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Preschool children's intraconversational narratives*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

D. Jean Umiker-Sebeok
D. Jean Umiker-Sebeok
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Abstract

Analysis of narratives produced spontaneously within natural conversation by children from three to five years of age found age-related increases in length, number, variety, compression, and complexity of six story elements, remoteness of narrated events, and number and variety of intra- and post-narrative listener responses made to them. These and other changes indicate a considerable growth from three to five in the amount and sophistication of information furnished by preschool narrators, particularly between three and four years, as well as in the motivation of the stories with respect to the overall conversational discourse.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , February 1979 , pp. 91 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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Footnotes

[*]

This paper is based on one chapter of a broad study of preschool children's conversational skills (Umiker-Sebeok 1976). Address for correspondence: RCLSS, Indiana University, P.O. Box 1214, Bloomington, Indiana 47401.

References

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