Original scientific paper
Linguistic complexity in late language development: reformulation of relative clauses
Jelena Kuvač Kraljević
orcid.org/0000-0003-1452-0851
; Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, Zagreb
Tomislava Bošnjak Botica
; Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, Zagreb
Kristina Vujnović Malivuk
; Postgraduate Study "Language and Cognitive Neuroscience", University of Zagreb
Paulina Pinjušić
Abstract
This paper focuses on syntactic development in late language development, i.e. after
the age of six, within the reformulation approach framework. Reformulation is a theoretical
approach which attempts to clarify how children transform utterances they
were exposed to in their language input into utterances they produce themselves. In
this study the reformulation of relative clauses was observed using methodology of
story retelling. A total of 90 children in three age groups: 6, 10 and 14 were included.
Besides quantitative analysis, i.e. frequencies of the relative clause reformulation,
qualitative analysis, regarding the type of reformulation procedures, was carried out as well.
The findings indicated that children aged 10 and 14 reformulated relative clauses with
a relative clause significantly more than 6–year–olds did. The same age groups also produced
semantically equivalent paraphrases more often than other types of paraphrases,
which indicated their improvement in the ability to interrelate semantics and syntax in
the construction of relative clauses.
Keywords
reformulation approach; reformulation procedures; relative clauses; syntactic development; late language developmen
Hrčak ID:
161876
URI
Publication date:
15.7.2016.
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