Priešmokyklinio amžiaus vaikų rišliojo pasakojimo ypatybės

212 Languages and Culture | 86 INGRIDA BALČIŪNIENĖ Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas AGNĖ KALNINYTĖ Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas KEY WORDS: developmental psycholinguistics, cohesive narrative, preschool age. INTRODUCTION The development and quality of children’s speech is a question that is relevant to society and that linguists, educators and psychologists are trying to answer. It is increasingly mentioned that the language of adults and – especially – children has become noticeably poorer over the last decade, slower to learn, and more difficult to acquire language and communication skills. The abundance and diversity of factors that can determine the development of language encourages the search for new methods of research, combining linguistic, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic methods of scientific research. The development of Lithuanian children’s language was studied even before the Second World War – spontaneous children’s language was observed and recorded (Kalnius 1993), but this activity was soon stopped. Later, during the creation and development of the Lithuanian school of speech therapy, particular attention was paid to the pedagogical aspects of children’s speech development, the diagnosis and correction of speech disorders, the linguistic preparation of the child for school (Glebuvienė 1977; Federavičienė 1978; Giedrienė 1986; Garšvienė, Ivoškuvienė 1993; Ivoškuvienė et al. 1997; Mazolevskienė 2000, 2003; Grigaitė 2004 et al.). In recent decades, the methodology of natural long-term observation has often been used to study the language of Lithuanian children (savickienė 1999, 2003; Wójcik 2000; balčiūnienė 2009; Kamandulytė 2010). Increasingly experimental studies are carried out (most language tests belong to them), the age range of the children studied has been expanded (Dabašinskienė 2010; ruzaitė, Dabašinskienė 2010; Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė et al. 2010), but semi-experimental – also called specia I. balčIūNIENĖ, a. KalNINYtĖ. 213 lios tasks – the method has only just begun to be applied (savickienė et al. 2009; balčiūnienė 2013) to Lithuanian language. One of the classic semi-experimental methods is the analysis of coherent narrative. This method was developed in the 7th-8th decades of the 20th century. and soon became popular around the world, due to its extreme flexibility and ease of adaptation to various subject groups and research objectives. Currently, the methodology of coherent narrative is applied to comparative language studies (berman, slobin 1994), to evaluate the linguistic readiness of a child for school (Hudson, shapiro 1991), to verify or clarify the diagnosis of a certain mental illness (Garrad 2005), to evaluate language interference in the case of bilingualism (multilingualism) (Gülzov, Gagarina 2007; Gagarina et al. 2012). in Lithuania, the methodology of connected storytelling, as already mentioned, is only beginning to be applied. Diagnostic and corrective language development tools are being developed and tested (balčiūnienė, Povilaitienė 2012; Gagarina et al. 2012), attempts are being made to establish the natural development of coherent narrative (balčiūnienė 2013), studies of coherent narrative in bilingual Lithuanian children have been started (balčiūnienė et al. 2011; balčiūnienė, Kalninytė 2013; Gagarina et al. 2013). This article reviews the characteristics of connected narrative in preschool children, determined by the methodology of connected narrative analysis (riPa) (balčiūnienė 2013). The study group was selected in view of the fact that the preschool age (i.e. the last year before school) is particularly important in terms of linguistic maturity and language preparation for school. It is expected that the results of the study will at least slightly expand the knowledge about the language of preschool children and will be useful not only to scientists, but also to practitioners whose activities are directly related to the diagnostics of speech development, correction and language education of children for school. 2. RESEARCH MATERIAL AND METHODOLOGY 2.1.Collection of research material When conducting a study of the coherent narrative of Lithuanian preschool children, the creation of a narrative about a fictional event according to a sequence of storyboard images was chosen. this choice was determined by the arguments presented in the scientific and methodological literature of foreign countries that a) the creation of the story reveals the quality of the child’s coherent narrative better than the retelling 214 Languages and Culture | 86 (Hedberg, Westby 1993, quoted from Hughes et al. 1997), and b) a sequence of pictures is the best way (compared to single pictures and movies) for a child to understand and create the plot and structure of a story (Hughes et al. 1997). Taking into account the age, linguistic and cultural experience of the participants, sequences of pictures were selected, which depict characters familiar to children, and the plot of the stories is close to Lithuanian culture. It is taken into account that the characteristics of children’s coherent narratives are directly related to cultural experience and environment (Gutierrez, Quinn 1993), so it is important to assess whether the visual material corresponds to the culture of the child’s environment when choosing it. A sample of 24 monolingual Lithuanian children of typical development, attending kindergarten and educated according to the Preschool Education Program (see www.smm.lt), was tested twice – at the beginning and at the end of the school year. During the first test, the children created a story based on a sequence of storyboards The story of the fox (see Figure 1). 1 PaV. The story of the fox (Gülzov, Gagarina 2007) During the second test, the children created a story based on the story of the cat (see Figure 2). I. balčIūNIENĖ, a. KalNINYtĖ. Peculiarities of preschool children's narrative 215 2 PaV. Cat Story Storyboard Sequence (Hickmann 2003) Both storyboard sequences consist of a set of six black and white pictures. during the study, all the pictures are shown (placed on the table in front of the child in one horizontal row from left to right) and told that a fairy tale is drawn on them. then you are asked to look at the pictures carefully (time is not limited). When the child looks at the pictures, it is said: And now I would like you to follow me in this tale. The story begins here… (shown in the first picture). while the subject is telling, the investigator does not interrupt the narration, does not help, does not suggest, but only encourages him to continue speaking by approving the words yes, mhm, aha, well, etc. and the corresponding mimicry and intonation. If the child is reluctant to speak, asks for advice, the investigator does not answer directly, but asks: What do you think? What do you think? What else can you say? The aim is to have as little influence as possible on the plot and structure of the narrative, the choice of certain lexical or grammatical categories and syntactic constructions. Each child is tested individually, his narration is analyzed. The diversity of the narrative vocabulary was investigated by examining the naming of the main characters of the narrative with noun combinations. During the study, all character names used in children’s stories were divided into semantically neutral1 (e.g., dog, bird), hyperonyms (e.g., animal) and 1 the description “semantically neutral” is used as a 216 Languages Culture | 86 working dictaphones. All the stories (48 pieces) were transcribed and encoded for automatic linguistic analysis using CHIlDEs (Child Language Data Exchange System, MacWhinney 2010). From these transcriptions a morphologically annotated textbook of connected narratives (total volume – 17 861 words) was compiled and prepared for the analysis of the connected narrative. 2.2. Analysis of the coherent narrative From the variety of connected storytelling methods, two most popular methods can be distinguished, providing the most opportunities, allowing to quickly and objectively assess the quality of connected storytelling; This is an analysis of the language (also called microstructure in English-speaking scientific literature) and structure (respectively macrostructure) of a coherent narrative. The research of the narrative language includes the study of certain linguistic features that best reveal the quality of the narrative language. Based on the experience of foreign researchers (loban 1976; Hughes et al. 1997; Justice et al. 2006; Mäkinen, Kunnari 2009; soodla 2011), three essential indicators of the linguistic characteristics of coherent narrative were selected for this study: a) racial productivity, b) lexical diversity, and c) syntactic complexity. The overall productivity of connected narrative was determined by evaluating two indicators – the average length of narrative (hereinafter – ADL) index and the diversity of lexical and grammatical forms (hereinafter – LGFI) index. The VPI is one of the essential indicators of grammar acquisition, especially often required in early language development studies. This criterion is also used for the analysis of coherent narrative, as it helps to objectively assess the quantitative characteristics of the analyzed narrative. lThe GFI index can be described as the ratio of all words used and their different grammatical forms. This index, like the VPI, is often used in studies of early grammar development, but is also recommended for quantitative analysis of coherent narrative language. in the study of preschool children's connected storytelling, was calculated a) general (all words), b) nouns, c) verbs and (d) the lGFI index of adjectives. conditional, working, so far without a more appropriate one. I. balčIūNIENĖ, a. KalNINYtĖ. According to 217 requirements, all stories were divided into communication units2, then their number was calculated and the hiponimus (pvz., buldogas, šarka), ir tuomet buvo apskaičiuotas procentinis jų pasiskirstymas. rišliojo pasakojimo sintaksės sudėtingumas buvo įvertintas taikant komunikacinių vienetų analizės metodą (loban 1976). laikantis šio metodo structure was investigated. analysis of the structure of the coherent narrative includes studies of the text’s coherence and structural balance. Based on the experience of foreign researchers (baltaxe, angiola 1996; benson 1997; Hughes et al. 1997; bliss et al. 1998; batoréo, Costa 2000; Mäkinen, Kunnari 2009; soodla 2011), four essential indicators of text coherence and structure quality were selected for this study: a) the balance of the structural parts of the coherent narrative, b) the unveiling of a coherent idea, c) the amount of information presented, d) the external coherence of the text. The balance of narrative structures is assessed by checking whether the coherent narrative has all the required structural elements and whether these elements are properly arranged and clearly expressed. In determining the disclosure of the main idea, it is checked whether the plot of the coherent narrative corresponds to the plot depicted in the pictures. When assessing the amount of information provided, it is taken into account whether the child provides all the story information and additional information. The external coherence of the text is assessed by the reference expression and the connections of communication units in coherent narratives. 3. Results 3.1. The characteristics of coherent narrative language The quantitative analysis of the overall productivity revealed that the Fox story sentences of preschool children consist of ~7–8 words, the Cat story – ~9–10 words, and the overall scale of the typical VPI index ranges from 4,700 to 15,000. Atypical cases of the VPI index were recorded in the group of subjects – one extremely low (2,909) 2 W. Lobanas described the communication unit as an independent sentence (or part of it) with all modifiable elements (1976: 9). in traditional Lithuanian grammar, the communication unit would correspond to (a) a continuous sentence; (b) a compound conjunctive sentence; c) the element of a compound connective sentence. When splitting a mixed or unconjugated sentence, the boundary of the communication unit is determined by the type of syntactic connections, i.e. connective or conjunctive. 218 Languages Culture | 86 and one extremely high (31,000) GPA index indicators, i.e. one story was composed of ~3 words sentences, and the other – of ~31 word sentences. An extremely low GPA index indicates that the coherent narrative uses insufficient (regarding the age group) long constructions and is limited to few-word sentences, e.g. : (1) The fox caught a fish. A bird bitten her. The bird took the fish from the fox. A very high VPI index suggests insufficient competence in segmentation of the coherent narrative, e.g.: (2) The dog saw her, the cat climbed into the tree, pulled her, bitten her tail and pulled her, and at the same time a bird with a worm flew to the children, and then the cat came down from the branch and the dog began to catch it, and then the bird fed the birds. The characteristics of narration recorded in the audio recording (intonation, pauses) reveal that the child does not try to break the text into separate fragments, he tries to say as much information as possible in one sentence. The results of the quantitative analysis show that the stories of preschool children are characterized by the average of 0.596 (Fox story) – 0.727 (Cat story) of the general lGFI index. The stories use a total of ~66 words3 (~38 different forms), so the lGFI index is ~0.661. In order to more accurately assess the diversity of the lexical and grammatical forms of the connected narrative, it is important to take into account the meaningful words of the narrative, so during this study the diversity of the lexical and grammatical forms of the noun, verb and adjective was examined. After quantitative calculations, it became clear that ~16 nouns (~9 different forms) are used in the stories of preschool children, and the lGFI index is equal to ~0.614 (in the story of the Fox – 0.491; in the story of the Cat – 0.737). four were extremely low (0.273; 0.286; 0.333 and 0.353) indicators of the lGFI index of the noun (the average of the lGFI index of typical nouns = 0.641), which indicate poor noun vocabulary and a small variety of grammatical forms, e.g.: (3) Attack a woman in a p a u k š t i s. And he wanted to eat the fish. And he ate the fish, and he came to the fisherman. The fisherman was not eating, hungry. Then wanted to catch him, 3 counting words, uncounted corrections (for example, here comes l a p ė... o i, wolf), broken words (for example, there was fish... fish chips), filling of pauzes (for example, and asks that m m m give him a fish). Morphological samples (e.g., as, any) are equated to a single word. I. balčIūNIENĖ, a. KalNINYtĖ. Features of preschool children's storytelling 219 well, and he wanted to eat it. Then the fox ran away after taking it, but it was already trying to attack. Then he wanted to run. Because he attacked her. Then he took it, then he wanted to swallow it, grabbed it and caught it. The very high (1,000) lGFI index of the noun means that there are no repetitive noun forms in the story at all, thus the child’s noun vocabulary is more developed, e.g.: (4) Once p a u k š t i s watched v i s k ą that bad people would not come. Then he flew out to bring food for his children and k a t ė wanted to steal v i k e l i u s and eat it. Then she waited for the l i z d a s to fall. Then she thought that she could sit on it herself and eat it. She saw this, and immediately came up with a stirring mouth, and bitten her in the mouth. Then she began to pull, and when she stopped, she went on until she came home. On the other hand, an extremely high (1,000) lGFI index for a noun can also be an indicator of a particularly poor and short narrative, e.g.: (5) Ka t ė įlipo į m e d į. Atskrido b a l a n d i s. Ir jis nuo uo d e g o s ir išvarė ka t ę. In this case, the narrative consists of only three sentences, and in them only five nouns of different lexical and / or grammatical forms are used in total. The index of the verb is higher than that of the noun. Preschool children use ~16 verbs (~13 different forms) in their stories, and the lGFI index is ~0.892. two extremely low (0.600) lGFI indexes of the verb were recorded (mean lGFI index of typical verbs = 0.863). in general, a verb could be described as the part of speech with the highest lGFI index; Even in cases where a lower than typical lGFI index is recorded, it cannot be said that the narrative lacks verb vocabulary, e.g.: (6) Once a crow laid eggs, from which came the crows. She is out looking for food, and the cat is at the same time keeping the nest folded. Well, she's been watching him for a long time and she's been eating his eggs. Before she could eat, the dog p o s t e d, n e n o r e j o w, that she s u e s t the birds, grabs the tail, n e m e t the cat, and then the mother grabs the snail, p o s t e d the birds, and the dog s u e s the cat. In this story, the verb saw is repeated three times, and this significantly reduces the lGFI index of the verb. The highest lGFI index of the verb (= 1,000) most often indicates that the narrative is characterized by a particularly developed verb vocabulary, e.g.: considering that the adjective in general is one of the most difficult to learn and the rarest part of speech, it could hypothetically be said that the use of adjectives in the preschooler’s cohesive narrative is a sign of a particularly rapid language development. 220 Languages and Culture | 86 (7) There was a bird that loved her little birds and loved them very much. Once she wanted to fly out to see them. The cat saw it all and couldn't help but l o w herself into the tree and watch the little birds. Around the corner there is a dog who takes the bird as his best friend and is willing to s u r p e t t e i l l i n g t o that nest. He grabbed her by the tail, s u č i u p o i and i š t e m p ė out of that nest. The cat is still on the road, the dog is still behind her, and the bird is happy to go to her birds with food. This story is characterized not only by the synonymy of the verb (grabbed – caught) but also by the binary, trinomial or even quaternary verb constructions (thought of getting on board, not to let get on board, wanted to fly out to get food). Completely different results emerge when analyzing the adjective lGFĮ rodik lius – this part of the speech is almost not used in preschool children’s narratives. Of the 48 stories, adjectives are used only in the shadows; All of them are different lexems, so their lGFI index = 1,000, e.g.: (8) D i d e l i s bird had three cubs. […] Then the cat watches. He saw the nest. He wants to eat them, the little birds. […] And then my mother told me that her birds were healthy. The diversity of the lexicon during the study, all the names of the characters of the stories by noun combinations were divided into semantically neutral, hyperonyms and hyponyms. After counting the words of each group (the number of use cases), it became clear that in all stories predominate semantically neutral characters names, and the ratio of the number of hyperonyms, semantically neutral names and hyponyms depends on the sequence of pictures. In the story of the fox, semantically neutral names (bird, bird) make up 77%, hyponyms (eagle, otter) – 22%, and hyperonyms (animal) – only 1% of all characters’ names. In the story of the cat, semantically neutral names make up as much as 80%, hyponyms – 4%, and hyperonyms – 16% of all characters’ names. The ratio of hyperonyms, semantically neutral names, and hyponyms depends on which character of the narrative is named. When naming the predator of the Fox story, children choose only semantically neutral names fox, fox, wolf, and the names of the bird are more diverse – from hyperonyms bird, bird- I. balčIūNIENĖ, a. KalNINYtĖ. 227 It can be argued that younger children are not always able to understand and reveal all the plot links (therefore there are some gaps in the stories), but later these skills are increasingly improved. Particular attention should be paid to cases where the narrative does not contain all the plot information, but inserts additional information and its own interpretations, e.g.: (21) The crow went to catch the fish and caught it. Then she, then... A n t st a l o s t o v e j o t e. The crow flew to the tree, and the fox came, and that fox wanted to take the fish, but it could not because it could not fly and the tree branch was very high. Because of all stories) can be a sign of the child’s inability to perceive the story: it is seen that the child žolės. Tenai medis buvo. Ir tenai gyveno tam medy voveraitė. Tenai ant stalo stovėjo puodukas su peiliu ir šakufocuses on the first picture, creates the prehistory of the story situation, but is unable to reveal the storyline lines. varnos snapas paėmė žuvį. To, ku r gy v e n o v o v e r a i t ė. Priešmokyklinio amžiaus grupėje tokie pasakojimai (jie sudaro 4 proc. External coherence of the text When studying the external coherence of the coherent narrative text, two characteristics were examined – the expression of reference and the interrelationships of the sentence elements. Deepening into the expression of reference, based on the experience of foreign linguists (Nicolopoulu et al., 2011), the first three nominations of each narrator were first examined and the type of these nominations was determined: (a) a noun; (b) omitted designation (hereinafter referred to as 0rrEF in the examples); (c) a combination of demonstrative pronoun and noun; (d) personal pronouns. then all the related stories were divided into 3 groups according to the name of the speaker. The first group consists of tales in which the narrators are always named by nouns, e.g.: (22) Here flies a p a r a t i o n a p p a r a t i o n. V i l k a s came to p a r a t i o n, and p a r a t i o n took a p a r a t i o n. V i l k a s stood up and wanted to grab a p a r a t i o n. Pa u k š t i s lost a p a r a t i o n, and v i l k a s turned around. And there are only the dice left. He ran away with the woman. Va r n a grabbed the woman, and v i l k a s hunted. The second group consists of stories in which the narrators are named by nouns or the naming is omitted, e.g.: (23) Was ž u v i s on the table. And he took [the fish:0rEF] p a u k š t i s. They're here. And he saw that p a u k š t i s took the girl. L a p ė wanted to dance, but did not reach. Ir 228 Languages Culture | 86 pronouns, and some of the nouns are omitted, e.g.: (24) Pulla ž u v i i p a u k š t i s, j ą nori pojesť. And he wanted to eat that thing. And he p a u k š t i s numetė, numetė l a p e i. Ir l a p ė pabėgo su žu v i m . Ir vijosi pa u k š - t i s. Ir tada paėmė p a u k š t i s iš l a p ė s [žuvį:0rEF]. trečiajai grupei priklauso pasakojimai, kuriuose referentai įvardijami daiktavardžiais, asmeniniais įvardžiais ir / arba parodomųjų įvardžių ir daikate that thing, and he came to her. She was hungry, hungry. Then [laa pė:0rrEF] wanted to catch it, and she wanted to eat it. Then he let the woman go, and then he would have eaten her. Then he ran away after taking it, but he was already trying to attack. Then he wanted to run. Because he attacked her. Then he took it, then he wanted to swallow it, he caught it, and he caught it. The stories of the first group comprise 8% of the preschool age group (in other age groups they were not recorded – balčiūnienė 2013), the stories of the second group – 33%, and the stories of the third group – 58% of all stories. It can be concluded that younger children typically name the referents with nouns, later learn to omit the nominations in certain positions (in this way the text acquires more coherence) and finally move to the mixed nominating of the referents with nouns (usually when mentioning the character for the first time), combinations of demonstrative pronouns and nouns, personal pronouns or by omitting the nominations. However, it should be mentioned that properly naming the narrators in preschool age is one of the most difficult tasks in creating a coherent narrative. Even when the mixed (third-group) reference method is used, it is evident that children do not always manage to use the personal noun correctly and/or skip the reference in the right position, e.g.: (25) Once a bird gave birth to three chicks and flew away to bring food, and a cat came because it wanted to eat the chicks. He caught a bird, which he pulled up to a tree, and dragged it to him, biting his tail [...]. There are also stories where a personal pronoun is used first, and then this choice is questioned and corrected – the referrer is specified by a noun, e.g. : (26) [...] and the dog came. And he took her by the tail, k a t e i. (27) [...] Then the cat looks. He saw the nest. He wants to eat j u o s, m a ž i u k u s p a u k š tyčius […]. I. balčIūNIENĖ, a. KalNINYtĖ. 229 such cases are not considered to be an error – on the contrary, corrections, clarifications show that the child understands the rules of anaphoric pronouns and tries to adapt them to the coherent narrative without violating the coherence of the text. Therefore, considering the development of the name of the narrator and the difficulties encountered by children, this criterion can be considered one of the important indicators of the development of the coherent narrative structure. the second criterion of the external coherence of the text – the relationships between sentences and/or their elements. Research by foreign linguists (reilly et al., 2011) shows that the structure and connections of sentences and/or elements of a coherent narrative are characterized by four developmental stages. at the earliest stage, the narrative consists of unconnected elements (sentences) describing the objects depicted in the pictures, e.g. : (28) Here is a dog. Here is a cat. Later, a new stage is introduced, where the narrative consists of unconnected elements / sentences that describe the actions performed by the characters, e.g. : (29) The fox caught a fish. A bird bitten her. The bird took the fish from the fox. Even later, one learns to connect sentences with a linear connection, e.g.: (30) A fox came, and a crow was at the time lying on a tree branch, and the fox stood on a pole for a while and tried to move that branch. He moved the little bit, and there the fish fell. Then the fox caught it and started running, and the crow started chasing and caught the fish, and then again the fox tried to chase, and the crow couldn't catch it. Finally, the stage is reached when the sentences (points) of the connected narrative begin to be connected by a causal (purpose) connection, e.g.: (31) Then the cat pulled the nest, but did not pull, because the dog pulled her tail […]. The study used this classification to calculate the frequency index for each of these types of communication. It turned out that in preschool age there is a linear relationship between sentences and (or) their elements – its frequency index is equal to ~0.656. Most of the time, the sentences and (or their elements) are not connected at all (only the actions of the actors are described) – the frequency index of this type is ~0.321. the rarest connection between sentences and (or their elements) is cause (effect) – its frequency index is ~0.023. almost all connected stories use not one, but several ways of connecting sentences (elements), only the ratio of these ways differs. but should 230 Language Culture | 86 to pay special attention to such cases, when sentences (elements) in a coherent narrative are not connected at all, i.e. the relationships between sentences (elements) have only reached the first stage of development. such an indicator means that there are neither linear nor causal (purpose) connections in the narrative – this may be a sign of the development of an atypical narrative structure. Summarizing the characteristics of connected narrative in preschool age, it should be emphasized the abundance of deviations of individual indicators from the established average. These deviations were most frequently recorded in the fields of cohesive narrative language and structure, compared to other age groups (balčiūnienė 2013). This may be related to individual differences in language and cognitive development, the child’s experience of listening to and following fairy tales, family traditions and attitudes towards reading or following fairy tales to the child and incorporating them into daily communication4. 1.The following characteristics are characteristic of the coherent narrative of preschool children: the average length of the narrative is ~8-9 words, but the individual index of this score ranges from 2,909 to 31,000, i.e. there are stories with narratives consisting of only ~3 words (very low index) and, conversely, those with narratives consisting of more than ~30 words (very high index). Nevertheless, despite these atypical cases, it can be said that the average narrative length of most children is not far from the typical VPI average (8.295), so this number could be considered as a reference point for assessing the average narrative length of preschool children. 2.The stories according to the sequence of six storyboard images consist of ~66 words (not counting corrections and broken words), of which ~38 are different forms. Thus, the index of diversity of lexical and grammatical forms (lGFI) is equal to ~0.661, in other words, each word of the narrative is multiplied by 4. According to the children, at home parents, older siblings often read children’s books to them (“about the little goat”, “the little bear”, “the princess”, “Colly”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, “bambi”, “the cat with boots”, “Harry Potter”), in kindergarten the nurses sometimes read books before bedtime. Some children said that they read books themselves, but such answers should be considered with caution (some children who gave such an answer said that they do not know the letters, and in conversation with some children it became clear that a book is considered to be read when all the pictures in the book are viewed). Some children mentioned that they like not only books, but also children’s magazines “barbie”, “Donald”, “Flint” and others. I. balčIūNIENĖ, a. KalNINYtĖ. The characteristics of preschool children’s connected narrative 231 jams ~1.7 times. The stories are characterized by a wide scale of individual lGFI index – from 0.422 to 0.800, and atypical (very low index) cases are very far from the typical lGFI index. After additionally calculating the LGFI index of significant parts of speech, it can be said that ~16 nouns (~9 different forms, LGFI – ~0.614), ~16 verbs (~13 different forms, LGFI index – ~0.892) are used in the stories of preschool children. It should be noted that both extremely high and extremely low lGFI indexes for nouns in this age group may be indicative of low narrative quality (poor noun vocabulary or poor narrative plot). On the contrary, the lGFI index of the verb, even in cases where it is extremely low, does not indicate a significant lack of verb vocabulary. A rare use of adjectives can be considered as a distinctive feature of preschool children’s narrative (compared with other age groups, balčiūnienė 2013). Considering that the adjective is generally one of the most difficult to learn and rarely used parts of speech, it can be assumed that even the use of one adjective in a coherent narrative in preschool age can be a sign of faster than typical language development. 3. the lexicon is characterized by an abundance of semantically neutral nouns, which are used to name the characters of the story (bird, bird, fox, cat). Semantically neutral names of characters account for 79%, hyponyms (dragon, crow) – 13%, hyperonyms (animal, beast) – 8% of all names of characters (cases of use). In this age group, names that are not entirely appropriate for the plot of the story (ost, otter) have also been recorded, but this may be related not to the linguistic but to the cognitive development of the child. 4. syntax is characterized by a ratio index of the number of communicative units to the number of grammatical centres – ~1.084. A large part of the stories (23 out of 48) consists of single-membered communicative units (independent elements with dependent elements), i.e. the communicative unit of these stories comprises only one grammatical center. 5.The narrative structure in general can be regarded as a forming trinary – it is characteristic of 36 of the 48 stories examined. Most stories have a beginning and an instructional part, but the end is not expressed. Even 10 stories completely do not meet the requirements of a coherent narrative structure. only 2 of the stories in this age group could be described as fully formed trilogy, i.e. the story has a clearly expressed beginning, teaching part and ending. 6. The difficulty of revealing the main message of the stories. only half of the stories are characterized by a fully revealed main storyline, 232 Languages Culture | 86 others (35%) – partially revealed or (15%) completely unrevealed, i.e. half of the children did not understand all the narrative lines and / or were unable to express them properly. When creating a coherent story, a large proportion of children (62%) provided all the necessary plot information, but did not provide any interpretations or information about what is not drawn, but can be detailed or interpreted, but as many as 18% of the stories lacked some plot information. This allows to assume that in the preschool age more than in būtų numanyti ar spėti remiantis kontekstu. Keletas pasakojimų (14 proc.) ne tik atskleidė visą siužetinę informaciją, bet ir buvo papildyta naujomis other (balčiūnienė 2013) cases were found where the story does not contain all the plot information, but inserts additional information and own interpretations. amžiaus vaikai dar ne visuomet pajėgūs suvokti ir atskleisti visas siužetines grandis, todėl pasakojimuose lieka tam tikrų spragų. Šioje amžiaus grupė7. characterized by a large variation in reference resolution. Some stories (4 out of 48) are characterized only by the simplest way of expressing reference – naming the characters with noun combinations, in others (16 out of 48) the ability to omit the name of the character where it is not necessary is recorded without the use of noun combinations, and more than half (28 out of 48) of the connected stories show the ability to use all possible ways of expressing reference: noun combinations, omitted name of the character, demonstrative and personal pronouns. When examining the connection of sentences and/or their elements, it appears that preschool children are no longer characterized by the simplest way of creating a coherent narrative, as soon as the objects in the narrative pictures are described. Around one-third of the sentences or their elements in a coherent narrative are not yet connected, but they describe not only objects but also actions, thus there are implicit connections in the plot. aapproximately two thirds of the narrative sentences or their elements are characterized by a linear connection, i.e. connection by conjunctions and, o. connection of sentences and their elements by causal (purpose) connections is particularly rare, but due to the complexity of perception and expression of this connection, this is not considered a major lack of narrative coherence. On the other hand, the expressed causal (purpose) connection in preschool storytelling could be a sign of faster development of coherent storytelling. 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Received 06/10/2013 Adopted on 20 December 2013 236 Languages Culture | 86 tHE MaIN CHaraCtErIstICs oF NarratIVE IN PrEsCHoolErs Summary the article presents the study of monologue (coherent) language of preschoolage children establishing the main micro and macrostructural indications of lithuanian preschool age children’s narratives. the study was based on the method of story generation according to a picture sequence: the children participating in the study were asked to tell a story according to a sequence of six related pictures. 24 children of 56 years old attending preschool education groups participated in the study; the sample was balanced in respect of social properties; all children were monolingual; they were not diagnosed with any speechrelated or other developmental disorders. Every child was individually tested twice; hence, 48 narratives in total were collected. the narratives were recorded by a voice recorder, transcribed and morphologically annotated for an automatic analysis of narrative language and structure using CHIlDEs software. the analysis of the data collected identified the following individual and general properties: general productivity (including Mlu and ttr), lexical diversity (namely, NP references), syntactic complexity (namely, Cu structure), narrative structure, quantity of information and cohesion (namely, referential and linkage development) of the narrative. the results obtained enable us to compare individual results, to make general conclusions and to identify the general tendencies of narrative development. KEYWORDS: developmental psycholinguistics, narrative, preschool age. INGrIDa balčIūNIENĖ Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas K. Donelaičio g. 58, lt44248 Kaunas, Lithuania [email protected] aGNĖ KalNINYtĖ Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas K. Donelaičio g. 58, lt44248 Kaunas, Lithuania [email protected]