ERIC Number: EJ1099980
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Apr
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0142-7237
EISSN: N/A
Syntax and Prosody in Narratives: A Study of Preschool Children
Zanchi, Paola; Zampini, Laura; Fasolo, Mirco; D'Odorico, Laura
First Language, v36 n2 p124-139 Apr 2016
The present study examines narrative competence and its relationships with syntactic and prosodic skills in preschool children. The narrative skills of 30 typically developing Italian children were assessed during their first year of kindergarten attendance (T1) and again one year later (T2). A picture book was used to elicit children's narratives. All stories were examined for narrative competence, syntactic complexity and prosody. The results are discussed in the context of the relationships between prosody and the other linguistic skills, considering that the children who were more proficient storytellers and exhibited better syntactic construction were generally less able to produce their utterances within a single melodic contour. Therefore, the linguistic and cognitive abilities required by a storytelling task may negatively influence a child's ability to produce sentences within a single melodic contour.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Preschool Children, Kindergarten, Syntax, Suprasegmentals, Story Telling, Narration, Problem Solving, Competence, Correlation, Hypothesis Testing, Data Analysis, Difficulty Level
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Kindergarten; Primary Education; Early Childhood Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Italy
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Raven Progressive Matrices
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A