ABSTRACT
The focus of our study is the development of linguistic form in children. We have chosen to analyze the production of connected discourse because we believe that the uses of language in discourse shape both grammar and the course of its development. There are, of course, many discourse genres that could be studied — but one has to choose. We selected the narrative genre, because it is one which develops relatively early in children, and because we were interested in the expression of temporality, which is critical to the narrative mode of discourse. We have spent a decade with the frog story because it has allowed us to have a measure of control over the content of expression without determining the form. Like all artificial tasks, this one has its strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps the most serious weakness is that we have not been able to control the subject’s definition of the task: picture description, picture-supported narrative, colloquial storytelling, bookish storytelling, and so forth. Our texts show us that individual subjects have made different kinds of choices — the youngest subjects more towards the picture description end of the scale, older subjects more towards the model of literary narrative. Chapter IIA shows a clear development in narrative competence, thus demonstrating that all of our subjects are not performing “the same task.”
