Frog Story Research Articles

An Empirical Study of the Teachability and Learnability of L2 “Thinking for Speaking” Patterns

This study examines whether explicit pedagogical instructions of multimodal strategies based on typological contrastive analysis have any facilitative effect on the restructuring of “thinking for speaking” patterns, focusing on motion event construal which has been demonstrated to be notoriously difficult in second language acquisition (Hendriks and Hickmann 2011, Slobin 1996). Eighty adult Chinese intermediate-level EFL learners were recruited for a classroom-based quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design. Teaching TFS instructions with awareness enhancement strategies as an independent variable divided the participants into two groups, the experimental group that received instructions and control group that followed a traditional teaching approach over a period of 4 weeks. Writing data were elicited by means of the <i>Frog Story</i> and was coded on specific measures of accuracy and complexity of the properties of lexicalization patterns: the description of Motion, Path and Ground. The results showed positive instructional effect on learners’ writing performance of motion event expression and confirmed the possibility of restructuring L1 thinking-for-speaking patterns in L2 through pedagogical instructions. The findings provide practical implications for teachers, typological contrastive awareness and explicit pedagogical instructions prove to be significant for learners’ development of L2 thinking for speaking patterns.

Causal Relations and Cohesive Strategies in the Narratives of Heritage Speakers of Russian in Their Two Languages

Causal relations allow a very detailed insight into the narrative skills of children from various backgrounds; however, their contribution has not been sufficiently studied in bilingual populations. The present study examines the expression of causal relations and the linguistic forms used to encode them in narratives of bilingual children speaking Russian as the Heritage Language (HL) and Hebrew as the Societal Language (SL). Narratives were collected from 21 typically developing Russian–Hebrew bilingual children using the Frog story picture book and were coded for frequency and type of episodic components, and for causal relations focusing on enabling and motivational relations. Results showed that the number of episodic components was higher in Hebrew than in Russian. An in-depth analysis showed that more components were mentioned in the first five episodes, particularly at the onset of the story. Causal relations were similar in both languages but were differently distributed across the languages—more enabling relations in Russian stories and more motivational relations in Hebrew stories. Production of episodic components and causal relations was affected by language proficiency but not by age of onset of bilingualism (AoB). In terms of language forms, lexical chains (e.g., search~find) were the most frequent means for inferring relations. Syntactic and referential cohesion were used in dedicated episodes to convey relations in both languages. Finally, a higher number of significant correlations between narrative productivity measures, episodic components, and causal relations were found in SL/Hebrew than in HL/Russian. The study results underscore the need to understand how language-specific abilities interact with knowledge of narrative discourse construction.

On the etymology and distribution of verb forms in Arabic-based pidgins

Abstract In this paper, we add to the body of existing literature on Arabic-based pidgins. We focus on the verbal system because the structure of this phrasal category and how it is used in discourse remain inconclusive. For instance, while some claim these speakers prefer the imperfective form which is marked for male third person singular (e.g. y-iji ‘3sg.m-come.ipf’), others claim it is the imperative that is most preferred (e.g. rūh ‘2.sg.m-go.imp’). Equally, while some argue the choice between either verb forms is pragmatically motivated, others claim it is phonologically motivated. To add to this mix, a third group claims there is a systematic division of labor in that non-state verbs usually follow the prefixed type while the state verbs follow the unprefixed type. We evaluate these proposals. Analysis of ‘frog story’ narratives by 10 GPA speakers in the United Arab Emirates reveal the prefixed form to be the most preferred and this preference is influenced by the contriving of phonological, semantic, and pragmatic factors. Frequency as well as item-based analogy as understood within usage-based theories of learning provide a viable framework in which the apparent inconsistencies between the competing proposals are resolved.

Speed as a dimension of manner in Estonian frog stories

AbstractFocusing on the expression of manner and path in the ‘frog story’ narrations of Estonian native speakers, this study shows that Estonian – a morphologically rich satellite-framed Finno-Ugric language – is characterised by high manner and high path salience. Furthermore, when analysing one of the core qualities of manner – speed – we show that when the participants were asked to narrate a story as if the events developed slowly, they also spoke slowly and their stories tended to be long (both in time duration and word count) and include many details. When they were asked to tell the story as if the events developed fast, they also spoke faster and used more verbs of caused motion and verbs of vertical motion. Thus, the speed of motion in the physical world seems to be mimicked by speech rate, indicating mental simulation and iconic prosody. The exact nature of speed effects in linguistic choices for expressing motion remains to be studied in future works.

Importance of Task Selection for Connected Speech Analysis in Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease from an Ethnically Diverse Sample

Features of linguistic impairment in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are primarily derived from English-speaking patients. Little is known regarding such deficits in linguistically diverse speakers with AD. We aimed to detail linguistic profiles (speech rate, dysfluencies, syntactic, lexical, morphological, semantics) from two connected speech tasks–Frog Story and picture description–in Bengali-speaking AD patients. The Frog Story detected group differences on all six linguistic levels, compared to only three with picture description. Critically, Frog Story captured the language-specific differences between the groups. Careful consideration should be given to the choice of connected speech tasks for dementia diagnosis in linguistically diverse populations.

Qualitative and quantitative aspects of child-directed parental talk and the relation to 2-year-old's developing vocabulary.

Although prior research has independently linked vocabulary development with toddlers' media usage, parental mental state talk (MST), and parent-child conversational turn-taking (CTT), these variables have not been investigated within the same study. In this study, we focus on associations between these variables and 2-year-old's (N=87) vocabulary. Child vocabulary and digital media use were measured through online questionnaires. We took a multimethod approach to measure parents' child-directed talk. First, we used a home sound environment recording (Language ENvironment Analysis technology) to estimate parents' talk (CTT). Second, parents narrated a picture book, the Frog story, to assess the parent's MST. There was a negative association between how much children watched video content and their vocabulary. However, parents reported that they frequently co-viewed and engaged with the child and media. The negative association first displayed between the amount of video content viewed and the child's developing vocabulary was fully mediated by the parents' qualitative and quantitative talk as measured by MST and CCT, respectively. We propose that the parent relative level of MST and CTT also occurs when parents engage with the child during media use.

Conveying a fictional false belief in narrative

Abstract Narrative ability is an important life-skill and mature narrators do not only provide information about actions and events when telling a story but also include the motivations, emotions and beliefs experienced by protagonists. It is rare for young children to spontaneously explain the beliefs of story characters but the reasons are unclear. In the current study, frog story data from 143 Swedish children aged 4–6 showed that children’s level of explicitness in conveying a fictional false belief was associated with referential narrative ability and use of mental vocabulary, but not to the ability to formulate embedded propositions. Socioeconomic status predicted level of explicitness, whereas no associations were found to age, sex or being multilingual. Future work should examine narrative practices in preschool and in the home more closely, enabling improved support to provide children with equal opportunities.

Connected Speech Characteristics of Bengali Speakers With Alzheimer's Disease: Evidence for Language-Specific Diagnostic Markers.

Background and aim: Speech and language characteristics of connected speech provide a valuable tool for identifying, diagnosing and monitoring progression in Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Our knowledge of linguistic features of connected speech in AD is primarily derived from English speakers; very little is known regarding patterns of linguistic deficits in speakers of other languages, such as Bengali. Bengali is a highly inflected pro-drop language from the Indo-Aryan language family. It is the seventh most spoken language in the world, yet to date, no studies have investigated the profile of linguistic impairments in Bengali speakers with AD. The aim of this study was to characterize connected speech production and identify the linguistic features affected in Bengali speakers with AD.Methods: Participants were six Bengali speaking AD patients and eight matched controls from the urban metropolis, Kolkata, India. Narrative samples were elicited in Bengali using the Frog Story. Samples were analyzed using the Quantitative Production Analysis and the Correct Information Unit analyses to quantify six different aspects of speech production: speech rate, structural and syntactic measures, lexical measures, morphological and inflectional measures, semantic measures and measure of spontaneity and fluency disruptions.Results and conclusions: In line with the extant literature from English speakers, the Bengali AD participants demonstrated decreased speech rate, simplicity of sentence forms and structures, and reduced semantic content. Critically, differences with English speakers' literature emerged in the domains of Bengali specific linguistic features, such as the pro-drop nature of Bengali and its inflectional properties of nominal and verbal systems. Bengali AD participants produced fewer pronouns, which is in direct contrast with the overuse of pronouns by English AD participants. No obvious difficulty in producing nominal and verbal inflections was evident. However, differences in the type of noun inflections were evident; these were characterized by simpler inflectional features used by AD speakers. This study represents the first of its kind to characterize connected speech production in Bengali AD participants and is a significant step forward toward the development of language-specific clinical markers in AD. It also provides a framework for cross-linguistic comparisons across structurally distinct and under-explored languages.

Effects of second-language acquisition on character introductions in 5- and 7-year-old bilingual and monolingual children’s Frog story narratives

This study investigates the effects of early second-language (L2) acquisition on introduction of characters in narrative discourse by comparing 5- and 7-year-old monolingual (first-language [L1] = Turkish) and bilingual (L1 = Turkish, L2 = English) children. Turkish does not have a grammaticalized article system like English which enables to investigate specific influences. The findings revealed that monolingual and bilingual children used similar forms while introducing characters; however, for the Frog character, bilingual children used more appropriate referencing compared to monolinguals. These findings were discussed within the effects of L2 on L1 in terms of introducing characters as well as the amount of exposure to L2.

Lexical diversity development in newly arrived parent-child immigrant pairs: Aptitude, age, exposure, and anxiety

AbstractThe Language Aptitude Outside the Classroom (LAOC) study investigates the factors that contribute to successful English-learning among newly arrived parent-child immigrants. Two types of factors are considered: cognitive abilities (aptitude measured with the LLAMA tests and working memory) and contextual-affective factors (exposure and anxiety). Participants are pairs of Spanish-speaking immigrants in the US. Each pair consists of a parent and their child aged 7–16. Their English proficiency is measured longitudinally during a one-year period using a listening comprehension test, a verbal fluency test, and an oral narrative (frog story). This contribution focuses on the lexical diversity of the oral narratives (Guiraud Index). Linear mixed models were run on the entire sample and on adults and children separately using time, aptitude, working memory, exposure to English, and anxiety as predictors of lexical diversity of the oral narratives (random effect = dyad, random slope = time). The results show that the development of lexical diversity over a one-year period is predicted by exposure to the language (and, for the children, anxiety). Two subtests of the LLAMA aptitude battery are also significant predictors when the entire sample is considered, but this effect nevertheless disappears for the adults when modeled separately from the children.

In Search of the Lost Term for Frog

The present paper investigates the use of own and foreign language terms in a German speech island in Russia. The informants living in the Altai Krai have been asked to tell the frog story (Mayer 1969) in their local German dialect. After analyzing the data, one was able to constitute three different groups of speakers. Their repertoires reflected in the predominant use of either Russian, standard German or dialectal descriptions for entities in flora and fauna. In this contribution, I argue that the differences observed are of diastratic nature. Furthermore, I will close with some remarks on the authenticity of the varieties that are to some extent quite distinct.

Producing Good Stories in English As A Foreign Language: Analysis of The Kurdish Efl Learners’ Oral “frog Story” Narratives

By focusing on the structural elements particularly the evaluative devices by (Labov & Waletzky, 1967) and (Peterson & McCabe, 1991), this study examined how the Kurdish participants’ narrative discourse deviate from the target language discourse, and how this deviation is explained in line with the cultural discourse strategies in both types of discourse (Kurdish and English). This study analyzed the frog narratives told by the EFL Kurdish participants (in Kurdish and English) and the American speakers with special attention on the narrative length, narrative structure and evaluative devices. The findings from the T-test and MANOVA statistics revealed cross-cultural patterns of differences between the narratives told by the Kurdish and the American speakers. Generally, the narratives told by the American participants were longer than those told by the Kurdish participants in both Kurdish and English. The American speakers elicited narratives with frequent evaluation. Conversely, the Kurdish participants constructed narratives with higher number of durative (descriptive) clauses, orientation and repetition.

Effects of second language on motion event lexicalization: Comparison of bilingual and monolingual children’s frog story narratives

This study investigates how children lexicalize motion event patterns in their first and second languages, L1-Turkish and L2-English. English is a satellite-framed language that conflates motion with manner expressed in the main verb and path in a non-verbal element, whereas Turkish is a verb-framed language that conflates motion with path in the main verb and expresses manner in a subordinated verb. We asked whether (1) learning a second language had an effect on children’s event descriptions in their first and (2) the effects were bidirectional. One hundred and twelve 5- and 7-year-old monolingual (L1-Turkish) and bilingual (L1-Turkish; L2-English) children participated. Participants produced narratives for wordless picture book, Frog, Where are you?. Six scenes of the book were selected for coding purposes as they represented motion events: (1) Frog’s exit from the jar, (2) Dog’s fall from the window, (3) Gopher popping out of the hole, (4) Owl’s exit from a nest, (5) Boy and dog falling down and (6) Boy and dog landing in a pond. For L1 descriptions, 5-year-old bilinguals used more manner-only and less path-only descriptions than monolinguals; no difference was found for 7-year-olds. For L2 descriptions, bilingual children used less Manner-only and Path-only expressions in their L2 narratives compared to L1 narratives. These findings suggest that for 5-year-olds, exposure to second language had an impact on how motion events are encoded. Results inform us about the early interactions between L1 and L2 in motion event lexicalization

Morphosyntactic Restructuring in Child Heritage Georgian

This study investigates morphosyntactic restructuring in Heritage Georgian, a highly agglutinative language with polypersonal agreement. Child heritage speakers of Georgian (n = 26, age 3-16) completed a Frog Story narrative task and a lexical proficiency task in Georgian. Heritage speaker narratives were compared to narratives produced by age-matched peers living in Georgia (n = 30, age 5-14) and Georgian children and young adults who moved to the United States during childhood (n = 7, age 9–24). Heritage Georgian speakers produced more instances of non-standard nominal case marking and non-standard verbal subject agreement than their homeland peers. Individual morphosyntactic divergence was predicted by lexical score, but not by oral fluency or age. Patterns of divergence in the nominal domain included overuse of the default case (nominative) as well as over-extension of non-default cases (ergative, dative). In the verbal domain, person agreement was more consistently marked than number. Subject agreement exhibited more divergence from the baseline than object agreement, contrary to previous evidence from similar heritage languages (e.g., Heritage Hindi, Montrul et al., 2012). Results indicate that morphosyntactic production in child Heritage Georgian generally displays the same divergences as adult heritage-language grammars, but language-specific differences also underscore the need for continued documentation of lesser-studied heritage languages.

ARABIC NARRATION BY JAPANESE-SPEAKING LEARNERS

There is an unmistakable upward trend in the population of Japanese-speaking learners of Arabic, reflecting the population growth of native Arabic speakers and recognition of the importance of Arabic languages and cultures as a field of study. The eagerness of Arab corporations to engage in business with Japanese organizations also continues to expose an increasing number of Japanese speakers to nations and cultures of the Arab world. Other reasons include growing attention on the Arab world’s important role in international society. All of these factors have contributed to a heightening of interest in Arabic language learning among Japanese speakers. The aim of this study is to investigate Arabic narration by native speakers of Japanese, primarily focusing on adverbial expressions that were used by Japanese-speaking learners when they were asked to narrate events depicted in the picture book, ‘The Frog Story’. This paper first identifies three Arabic adverbial clause types, classified based on morphosyntactic and functional differences. This is followed by an examination of the different ways in which the learners’ narrations of the events were coded via adverbial expressions and verbs. The first type of adverbial expression is what in Arabic is known as alħa:l^l-mufrad or the ‘accusative adverb’, which for the purpose of this paper is referred to as the ‘noun/participle adverb’. This phrase type comprises a verb participle combined with an accusative case and containing no tense information. An exciting conclusion of this study is that Japanese learners of Arabic tend to utilize this adverb type more frequently than native Arabic speakers do. The second type of adverbial expression, known in Arabic as jumlatu^l-ħa:l or the ‘adverbial sentence’, is referred to as the ‘explicit subject adverbial clause’ in this paper. This clause type comprises a conjunctive particle, a subject pronoun, and a verb. The verb is always imperfect, and the subject need not be coreferential with the main clause subject. Results of this study indicate that Japanese learners of Arabic tend to use this adverbial clause type less frequently compared to native Arabic speakers. This may be due to learners not being aware that the subject of the adverbial clause need not be coreferential with the main clause subject. The third type, also known as the ‘adverbial sentence’, is referred to as the ‘non-explicit subject adverbial clause’ in this paper. This clause type consists of only a verb in the imperfect tense, and has neither a conjunctive particle nor a pronominal subject. This clause type was not found in the learners’ narrations, suggesting that the learners are not familiar with the fact that this kind of clause even exists in Arabic.

The intonation of broad focus declaratives in Afro-Peruvian Spanish: Findings from two elicitation tasks

AbstractThis paper examines the intonation of broad focus declaratives in the Afro-Peruvian Spanish spoken in Chincha, based on two elicitation tasks. The objectives were to investigate the intonation of Afro-Peruvian Spanish broad focus declaratives, as compared to non-Afro-Peruvian Spanish, and to compare the findings across genders and age groups.The data came from a Story Builder Action Cards task and a Frog Story task. The participants were thirteen Afro-Peruvians (seven female; 21–54 years), who were divided in two age groups. For comparison, data were collected from three speakers who did not identify as Afro-Peruvian. The data were analyzed inPraat, following Spanish ToBI. Specifically, pitch accents in prenuclear and nuclear positions, and intermediate and final boundary tones were analyzed.The results showed a lack of downstepping in prenuclear and nuclear positions, early-aligned peaks in prenuclear position, a high frequency of falling tones, high and rising boundary tones, and circumflex contours. These characteristics were found in males and females, and younger and older speakers, suggesting that the characteristics of Afro-Peruvian Spanish intonation are not limited to elderly male speakers as suggested in previous research. Interestingly, circumflex contours were especially frequent in younger males, possibly as a marker of their identity.

The challenges of viewpoint-taking when learning a sign language: Data from the ‘frog story’ in British Sign Language

Little is known about how hearing adults learn sign languages. Our objective in this study was to investigate how learners of British Sign Language (BSL) produce narratives, and we focused in particular on viewpoint-taking. Twenty-three intermediate-level learners of BSL and 10 deaf native/early signers produced a narrative in BSL using the wordless picture book Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 1969). We selected specific episodes from part of the book that provided rich opportunities for shifting between different characters and taking on different viewpoints. We coded for details of story content, the frequency with which different viewpoints were used and how long those viewpoints were used for, and the numbers of articulators that were used simultaneously. We found that even though learners’ and deaf signers’ narratives did not differ in overall duration, learners’ narratives had less content. Learners used character viewpoint less frequently than deaf signers. Although learners spent just as long as deaf signers in character viewpoint, they spent longer than deaf signers in observer viewpoint. Together, these findings suggest that character viewpoint was harder than observer viewpoint for learners. Furthermore, learners were less skilled than deaf signers in using multiple articulators simultaneously. We conclude that challenges for learners of sign include taking character viewpoint when narrating a story and encoding information across multiple articulators simultaneously.

The Development of Narrative Macrostructure of Thai Children

The present article aims to examine the development of storytelling ability of Thai children. The Thai Frog Story corpus, consisting of a total of 50 narratives by 4-, 6-, 9-, 11- and 20-year-old participants, is used as data for this study. Three main components of narrative macrostructure are employed as the framework for analysis: onset, problem and resolution. Results find that elementary children have shown significant acquisition of narrative macrostructure since the age of 9. In relation to percentage of acquisition, it is found that ‘problem’ is the easiest component to be recognized, followed by ‘onset’ and ‘resolution, respectively. More specifically, it is found that 4- to 6-year-old children tend to rely on immediate contexts and existing components in particular pictures. Accordingly, they fail to recognize the relationship among the protagonists and settings of the story. Moreover, they cannot keep the main plot along continuously until the end.

Ikpeng - Puron Mïran - História do sapo

Neste trabalho, apresentamos uma análise comentada da narrativa ikpeng Puron Mïran “História do sapo”, contada por Ayre Txicão e registrada por nós em 2009. Ikpeng é uma língua karib, falada pelo povo homônimo, que vive no estado de Mato Grosso, na região do médio Xingu. A presente narrativa consiste na explicação dos Ikpeng para o surgimento do Sapo. Além disso, o texto aponta para as restrições alimentares das mulheres durante o período menstrual. Neste caso específi co, a transgressão de um tabu alimentar por uma mulher menstruada fez com que ela se transformasse no primeiro sapo, consequência de sua leviandade.

The Narrative Abilities of an English-Spanish Bilingual with Prader-Willi Syndrome

The aim of this study was to analyze the narrative abilities of a 33-year-old English-Spanish bilingual with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS). The few previous linguistic studies examining monolinguals with PWS have focused primarily on these individuals’ narrative capacity, revealing a performance deficit in this area (Lewis et al. 2002; Garayzábal-Heinze et al. 2012). The present study is novel in that it examines a bilingual speaker and also tests his narrative abilities in both languages. Two wordless picture books from Mayer’s (1967, 1969) Frog story series were used as the elicitation method. The PWS bilingual produced, over two experimental sessions, four narratives (two in each language), which were compared to four analogous narratives produced by a 25-year-old typically developing bilingual with a comparable linguistic background and proficiency level in Spanish and English. Following Gonçalves and collaborators’ (Gonçalves et al. 2001a, 2001b, 2001c) narrative evaluation protocol, the narratives were analyzed according to three dimensions: narrative structure and coherence, narrative process and complexity, and narrative content and multiplicity. Overall, the results revealed that the PWS bilingual (1) presented a poor narration ability in both languages, with narrative content and multiplicity being the least impaired; (2) showed better narrative abilities during the second experimental session (i.e., narrative abilities improved with experience/practice); and (3) did not show typically developing behavior but a comparable performance to that of monolingual speakers with PWS. These findings suggest that bilingualism should not be discouraged in PWS populations and that special attention should be given to the development of their narrative abilities in their school curriculum.