On referential abilities in personal narratives of Mandarin-speaking children aged three to six years

Abstract

This study examines referential abilities in Mandarin-speaking children aged 3;0-6;0, a population that is currently understudied in the area of referential development. Most prior studies have explored how children use referential devices in narratives from storybooks (e.g., frog stories) or in lab-based communication tasks. Such an approach has had an impact on revealing children's referential skills, though children may point to persons or objects rather than verbally describe them. In our study, 74 children were asked to tell personal narratives, where all referential forms can be used. References to persons and objects were coded for form and discourse functions, i.e., introduction, maintenance and re-introduction. Children's referential forms developed significantly with age in terms of frequency and variety. The use of referent introductions and maintenance also increased significantly in terms of frequency, but not proportion, across age groups. The use of pronominal forms for re-introduction increased significantly both in frequency and proportion across age groups. Significant differences were found among discrepant age groups. Our findings underline the importance of always considering frequency and proportion of linguistic data, as Hoff-Ginsberg (1992) and Ambridge et al. (2015) have suggested.