The acquisition of narrative syntax

This dissertation examines the manner in which children aged four through eleven acquire the culturally shared structure of narrative form. Based on the categories and general narrative nomenclature described by William Labov, this study breaks down narratives into abstracts (prefaces), orientations, high points and resolutions, and examines the synchronic make-up and diachronic development of each for children in the critical period of acquisition. The data, consisting of 405 narratives collected at The Hammond School, in Columbia, South Carolina, during the 1994-1995 school year, is a departure from (and addition to) that of Labov in that it was produced by pre-teen children and, importantly, was entirely naturally occurring and unelicited.;The findings with respect to the development of prefaces showed that the preface as a multiturn structural component of narrative form is acquired early and maintained throughout the period under study. More importantly, it was observed that the internal nature of the narrative "work" being performed in the preface evolved considerably, moving from a semantically empty discourse marker to an evaluated characterizational abstract, suspending conversational turn-taking and orchestrating listener response--a developmental process "from the outside in." Similarly, the orientation sections of developing narrators appear at early ages, the nature and degree of orientation increasing as the children reach maturity, another case of function following form. The high point--the hingepin of mature narrative discourse--was found to be typically indiscernible in 4-year-old speakers; however, by age 11, the high points, or climactic moments of the narratives, were identifiable in 100% of the sample. This critical developmental curve was due in large part to the gradual acquisition of evaluative linguistic skills. These consisted primarily of repetition, negatives, descriptive terms, reference to internal psychological states, reported speech and more complex syntactic forms--all devices for marking and evaluating the components of the narrative. The evaluative linguistic devices both communicate the point of the narrative and cue the listeners toward the expected responses. Resolutions and codas were also found to be vital aspects of narrative development, examples showing both logical resolution of conflict and temporal frame shift as closing mechanisms.