Referential Choices in Oral Narratives of Chinese among Immersion Learners

Abstract

Much research has investigated the production of referring expressions made by bilingual children in terms of referential functions. Few studies have focused on bilingual Chinese-English children. This thesis explores the referring expressions (nominal forms, pronominal forms, and null forms) used under different referential functions (reference introduction, reference maintenance, and reference reintroduction) by bilingual Chinese-English children. The research questions are (1) What are the developmental patterns across grades for the three referential functions and referential forms for Chinese? (2) What are the developmental patterns across grades for the three referential functions and referential forms for English? (3) Are referential choices made by the schooled bilinguals differ from monolingual language learners? To answer these questions, the Bilingual and Biliteracy Research Lab at the University of Washington collected Chinese and English oral narratives from a Chinese Dual Immersion elementary school. The research assistant at the lab used the wordless picture book Frog Goes to Dinner (Mayer, 1974) to test first and fifth graders narrative skills. After collecting the data, I compared the referring expressions in Chinese between first-grade and fifth-grade students of bilingual Chinese-English children to speculate the developmental patterns. As for within groups, I calculated and compared the percentage of definite and indefinite noun phrases used by first and fifth graders to investigate their referential ability. Finally, I compared the percentage of referring expressions used by first and fifth graders between bilingual Chinese-English and monolingual Chinese children. The results suggested a striking finding on reference maintenance. When comparing the referring expressions used in the three referential functions between the first and fifth-grade bilingual students, the results indicated that the fifth graders preferred nominal forms. In contrast, first graders tended to use pronominal forms for reference maintenance. When comparing the referring expressions under three referential functions, respectively, in first and fifth-grade students, both grade students tended to use the pronominal form to maintain a referent. With mutual knowledge, both groups preferred definite noun phrases, while in no mutual knowledge condition, fifth graders tended to use indefinite noun phrases. In conclusion, fifth graders developed more appropriate referential ability, and nine might be a critical age for children to become aware of mutual knowledge and acquire the reference maintenance function.