2.2 discusses studies on. Ch. engchi. i n U. connectivity in the genre of narratives, including narrative coherence, relating events in narratives, and cross-linguistic differences in narrative connectivity. Section 2.3 introduces features of connectivity in Mandarin Chinese. Finally, important studies related to children’s acquisition of connectivity in Mandarin Chinese, especially in narratives, are presented in Section 2.4.. 6.

(16) 2.1 Connectivity The term “connectivity” is used to represent the notion of relating linguistic units in a text. To construct connectivity in a text, cognitive abilities and linguistic capacities are required. Connectivity is realized through additive, adversative, temporal, and causal aspects and through various linguistic devices in a text.. 2.1.1 Coherence and connectivity. 立. 政治大. The concept of connectivity is regarded as similar to “coherence” (e.g., Ellis, 1983;. ‧ 國. 學. Samet & Schank, 1984). The notion of coherence is one of the properties of discourse. ‧. structuring in general (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Ellis, 1983; Samet & Schank, 1984; Berman. y. Nat. al. er. io. sit. & Slobin, 1994). Halliday and Hasan (1976) described coherence as the “relations of meaning. v. n. existing within a text and defining a text” (p. 4). Accordingly, in terms of a coherent text,. Ch. engchi. i n U. Samet and Schank (1984) put it another way, stating that “something is coherent if it ‘hangs together’; if it is unified” (p. 59). Moreover, “[t]he interpretation of coherence requires linguistic units beyond the sentence proposition and is based on the interpretation of one sentence, clause, or utterance relative to another,” which is “the fundamental notion of ‘connectiveness’” (Ellis, 1983: 233). The present study has adopted the term “connectivity” to denote the concept of connectiveness. The notion of connectivity is seen in many studies on. 7.

(17) relating events in discourse or extended discourses (e.g., Ellis, 1983; Samet & Schank, 1984; Trabasso & Sperry, 1985; Berman & Slobin, 1994; Sah, 2013). In terms of texts such as narratives, Samet and Schank (1984) considered the notion of connectivity as “internal connectivity” (p. 59), which represents the function of connections between units smaller than narratives. In other words, connectivity represents the relation between a linguistic unit and some other unit (Ellis, 1983).. 政治大. To sum up, connectivity is crucial for understanding the coherence of a text (Ellis, 1983;. 立. Samet & Schank, 1984). This implies that how a discourse is coherent is analyzable by. ‧ 國. 學. specifying the connectivity among units of a text (e.g., Trabasso & Sperry, 1985; Diehl et al.,. ‧. 2006).. n. Ch. engchi. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. 2.1.2 Cognitive abilities and linguistic capacities. i n U. v. To construct the connectivity of a text, corresponding cognitive abilities and linguistic capacities are required (deBeaugrande, 1980; Ellis, 1983; Kemper, 1984; Berman & Slobin, 1994). A text should be produced following a topic; thus, the notion of topicality has been used to define the connectivity of sentences and the coherence of discourse (Ellis, 1983). DeBeaugrande (1980) indicated that topicality lies in both sequential and conceptual connectivity. Sequential connectivity means that to elaborate on a topic, utterances should be. 8.

(18) organized; thus, back-tracking abilities, on-line verbal production, explicitly stating relations between clauses, local linking, and integration and organization of the text units are necessary (deBeaugrande, 1980; Ellis, 1983; Berman & Slobin, 1994). Conceptual connectivity refers to different levels of abstraction from sentence topicality; thus, elements in a discourse should relate to the topic and relate to each other in terms of the elaboration of the topic (Ellis, 1983; Berman & Slobin, 1994).. 政治大. One of the necessary bases in building these abilities is the concept of causality. Earlier. 立. researchers have suggested that causal relation is the basic foundation of argumentation and. ‧ 國. 學. explanation (e.g., Kemper, 1984; Byrnes, 1991; Berman & Slobin, 1994; Hsu, 1996). The. ‧. concept of causality emerges at the age of two (Hood & Bloom, 1979). Hood and Bloom. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. found that two- to three-year-old children can put sentences together that include both cause. v. and effect, without applying explicit linguistic devices to mark the relationship between cause. Ch. engchi. i n U. and effect. In developing extended discourse ability, such as narrative ability, one must be equipped with the concepts of temporality and causality, which enable the construction of plots and themes (Kemper, 1984). In the circumstance of storytelling narratives, a narrator must be able to introduce the protagonist’s action, reveal the protagonist’s motives, display the following actions or states, and show the results of the protagonist’s actions; these elements enable narrators to connect. 9.

(19) events in stories and make unified narratives (Samet & Schank, 1984; Berman & Slobin, 1994). Many researchers have indicated that the concept of causality plays a role in narrative skill and narrative coherence in terms of telling a story (e.g., Applebee, 1978; Samet & Schank, 1984; Peterson & McCabe, 1991; Shapiro & Hudson, 1991; Berman & Slobin, 1994). For example, Berman and Slobin (1994) elicited narratives with the aid of a picture book called Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). In the picture book, the first three pictures. 政治大. display (1) a boy and a dog looking at a frog in a jar, (2) a frog climbing out of the jar while. 立. the boy and dog are sleeping, and (3) the awakened boy and dog and an empty jar. Still other. ‧ 國. 學. series of events exist in the story, and narrators with different levels of cognitive maturity. ‧. might relay different interpretations of the events in terms of their causal relations. Berman. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. and Slobin indicated that young children were found to have had no difficulty in recognizing. v. the above scenes, but they might have been unable to figure out what happened to the. Ch. engchi. i n U. protagonists in the latter series of pictures, which features (1) the boy climbing on a rock, (2) the boy clutching what seems to be branches of a tree, and (3) the branches lifting, which are actually antlers on the head of a deer. Temporality is encoded in causality (Byrnes, 1991; Hsu, 1996; Wu & Tsai, 2006). The use of causal connectives not only expresses the causal relation between two clauses but also signals their temporal relation. For example, “if” encodes the co-occurrence of cause and. 10.

(20) effect, while “because” encodes the inconsistency of cause and effect in time, namely the cause brings about the effect (Byrnes, 1991). The expression of causality between events lies on understanding the principle of covariance, namely their temporal priority continuity (Byrnes, 1991; Hsu, 1996; Wu & Tsai, 2006). Other researchers have posited that temporal succession characterizes causal connections (Trabasso & Sperry, 1985; Trabasso & van dan Broek, 1985). In addition, many researchers have found that temporality plays a role in. 政治大. narrative skill (e.g., Applebee, 1978; Peterson & McCabe, 1991; Shapiro & Hudson, 1991;. 立. Berman & Slobin, 1994; Chang, 2004; Sah, 2007, 2013).. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. 2.1.3 Linguistic devices for connectivity. sit. y. Nat. io. al. er. Berman and Slobin (1994) defined connectivity as a structured characteristic of events in. v. n. narratives and they described connectivity as “knitting the fabric of narrative discourse” (p.. Ch. engchi. i n U. 19). Berman and Slobin suggested that formal expressions of connectivity include syntactic conjunctions, syntactic subordinations (such as relative clauses), nonfinite verb forms, nominalizations, and topic ellipses. These formal expressions belong to the cohesive devices proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976). In their influential work on cohesive devices in English, Halliday and Hasan investigated the linguistic system that constructs the unity and consistency in a text. The cohesive devices were categorized into five classes: conjunctions,. 11.

(21) substations, ellipses, references, and lexical cohesion. Various types of conjunctions, namely various functions that connectives serve, include additive, adversative, temporal, and causal relations (Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Peterson & McCabe, 1991; Hsu, 1996). An additive relation is the coordination of sentences or clauses when extra information or exemplification is added. An adversative relation refers to something “contrary to expectation”; that is, the second-occurring linguistic element is contrary to the first-occurring one in meaning. A. 政治大. temporal relation, often shown in two successive sentences, is the relation in time in terms of. 立. semantic content; for example, simultaneousness, sequenceness, or perviousness. Common. ‧ 國. 學. expressions are “then,” “afterward,” “simultaneously,” “finally,” etc. A causal relation. ‧. includes result, reason, purpose, conditional, and respective relations between linguistic. y. Nat. al. er. io. sit. elements. They are often expressed through “so,” “thus,” “consequently,” “because of that,”. v. n. “then,” “under those circumstances,” “in this respect,” etc. (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).. Ch. engchi. i n U. The use of connectives has been a prevailing issue in the study of language in recent decades (e.g., Schiffrin, 1986; Peterson & McCabe, 1988, 1991; Biq, 2001; Wang & Huang, 2006). Peterson and McCabe (1991) elicited personal narratives from children three-and-a-half years old to nine-and-a-half years old. They investigated connective use and how the use of this linguistic device reflected narrative macrostructure. Their results showed that most of the uses of the connectives “because,” “and,” “so,” “but,” and “then”. 12.

(22) appropriately matched their canonical meanings, although a number of them did not. Moreover, these connectives not only marked semantic relations but also functioned pragmatically, such as for utterance initiation. A feature of these connectives was that most of them served various functions. For example, “and” marked the temporal succession between statements and coordinated events, and it was often applied in presenting physical causation between events. Peterson and McCabe also found that even though narratives are texts that. 政治大. use connectives heavily, intersentential relations were sometimes built in narratives without. 立. any use of markers. Peterson and McCabe further designed three versions of narratives to play. ‧ 國. 學. to college students and asked them to rate their comprehensibility. The three narratives were. ‧. designed with both the presence and the absence of connectives. The results showed that. sit. y. Nat. io. al. er. comprehensibility did not differ much regarding the presence or absence of connectives.. v. n. Grices’ (1975) Maxim of Orderliness was adopted in their explanation:. Ch. engchi. i n U. [T]wo sequentially stated event clauses are assumed by the listener to be an accurate reflection of the order of occurrence of those events, that is, the act of stating or describing one event before the other is automatically assumed to mean that the event mentioned first actually occurred first (p. 31).. 13.

(23) In sum, connectives are considered obligatory in the production of a well-formed narrative but are not obligatory in the inference and comprehension of a narrative; moreover, connectives are obligatory only when the chronological order of events is stated in a violated order (Peterson & McCabe, 1988, 1991).. 2.2 Connectivity in narratives. 政治大. Earlier researchers have revealed that connectivity is a crucial element in constructing. 立. narratives (e.g., Labov, 1972; Samet & Schank, 1984; Trabasso & Sperry, 1985; Peterson &. ‧ 國. 學. McCabe, 1991; Shapiro & Hudson, 1991). Labov (1972) defined a minimal narrative as “a. ‧. sequence of two restricted/independent clauses which are temporally ordered” (p. 360). A. y. Nat. al. er. io. sit. narrative, according to Peterson and McCabe (1991), is “a recounting of events that follow. v. n. each other in time” (p. 30). A frequent method adopted in narrative studies is storytelling,. Ch. engchi. i n U. either telling fictional stories or personal experiences (e.g., Applebee, 1978; Trabasso & Sperry, 1985; Peterson & McCabe, 1991; Shapiro & Hudson, 1991; Berman & Slobin, 1994).. 2.2.1 Narrative connectivity and narrative structure Researchers have described the connectivity in narratives in various ways, such as “a matter of the causally connected story-line at the center” (Samet & Schank, 1984: 65),. 14.

(24) “knitting the fabric of narrative discourse” (Berman & Slobin, 1994), and “the interconnection and integration of the content of a narrative” (Nicolopoulou, 2008: 300). In sum, narrative connectivity is a structured characteristic of events. Researchers have proposed many ways to represent narratives based on the examination of relations between narrative elements (Applebee, 1978; Kemper, 1981, 1984; Trabasso & Sperry, 1985; Trabasso & van dan Broek, 1985; Diehl et al., 2006). Applebee (1978). 政治大. developed a six-stage narrative model based on Vygotsky’s (1962) stages of concept. 立. development. Applebee examined stories told by children aged two to five and concluded that. ‧ 國. 學. there are six stages to a story’s structure. The six stages showed a path similar to the general. ‧. developmental order for children proposed by Vygotsky (1962). In resemblance to Vygotsky’s. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. stages of concept development, Applebee called the stages heaps, associative sequences,. v. primitive narratives, unfocused chains, focused chains, and true narratives.. Ch. engchi. i n U. Trabasso and Sperry (1985) proposed procedures for deriving a causal network to assess connectivity between events in a narrative. In their study, a pause unit in a story narrative was considered an event. Trabasso and Sperry identified causal relations between all pairs of events in a narrative through logical criteria of necessity (Mackie, 1980). A counterfactual test was used to examine necessity and dependency between events: “If not A then not B.” Given that event A is the necessary element for the occurrence of event B, if event A has not. 15.

(25) occurred, it is impossible for event B to occur. Accordingly, a pair of events that passed the test was identified as causally related. To facilitate the judgment of relation between a pair of events, six kinds of causal relations described by Warren et al. (1979) were employed by Trabasso and Sperry (1985): (1) motivation, an event that causes a goal-directed action; (2) psychological causation, an event that causes a non-goal-directed action; (3) physical causation, naïve interpretations of the. 政治大. physical world or mechanical causality between objects and/or people; (4) enablement,. 立. actions or occurrences or states that are necessary but not sufficient to cause other actions or. ‧ 國. 學. states; (5) temporal succession; and (6) temporal coexistence, any pair of linguistic units. ‧. possessing a temporal sequence or coexistence but failing to pass the necessity test. Based on. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. the connections between events, Trabasso and Sperry derived causal networks for narratives.. v. Moreover, they identified whether the event depicted by a statement was in a causal chain,. Ch. engchi. i n U. which consists of opening, closing, and continuing. Trabasso and Sperry found that the number of direct operative links a statement has to other statements and whether a statement is in a causal chain were both given consideration in the assessment of connectivity in narratives. Trabasso and Sperry further compared an earlier study on the importance of each event to the dependencies between the particular event and others, namely the connections, and to whether or not an event was in a causal chain. In conclusion, the importance of story. 16.

(26) events was highly related to causal relatedness. Diehl et al., (2006) calculated the number of connections between related narrative events that had been identified following Trabasso and Sperry’s (1985) procedures. Events coincided with communication-units (c-units), which consist of a verb and its arguments (Strong, 1998). The number of connections that en event had to other events was categorized into four levels: isolated events that have no causal connection to or from other events in a. 政治大. narrative (C0); an event that has only one connection to or from the other events in a narrative. 立. (C1); an event that has two connections with other events in a narrative (C2); and an event. ‧ 國. 學. that has three or more connections with other events in a narrative (C3+). Levels of. ‧. connectedness for three connections and above were collapsed because they were seldom. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. found to be produced by children. Diehl et al. (2006) investigated narrative coherence in. v. children with ADS (autism spectrum disorders) and children in a control group, with ages. Ch. engchi. i n U. ranging from six to fourteen. In terms of narrative connectivity, relative to the children in the control group, the children in the ADS group were found to have produced a higher proportion of isolated events with no connections to or from the other events. They also had a lower proportion of highly connected events. Diehl et al. indicated that these patterns signaled that children with ADS produced less coherent stories relative to the children in the control group.. 17.

(27) Applebee’s (1978) model and Trabasso and Sperry’s (1985) causal network were both applied in later studies that investigated narratives via narrative structure analysis. For example, Applebee’s (1978) model was adopted in Kemper’s (1984) study, along with high point analysis (Labov, 1972). Trabasso and van dan Broek (1985) proposed a recursive transition network that integrated story grammar (Stein & Glen, 1979), causal network, causal chain, and problem-solving approaches. Sah (2013) adopted Trabasso and Sperry’s (1985) and. 政治大. Diehl et al.’s (2006) methods of analysis, and further discussed the causal relation between. 立. narrative events with the approach of goal plan analysis.. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. 2.2.2 Developmental path of narrative connectivity. sit. y. Nat. io. al. er. Given that researchers used various ways to investigate narrative connectivity, they. v. n. interpreted children’s developmental path of narrative connectivity differently. In terms of. Ch. engchi. i n U. Applebee’s (1978) six-stage narrative model, 1 children’s ages corresponded to these six. 1. Figure 1. Applebee’s (1978) model for developmental stages of narratives (p. 58). 18.

(28) stages as they developed. In the first stage, heaps, two- to three-year-old children can list unrelated (linguistically not marked as related) characters, actions, or events. In the second stage, associative sequences, children three years of age are aware that there is a characteristic such as a central theme in the story, but they are unable to associate the sequence of events into a plot and merely describe what events have happened. In the third stage, primitive narratives, four- to four-and-a-half-year-old children are aware that there is a concrete core to. 政治大. the narrated events and are able to relate those events. Primitive story grammar is seen in the. 立. initiating event, action, and consequence. In the fourth stage, unfocused chains,. ‧ 國. 學. four-and-a-half- to five-year-old children can present events related directly to each other.. ‧. However, they still could not conceive an overall plot, and thus the consistency of characters. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. or the main theme in a story was missing. In the fifth stage, focus chains, four-and-a-half- to. v. five-year-old children are able to describe a chain of events and how the chain of events. Ch. engchi. i n U. relates to a central core, and the process of forming a narrative emerges. Finally, in the sixth stage, narratives, five- to seven-year-old children are aware that stories have a main theme, plot, and characters. They are aware of the hierarchical order and relations of events and are able to express them in a story. In the procedure, Applebee found that centering and chaining were two basic mechanisms in the process of forming narratives and that children often linked story elements through time sequence and causality.. 19.

(29) A developmental path was also concluded by Berman and Slobin (1994) in their study of children’s and adults’ performance of relating events in storytelling. In the first phase, very young children tended to treat each scene as an isolated event, and they described each individual picture separately. For example, three-year-old children’s narrative style was deictic, as they usually identified, named, described and pointed at objects. In the second phase, three-year-old children could connect events sequentially. The relation chain between. 政治大. events was a linear chain, meaning that they could connect events in a temporal sequence and. 立. they could also introduce the characters and their possessive relationships. The four-year-old. ‧ 國. 學. children were regarded to be in developmental transition between the three-year-old and the. ‧. older five-year-old preschoolers. The four-year-old children started to think about and relate. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. sit. the events from a protagonist’s perspective. They could also understand the protagonist’s. v. beliefs, mental states, and intentions. In the third phase, events were causally associated. For. Ch. engchi. i n U. example, five-year-old children could introduce characters and indicate the characters’ goals and actions. However, causal relations in the five-year-old children’s narratives were still considered to be simple. In the last phase, the causal interrelations became hierarchically structured. For example, in the adults’ narratives, the purpose, actions, and outcomes became more complicated and richer in detail and emotional reactions. Other researchers have interpreted children’s developmental path of narrative. 20.

(30) connectivity using earlier researchers’ frameworks. For example, Kemper (1984) studied children aged two to ten following Applebee’s (1978) model along with high point analysis (Labov, 1972). Sah (2013) studied children aged five to nine and adults using Trabasso and Sperry’s (1985) and Diehl et al.’s (2006) methods.. 2.2.3 Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic studies on narrative connectivity. 政治大. Linguistic or culturally specific influences on narratives have been found in many. 立. languages (e.g., Berman & Slobin, 1987, 1994; Slobin, 1993; Chang, 2004; To et al., 2010).. ‧ 國. 學. Berman and Slobin (1994) conducted a large-scale, well-known, cross-linguistic study on. ‧. connectivity in narratives. They collected narratives in English, German, Spanish, Hebrew,. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. and Turkish; recruited children narrators aged three, four, five, and nine, as well as adults; and. v. used the picture book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969) to elicit narratives.. Ch. engchi. i n U. The story Frog, Where Are You?, which is regarded as a product of Western culture, is about a boy and his dog searching for their missing frog. Berman and Slobin (1994) cited the interpretation of the storybook by anthropological linguist David Wilkins, who indicated several Anglo-American frames presented in the story. According to Berman and Slobin, Frog, Where Are You? includes the following characteristics: (1) Young children’s storybook tales are not true; they are often equipped with happy endings; animals can talk and think, and the. 21.

(31) hero encounters no misery or fatal events. (2) The protagonist goes into nature to collect small animals or insects, which are typically disliked by mothers for being repulsive or slimy. (3) The dog and the frog in the story are commonly and typically featured as our common knowledge. (4) The relationships between people are husband and wife, parents and children, a family, leaving and returning, and solidarity. (5) The natural environment of North America includes forests, woods, ponds, and all types of animals, plants, and terrains. Even though the. 政治大. storybook depicted Anglo-American frames, the content is common across ages and cultures,. 立. as people can understand and narrate the story easily. Therefore, the book provides an equal. ‧ 國. 學. base for the comparison and analysis of different narrators’ narratives.. ‧. In terms of narrative connectivity (i.e., the linkage and relationship between two events),. sit. y. Nat. io. al. er. Berman and Slobin (1994) found that linguistic factors played a role in language expression.. v. n. They indicated that “if a linguistic form is highly accessible, its functional development may. Ch. engchi. i n U. be accelerated” (p. 624); therefore, a mature speaker of a native language possessed a “language-specific rhetorical style” (p. 611). For example, the speakers of satellite-framed languages such as English and German had different tendencies in using verbs from those of verb-framed languages such as Hebrew, Spanish, and Turkish. Accordingly, features of a language are displayed in the channeling of attention and rhetorical style.. 22.

(32) 2.3 Mechanisms marking connectivity in Mandarin Chinese The grammar of Mandarin Chinese has been introduced thoroughly (Li & Thompson, 1981; Tiee & Lance, 1986; Yip & Rimmington, 2004). Though the terminology and classification are not the same in detail, comprehensive grammar in Mandarin Chinese has been extensively analyzed. The following section presents temporal markers, causal markers, and other connectivity-related markers in Chinese.. 立. 2.3.1 Temporal markers. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. Mandarin has no markers of “tense” (Li & Thompson, 1981). A marker of tense relates to. ‧. the time of the occurrence of the situation to the time that situation is brought up in speech.. y. Nat. al. er. io. sit. For example, in English, the suffix “-ed” marks an action denoted by a verb, meaning the. v. n. action happened before the time of speech, so “I proposed a toast” (Li & Thompson, 1981, p.. Ch. engchi. i n U. 184) means that the proposal happened before the speech was made. Unlike English, Mandarin uses “aspect” to signal the temporal notion of an event. Aspect refers to how the situation itself is being viewed with respect to its own internal makeup (Li & Thompson, 1981, p. 84). Li and Thompson (1981) indicated that the verbal aspects in Mandarin are as follows, along with aspects concluded by Tiee and Lance (1986): Perfective le and perfectivizing expressions represent a bounded event viewed in its entirety, as shown in example (2.1),. 23.

(33) where le marks the change of state or termination of an action. Imperfective (durative) zai and zhe signal actions in progress, as shown in example (2.2). Experiential guo indicates an event viewed as having been experienced at least once. Inceptive aspects qilai and kaishi possess the derivative sense of “starts to,” as shown in example (2.3):. (2.1). 他. 走. 了。. 政治大. ta zou le he go(walk) PFV “He has gone.”. 在. 打. 李四. y. 孩子. haizi. al. 哭. 起來. ku. qilai. Ch. start to engchi U. this child cry “This child has started to cry.”. sit. (Li & Thompson, 1981). n. zhe. Lisi Lisi. ‧. 這. io. (2.3). Nat. Zhangsan zai da Zhangsan DUR hit “Zhangsan is hitting Lisi.”. 了。. er. 張三. (Tiee & Lance, 1986). 學. (2.2). ‧ 國. 立. vle i n ASP (Tiee & Lance, 1986). Another way to indicate the notion of time is by clarifying time. In Mandarin, this is commonly expressed through the use of connectives such as …shi, …de shi hou; …hou/yihou/zhihou; …qian/yiqian/zhiqian; yi…jiu…; yushi; ranhou; and jiezhe. The corresponding words in English are “when,” “as soon as,” “after,” “before,” etc. (Yip &. 24.

(34) Rimmington, 2004). Examples of clarifying time in Mandarin are shown in (2.4) through (2.6) below:. (2.4). 行車. 的. 時候，. 請. 大家. 不要. 把. 手. xingche. de. shihou. qing. dajia. buyao. ba. shou. driving 伸. DE time 窗. please 外。. everyone. do not. BA hand. 出. shen chu chuang wai reach out window outside “When the train is moving, please do not reach your hands out the window.” (Yip & Rimmington, 2004). 政治大. 立. 一. 到，. 樹. 上. yi. dao. shu. come. tree. qiutian. autumn as soon as 掉下來了。. 的. 葉子. 都. shang. de. yazi. dou. up. DE. leave. all. ‧. ‧ 國. 秋天. 學. (2.5). n. al. (2.6). er. io. sit. y. Nat. diao zialaile fall down-ASP “As soon as autumn arrived, the leaves on the trees all began to fall.” (Yip & Rimmington, 2004). i n 胭脂，塗 C h點 e h i Utu diann g c yanzhi. 她先. 擦. ta xian she first 接著. ca apply a little 戴上. jiezhe following that. daishang put on. rouge 項鍊 xianglian necklace. v. apply 和 han and. 上. 口唇膏，. shang kouchungao up lipstick 戒指。 jiezhi ring. “She first applied a bit of rouge and lipstick, and following that put on a necklace and ring.” (Yip & Rimmington, 2004). 25.

(35) 2.3.2 Causal markers One way to express cause and effect or reason in Mandarin grammar is to use clausal conjunctions (Tiee & Lance, 1986; Yip & Rimmington, 2004). Paired statements are realized with the use of conjunctions such as yinwei…, suoyi…, youyu, yiner, or yinci. Examples of causal expressions in Mandarin are displayed in (2.7) through (2.9) below:. 他. 今天. yinwei Conj 他. ta jintian he today 上課。. ta. shangke. 立. 生病了，治所以政大 shengbingle suoyi. 替. wo I. ti for. be-born-sick-ASP therefore. 我. 學. 因為. ‧ 國. (2.7). y 因此. 沒. ta he. shouleshang have-ASP-injury. yinci Conj. mei not. 為了. 鍛鍊. 他買了. weile In order to. duanlian shenti exercise body. tuibu leg. al. er. 受了傷，. io. 他腿部. 參加. 比賽。. canjia join. bisai contest. sit. Nat. (2.8). ‧. him go-class “Because he fell ill today, (therefore) I am going to class for him.” (Tiee & Lance, 1986). (2.9). n. v i n “He had a leg injury,C so he did not play in the h e n g c h i U match.” (Yip & Rimmington, 2004) 身體，. ta he. 一副. maile yifu buy-ASP a-CL. 啞鈴。 yaling dumbbell. “In order to get in shape, he bought a set of dumbbells.” (Yip & Rimmington, 2004). 2.3.3 Connectivity markers In addition to the above ways of signaling connectivity, Yip and Rimmington (2004) 26.

(36) proposed the term “zero connectives.” They pointed out that some clauses in Mandarin Chinese also connect in meaning but come together without any explicit conjunction or conjunctive marker. A similar phenomenon was observed in Taiwan’s Southern-Min in a study by Chang and Su (2012) in terms of pragmatic usage. Yip and Rimmington indicated that the clauses are related “only when they are set in apposition to each other and the meaning of the second clause is in some way sequential on the meaning of the first” (p. 345). The relations of. 政治大. clauses are the abovementioned temporal and causal relations. For example, clauses in (2.10). 立. are causally related and clauses in (2.11) are temporally related:. io. le ASP. zanmen zou we go. (2.11). 他. 剛. 想. ta he 來. gang just. xiang think. lai. 走. 吧。 ba Pt. v(Yip & Rimmington, 2004) i n. n. al. 咱們. y. Nat. shijian bu zao time not early “It is late, (so) let’s go.”. 了，. sit. 早. er. ‧ 國. 不. ‧. 時間. 學. (2.10). C h出去，忽然 U下 engchi chuqu out-go. furan xia suddenly fall. 起. 大雪. qi begin. daxue heavy snow. 了。 le. come ASP “(When) he was just thinking of going out, it suddenly began to snow heavily.” (Yip & Rimmington, 2004). To sum up, Mandarin signals temporality and causality between events through the. 27.

(37) marking of aspect, the anchoring of points in time, the application of connectives, the use of a rich lexicon, and the mere juxtaposition of clauses, namely zero connectives. Similar to zero connectives, which represent the connection of two clauses or sentences, the abovementioned mechanisms marking the relationship between two clauses or sentences include temporal connectives, causal connectives, and aspectual expressions.. 政治大. 2.4 Mandarin-speaking children’s acquisition of narrative connectivity. 立. Children’s acquisition of connectivity in Mandarin Chinese has been studied in regard to. ‧ 國. 學. their cognitive abilities and their language production. Language production, that is, narrative. ‧. connectivity, has been commonly analyzed in two ways: the use of connectivity mechanisms. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. and the recognition and expression of connections. Studies of the former aspect (e.g., Hsu,. v. 1996; Chang, 2004) have outnumbered studies of the latter aspect (e.g., Wu & Tsai, 2006; Sah, 2007, 2013).. Ch. engchi. i n U. 2.4.1 Forms marking narrative connectivity Comprehensive connectivity markers have been studied by many researchers (e.g., Hsu, 1996; Chang, 2004; To et al. 2010). Among these studies, Hsu (1996) and Chang (2004) presented developmental paths of children’s acquisition of various narrative connectivity. 28.

(38) mechanisms. Hsu (1996) carried out the most elaborate investigation of Mandarin-speaking children in examining language use by children aged one-and-a-half to five in Taiwan. He adopted Piaget’s stages of development in explaining the findings of the acquisition and development of Mandarin in these children. In respect to conjunctions, children between two and three years old are able to use coordinate conjunctions and subordinate conjunctions, such as jiu. 政治大. (and then), yinwei (because), and …de shihou (the time when…). Other conjunctions, such as. 立. keshi (but), danshi (but), …yi…jiu…(as soon as), …yihou (after), …yiqian (before), suoyi (so),. ‧ 國. 學. and jiguo (so), emerged when children were between the ages of three and four. The use of. ‧. yuchi (thus), erqie (and), and buguo (but) were found in children after age four. In respect to. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. aspects, the findings showed that le, zai, and zhe all occurred before the age of two; the. v. experiential aspect guo was the last one commonly used after age two and six months. Hsu. Ch. engchi. i n U. explained the children’s errors based on Piaget’s stages of development: Children before the age of five are unable to see the real connections among several things or events; accordingly, they might fail to mark relations between events or group unrelated things together. Moreover, children tended to mark causality on an action level because actions are relatively more concrete than ideas on a psychological or cognitive level. Children in this period of development were also immature in terms of time conception. Thus, children might reverse. 29.

(39) the occurrence of events in their speech without the proper use of connectives. Hsu concluded that only when children reach the age of five can they begin to display adult-like speech. Chang (2004) did a longitudinal study on experience stories told by sixteen Mandarin-speaking children aged three and six months to four and three months. With respect to narrative connectivity, Chang investigated the temporality encoded in the narratives. The temporality coding was based on earlier analysis of Mandarin Chinese and a previous study of. 政治大. the following connectivity markers (Li & Thompson, 1981; Erbaugh, 1992; Chang, 1998,. 立. 2004): (1) temporal connectives (expressions corresponding to “when,” “as soon as,”. ‧ 國. 學. “afterward,” “before,” and “finally” in English); (2) causal connectives (expressions. ‧. corresponding to “because,” “so,” “therefore,” “so then,” “as a result,” and “but” in English);. y. Nat. al. er. io. sit. (3) sequencers (sequential connectives; expressions corresponding to “then,” “later,” “and. v. n. then,” and “later on,” in English); and (4) aspectual expressions (le, yijing, guo, zai, zhe, and. Ch. engchi. i n U. kaishi in Chinese). Although individual differences were found across children, the results showed that the forms and types of temporality devices ascended with age. Even though detailed information about the linguistic devices (e.g., precise forms) was not provided in the study, the findings of the study corresponded to those of previous studies in English and Japanese; the findings also provided evidence in Mandarin for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural study.. 30.

(40) Similar to Chang’s (2004) method, To et al. (2010) assessed narratives for Cantonese-speaking children. With respect to narrative connectivity, they examined connectives produced in the narratives. It is worth stressing that Cantonese grammar is similar to that of Mandarin Chinese. The findings showed an increasing tendency to use connectives among younger groups. However, the use of connectives did not provide further predictions of later academic achievement in school. To et al. explained that connectives are not. 政治大. obligatory in Cantonese and intersentential relations could still exist by clause embedding,. 立. which is often seen in Cantonese (Matthews & Yip, 1994). Therefore, the coding of the. ‧ 國. 學. explicit use of cohesive devices cannot completely represent a Cantonese speaker’s. ‧. competence of language due to the optionality of connectives.. n. Ch. engchi. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. 2.4.2 Recognition and expression of event relations. i n U. v. The connectivity of discourse, namely event relations in discourse, has been investigated by many researchers based on English data (e.g., Trabasso & Sperry, 1985; Trabasso & van dan Broek, 1985; Diehl et al., 2006). With respect to Mandarin Chinese data, fewer studies have been conducted. Among those studies, Wu and Tsai (2006) and Sah (2007, 2013) presented children’s development of event relation recognition and expression. Wu and Tsai (2006) investigated Mandarin-speaking children’s causal concept and. 31.

(41) relating language development, and how the patterns accounted for the children’s theory of mind. In the study, they recruited children aged three and six months to five and five months, and told them a story about a protagonist and his/her missing candy. The candy was missing because after the protagonist went out, it was moved by his/her mother. Then, the subjects were asked to answer questions. They found that hardly any children younger than five years old were able to figure out how the protagonist’s understanding/mind was different from the. 政治大. children’s understanding/mind. The false belief understanding was found to be better in. 立. children older than five, who also showed a better ability of explanation. Wu and Tsai adopted. ‧ 國. 學. Piaget’s (1928, 1930) cognitive developmental stages to explain three-year-old children’s. ‧. inability in reasoning and explanation: they were at the preoperational stage and thinking in. y. Nat. n. al. er. io. sit. the way of pre-causal reasoning. Wu and Tsai further longitudinally examined two children’s. v. explanation types, which included psychological explanation, physical explanation,. Ch. engchi. i n U. social-traditional explanation, biological explanation, magic-fantasy explanation, and behavioral explanation. It was found that social-traditional explanation and psychological explanation were the two dominant types. Wu and Tsai concluded that children around three to five years of age develop their theory of mind critically. Sah (2007) also studied Mandarin-speaking children’s reasoning and explanation by investigated whether children were able to point out a misconception and were able to relate. 32.

(42) the events in a cause-effect situation using particular pictures in terms of particular scenes in the storybook Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Developmental differences were found between narrators in the groups of children five years and five months, five years and eight months, and five years and eleven months. The development of cognitive ability and the gaining of linguistic capacity contributed to the theory of mind development for older children, which facilitated the explanation of misconception. The Three Phase Model. 政治大. (Karmiloff-Smith, 1984) of children’s problem-solving was also adopted in the discussion.. 立. Sah (2013) conducted research on narratives produced by Mandarin-speaking children. ‧ 國. 學. aged five and nine and adults. The narrative data was elicited using the storybook Frog,. ‧. Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). Sah adopted methods proposed by earlier researchers. sit. y. Nat. io. al. er. (Trabasso & Sperry, 1985; Diehl et al., 2006) in the assessment of narrative connectivity. The. v. n. results showed that in the five-year-old children’s narratives, a large percentage of events. Ch. engchi. i n U. were discrete events and events with only one connection from or to the other events. For the nine-year-old children, the most frequently found event belonged to the type of events with two connections to or from it. As for the adults, their pattern was similar to that of the nine-year-old children; however, adults produced the highest proportion of events with three or more connections. This phenomenon implies that children gain the ability of inferring and constructing causal relations as they age. The results also corresponded to previous research. 33.

(43) on English-speaking children. The theory of mind and working memory capacity were adopted in explaining younger children’s insufficiency in establishing causal relations: limited working memory and the immature development of the theory of mind constrained their ability to encode planning components. Sah’s study provided evidence for the developmental differences in language; moreover, it demonstrated the method of narrative representation proposed by Trabasso and Sperry (1985), using an alternative approach to the qualitative analysis of narratives.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 34. i n U. v.

(44) Chapter 3 Method. This chapter will present the methods adopted in the present study. Section 3.1 details how data was collected and grouped, and Section 3.2 shows the analytical frameworks used in dealing with the data.. 立. 3.1 Data collection. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. The present study used data from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). ‧. Beijing2 corpora (Tardif, 1993, 1996; MacWhinney, 2000), with Dr. Twila Tardif’s. y. Nat. al. er. io. sit. permission. The present study randomly selected 30 pieces of four-year-old children’s story. v. n. narratives for further analysis. The children’s mean age was four years and five months, and. Ch. engchi. i n U. their mean MLU (mean length of utterance, Brow, 1973) was 6.68. The data contributed from Dr. Twila Tardif (2002, 2003) consisted of transcribed speech samples of children speaking Mandarin in their home environment. The children were first presented with the picture storybook Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969) and were asked to read the story (24 pictures) silently with an investigator. Then, the children were asked to recount the story as they browsed through the book page by page. The children’s verbal. 35.

(45) narration of the story was transcribed into written transcriptions following the transcription format of the Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT) used by the CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000). Picture stories provide a controlled content with protagonists, problems, a set of actions that follow from these problems, and an outcome. Thus, the series of events allow narrators to infer causal relations, and narrators with different levels of cognitive maturity may relay. 政治大. different interpretations of the events (Berman & Slobin, 1994). Given this benefit, many. 立. studies have collected data using the picture storybook Frog, Where Are You?, which has. ‧ 國. 學. enabled the present study to make further comparisons.. ‧. Examining Tardif’s data, it was found that the investigator’s verbal feedback was seldom. y. Nat. al. er. io. sit. provided. The investigator gave neutral comments such as “uh-huh,” “yes,” “anything else?”,. v. n. and “and…?”. This minimized and neutral feedback prevented the narrators from being. Ch. engchi. i n U. influenced in choosing particular words and structures. Thus, a narrator’s output could be considered an independent and spontaneous narrative. The present study analyzed the children’s narratives without taking the investigator’s comments into consideration.. 3.2 Analytical frameworks Narrative connectivity was analyzed using the following procedures: linguistic unit. 36.

(46) segmentation, causal connection coding, relation type coding, and linguistic device identification. Coding schemes and analytical frameworks are introduced below.. 3.2.1 Communication units A story event was represented by a communication unit (c-unit), which is defined as “an independent clause with its modifiers” (Loban, 1976) and roughly consists of a verb and its. 政治大. arguments (Strong, 1998). Accordingly, the transcripts were segmented following c-unit. 立. segmentation conventions (Loban, 1976; Strong, 1998). 2 An example of an utterance. ‧ 國. 學. segmented into c-units is shown in (3.1) below:. ‧ sit. y. Nat. Pre-c-unit segmented sample: 出. 來. a chul. n. 貓頭鷹. io. *CHI:. maotouying owl 從樹. 了. er. (3.1). lai le n C U go_out hcome exclamation engchi 上. 踢了. 給. 小. 孩兒. xiao give small 下去. haier child. i vgei. cong shu shang ti le xia qu from tree above kick completive go_down go “The owl came out and kicked the child off the tree.”. C-unit segmented: (a) 貓頭鷹 maotouying owl 2. 出. 來. 了. chu go_out. lai come. le exclamation. Two coders achieved 90% reliability in determining c-units. Disagreements were resolved through consensus. 37.

(47) “The owl came out.” 孩兒. 從. 樹. 上. 踢. 了. haier. cong. shu. shang. ti. le. give small child 下去. from. tree. above. kick completive. (b) 給. 小. gei xiao. xia. qu. go_down go “[…] kicked the child off the tree.”. 政治大 consists of two actions: “go-out 立come” and “kick.” According to the above definition, a verb. As seen in the pre-c-unit segmentation sample, this utterance produced by a child. ‧ 國. 學. and its arguments—“The owl came out” —is an independent c-unit (see (3.1a)). Similarly, a. ‧. verb and its arguments—“[…] kicked the child off the tree” —is another independent c-unit. sit. n. al. er. io 3.2.2 Causal connections. y. Nat. (see (3.1b)). These two c-units represent two events.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Causal connections between two linguistic units (c-units) were identified using Trabasso and Sperry’s (1985) procedures. A causal connection refers to the direct operative causal relation between a pair of linguistic units (Trabasso & Sperry, 1985). The identification procedure works with a counterfactual test based on the criterion of necessity (Mackie, 1980). The test provides a reliable, logical, and analytic procedure in the inference of cause and consequence (Trabasso & Sperry, 1985). 38.

(48) A counterfactual argument was used in the following format: “If not A then not B.” That is, event A is the necessary element for the occurrence of event B. In other words, if event A has not occurred, it is impossible for event B to occur. A pair of linguistic units that passes this test is causally related, whereas any pair of linguistic units that fails to pass the test is not causally related. The following pair of units in (3.2) exemplifies the counterfactual test. If event A “the frog jumps out” is to be causally related with event B “the frog is not there,” then. 政治大. their negated forms should be examined: “The frog did not jump out” makes “the little frog. 立. was there” possible, and thus “the frog jumps out” is said to be the reason that “the frog is not. ‧ 國. 學. there.” In other words, if the frog “did not” jump out, then the frog “would be” there; because. ‧. the frog jumped out, subsequently, the frog is not there, the frog has gone. Accordingly, event. sit. y. Nat. io. n. al. er. A and event B in (3.2) are a causally related pair:. (3.2). *CHI:. 小. 青蛙. Ch. i n U. v. e n跳g c h i出來. xiao qingwa tiao chulai little frog jump out-come “The little frog jumped out.” *CHI:. 小. 青蛙. 沒有. 了。 le ASP Event A. 了。. xiao qingwa meiyou le little frog no-have ASP “The little frog is not there (anymore).”. 39. Event B.

(49) After identifying the related unit pairs, 3 four levels of causal connectedness in the narratives were coded using Diehl et al.’s (2006) method, namely, C0, C1, C2, and C3+. C0 indicates an isolated unit; that is, the unit has no causal connection with other units in a narrative, and the event represented by the unit is a discrete event. C1 refers to an event that has only one connection with one other event in a narrative. C2 indicates an event that has two connections with other events in a narrative. C3+ refers to an event that has three or more. 政治大. connections with other events in a narrative. The levels of connectedness for three. 立. connections and above were collapsed because they were seldom found to be produced by. ‧ 國. 學. children (Diehl et al., 2006). A connectivity network 4 was derived as a visualization of all. ‧. c-units and connections in a narrative, following Trabasso and Sperry’s (1985) procedures.. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat 3.2.3 Connection types. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. After related pairs were identified, they were further coded with four types of causal relations5: motivation, psychological causation, physical causation, and enablement. This classification method follows Trabasso and Sperry’s (1985) procedures based on the taxonomy of relations (Warren et al., 1979). Definitions and examples are presented below:. 3. Two coders achieved a mean K of 0.82 in identifying causal relations and coding connection types. Disagreements were resolved through consensus. 4 Trabasso and Sperry (1985) referred to this as a “causal network.” The present study uses the term “connectivity network” for clarity since both causal and temporal connections are shown in the network. 5 Two coders achieved a mean K of 0.82 in identifying causal relations and coding connection types. Disagreements were resolved through consensus. 40.

(50) (1) Motivation: Goal-directed actions. In example (3.3), the event stated in the clause “the little frog has gone” motivates the action stated in the clause “search for the little frog”; because the frog has gone, someone is going to search for the frog. Thus, this clause pair is causally related in terms of motivation. (3.3). 小青蛙. *CHI:. 沒有. 了。. le 政治大 ASP. xiaoqingwa meiyou little frog no-have “The little frog has gone.”. 立. Cause. ‧ 國. 學. […]. ‧. 小青蛙。. 找. io. n. al. y. sit. Nat. zhao xiaoqingwa search little frog “Search for the little frog.”. Effect. er. *CHI:. i n U. v. (2) Psychological causation: A non-goal-directed action in a statement involuntarily. Ch. engchi. causes a psychological effect in another statement. In example (3.4), the event stated in the clause “the little frog has gone” causes an involuntary psychological state “the little dog worries, too,” as seen in the second clause. Thus, this clause pair is related in terms of psychological causation. (3.4). *CHI:. 小青蛙. 沒有. 了。. xiaoqingwa little frog. meiyou no-have. le ASP. “The little frog has gone.” 41. Cause.

(51) […] *CHI:. 小狗兒. 也. 著急. 了。. xiaogouer. ye. zhaoji. le. little dog also worry “The little dog worries, too.”. ASP. Effect. (3) Physical causation: Naïve interpretations of the physical world or mechanical causality between objects and/or people. In example (3.5), the physical action stated. 政治大. in the clause “the little frog has jumped out” causes the outcome as stated in “the. 立. little frog was not there.” Thus, this clause pair is related in terms of physical. ‧ 國. 小青蛙. 蹦. y. xiaoqingwa beng chulai little frog jump out-come “The little frog has jumped out.”. io. sit. Nat. al. n […] *CHI:. 出來. er. *CHI:. ‧. (3.5). 學. causation.. Ch. 小青蛙. engchi 沒有. i n U. 了。 le ASP Cause. v. 了。. xiaoqingwa meiyou le little frog no-have ASP “The little frog was not there.”. Effect. (4) Enablement: Actions, occurrences, or states that are necessary but not sufficient to cause other actions or states. In example (3.6), it is the situation as stated in “[the frog] is raised in a bottle” that makes the following event in the statement “the little. 42.

(52) frog has jumped out” possible; if the frog was never in the bottle, then it is impossible for it to jump out. Meanwhile, the situation does not motivate any action or cause any physical or psychological state. Thus, this clause pair is merely related in terms of enablement. (3.6). *CHI:. 養. 在. 瓶子. 裡。. yang keep. zai pingzi at bottle. li inside Cause. “[The frog] is raised in a bottle.”. 政治大. *CHI:. 小青蛙. 蹦. 出來. 了。. xiaoqingwa. beng. chulai. le. ‧ 國. 立. 學. […]. ‧. little frog jump out-come “The little frog has jumped out.”. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat 3.2.4 Linguistic devices. ASP Effect. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. After related pairs were identified, they were further coded with different types of linguistic devices. 6 The categories of linguistic devices were based on Chang’s (2004) temporal coding scheme, with slight adjustments based on studies of Mandarin grammar (Li & Thompson, 1981; Tiee & Lance, 1986; Yip & Rimmington, 2004) and evidence found in related studies (Hsu, 1996; Wu & Tsai, 2006; Chang & Su, 2012). The main categories in the coding scheme are presented below. Types (1) through (3) are 6. After identifying related events, two coders achieved 100% reliability in recognizing linguistic devices. 43.

(53) explicit linguistic devices; that is, certain forms in Chinese characters serve as linguistic devices. Type (4) is an implicit linguistic device.. (1) Temporal connectives: temporal conjunctions or adverbs, including sequential connectives. Examples: …shi, …de shihou, …hou/yihou/zhihou, …qian/yiqian/zhiqian,. 政治大. yi…jiu…, yushi, ranhou, jiezhe, jiu. 立. ‧ 國. 學. (2) Causal connectives: causal conjunctions or adverbs.. ‧. Examples: jieguo, yinwei…, suoyi…, yinwei, youyu, yiner, yinci. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. v. (3) Aspectual expressions: perfective, durative, and experiential expressions. Ch. engchi. i n U. Examples: le, yijing, zai, zhe, guo, qilai, and kaishi. (4) Zero connectives (juxtapositions): Zero connectives exist where two clauses are related in meaning (causal or temporal) but come together without any explicit conjunction marker. The two clauses’ meanings will not change if they are equipped with a conjunction marker. For example, the clauses in (3.7) are causally related and. 44.