An Introduction to The National Language Research Institute:
A Sketch of its Achievements
Third Edition(1988)/
HTML Version(1997)
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II.4.13 The Development of Syntactic Structures
in Children's Speech from 3 to 6
(Report 50, 1973. 267 pages)
This book is a report on the syntactic structures in
pre-school children's speech. We used transcriptions of
recordings of the speech of 305 pre-school children between the
ages of 3 and 6 as data for this study. These data are published
in 7 volumes as Pre-School Children's Speech Transcription
Cards.
This survey deals with the following topics: "Structures
and Uses of Children's Simple Sentences," "Structures and Uses
of Nominal Modifying Words," "Structures and Uses of
Sentence-Ending Forms," "Length of Children's Utterances," and
"Structural Analysis of Supplementary Utterances." In
addition, the following characteristics of the syntactic
structure of pre-school children's speech were identified.
1. Pre-school children used a variety of syntactic
structures.
2. Remarkable development occurred between the ages of 3 and 6.
3. Pre-school children did not use nominal modifying clauses
until the age of 6.
4. 3- to 4-year old children used the conjunctive particle, KARA,
as a sentence-final particle and often ended sentences expressing
reason in this way. They rarely used the structure "... DA
KARA,... DA" to clearly connect two sentences.
5. Children often used the conjunctions, SOREDE, SOSITE as
interjections. In particular, they often used the
grammatical structures, "...SITE, SOREDE...," "...SITE,
SOSITE...," and thus, their sentences were rarely
disconnected.
OKUBO Ai directed this survey and wrote up the results.
The following related research reports are available.
OKUBO Ai, "Syntactic Development of the Speech of
Pre-School Children- Using a Series of Three Picture Cards to
Elicit Speech," (Study of Language, Volume IV, 1973.)
OKUBO Ai, "Development of the Ability to Connect Sentences
in Children from Pre-School Age to Elementary School Grade 6,"
in Annual Report 26, 1975.
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