ANALYSIS OF SYNTACTIC COMPLEXITY OF CHILDREN’S NARRATIVE DISCOURSE

Abstract

One way to study narration is to study syntactic complexity. The results of previous studies on syntactic complexity are inconclusive, and it is not clear how sensitive these measures are to age differences when it comes to language abilities. The aim of this study was to examine the difference between six- and eight-year-olds with respect to the syntactic complexity of narratives using four measures. Eight-year-olds’ narratives were expected to be more syntactically complex, that is, the mean length of the C-unit and the mean length of clause, clausal density, and the number of different subordinate clause types were expected to be higher. Another aim of this study was to describe the use of subordinate clauses in each group. Fifty-eight narrative samples were selected from children’s corpus, and syntactic complexity measures were calculated using the CLAN software (MacWhinney 2000). The data were analysed using the Mann Whitney U test. The results of this study show that there are statistically significant differences between the two age groups with respect to the mean length of the C-unit and the mean length of clause. There are no significant differences between six- and eight-year-olds in terms of clausal density and the number of different subordinate clause types. This study also showed that adverbial clauses are the most frequently used clause type in both age groups. In line with the findings of previous studies, age differences with respect to the syntactic complexity of narratives were found between preschool and early school-age children. The mean length of the C-unit / clause differentiated the syntactic complexity of the two age groups.