Acquisition of referentiality in elicited narratives of Estonian-speaking children

2.1.1 Participants

The MAIN test was conducted with 16 Estonian monolingual 6- and 7-year-old children. There were eight boys and eight girls in the group. All parents were asked to provide a written consent to test their children. The parents also completed a questionnaire where they were asked to provide some information about the family.

2.1.2 Materials

From two sets of pictures intended for storytelling in MAIN, “Baby Birds” and “Baby Goats,” the “Baby Goat” story was chosen. The story provides a culturally coherent and at the same time interesting story for Estonian children (a goat is not as common an animal as a bird and could be more attractive to the children). Although the MAIN test makes it possible to evaluate children’s production and comprehension, only production has been analysed in this article.

The number of protagonists per picture and the timing/sequence of their appearance in each story are controlled for in the test. For example, in the first picture in each of the four stories, only the main protagonist is presented, and in “Baby Goats,” the two babies are presented additionally; in all the MAIN stories, the second protagonist appears only in picture 2, where he/she/it is seen only partially in order to convey a process of “entering” or first appearance. In addition, plurality is controlled in the “Baby Goats” story: there are two baby goats in the pictures. Background details are kept to a minimum in order not to distract the child from the primary content and structure.

The story of the baby goats contains six pictures with five animal characters of three different species: a mother goat and two baby goats (all introduced in the first picture), a fox (introduced in the second picture), and a crow (introduced in the fourth picture). All referents are presented in the pictures, but their information status changes during the story (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Baby Goats stimulus pictures (based on Guelzow and Gagarina 2007).

The production, i.e., all children’s narratives, was audio-recorded and transcribed (in CHAT format, MacWhinney 2000) for further analysis. The Estonian MAIN database is available in the CHILDES Estonian corpora (https://childes.talkbank.org/browser/index.php?url=Other/Estonian/).

2.1.3 Procedure

The assessment of narrative production was carried out individually in a separate room in the children’s kindergarten or hobby school by an examiner. Each child was presented with six pictures from the “Baby Goat.” To create a mediated narrative, three envelopes were placed on the table, all of which contained the same picture series. The purpose was to make the child think that the instructor did not know what the story in the envelope was. The instructor sat in front of the child so that the child could hold the pictures and the instructor could see the back of the pictures. The setup of the test was thus one of non-shared visual attention with a “not very aware” listener. Pictures 1–2 show a scene in which a goat is trying to save a baby goat that has fallen into a pond, and in pictures 3–4, a fox tries to catch a baby goat; pictures 5–6 show a bird saving the baby goats from the fox.

The children were guided according to MAIN instructions. The observer gave only minimal neutral positive feedback (e.g., “yes”). The observer did not react when the child gave an incomplete answer. When the child reached the end of the story and stopped speaking, the observer asked if she/he had finished the story.

2.1.4 Coding and analysing the material

The narratives were transcribed and coded by one of the authors of the present study, Andra Kütt. Then, all narratives were coded by the second author, Reili Argus. The only disagreement between two coders concerned the coding of verb inflection as the device for reference maintenance in cases where the child’s utterance followed the experimenter’s feedback, and there were no other reference devices used in the utterance, for example, the NP for reference was used in one utterance and the bare verb form was used after the experimenter’s feedback utterance. This problem was discussed, and the final decision to code these verb forms as zero references was made on the basis of the information available for the experimenter, that is, for the first coder who could assure that the child was referring to the character of the story and not to anything else.

The narratives were transcribed and coded at the first level for the first presentation of a new referent and for the second reference. On the second level, the narratives were coded for reference chains, that is, all references used for one character were marked. On the third level, the means used for reference were coded: different NPs (bare noun, NPs with different determiners); pronouns (indefinite, demonstrative, personal pronouns); zero references. To analyse the use of a pragmatically driven word order to express definiteness, all constructions consisting of the reference unit as subjects were extracted and coded for the position of the subject (in pre- or post-verbal position).

The Story Structure Scores for the children’s narratives were calculated according to MAIN assessment guidelines. The story structure score (see Table 1) indicates the overall complexity and the number of components in a child’s story. Quantitative scoring in the story structure calculates the number of story components produced by the child (the maximum score consists of 1 point each for reference to time and place at the beginning of the story, and 1 point each for mentioning the five components of an episode (internal state as initiating event, goal, attempt, outcome, internal state as reaction)), see https://zaspil.leibniz-zas.de/article/view/516/525.

2.2.1 Introducing a new referent

In order to use different types of linguistic means to introduce a character in the story, children must be able to judge whether the referent they are introducing is currently also known to the listener, that is, they need to be able to take the listener’s perspective into account. This means that children should have developed the sufficient theory of mind (Tomasello 2003). In the current study, the pictures were not visible to the experimenter and children could assume that the experimenter did not know the characters of the story.

Children’s skills of the introduction of new referents may also depend on the complexity of the story, e.g., good performance in introducing new characters has been reported in studies where simple stimulus material with a small number of characters was used (Lindgren 2018, 113). When using more complex stories with a higher number of characters, the results indicate that children acquire full mastery of introducing a new character rather late. In the current study, the stimulus (the MAIN story “Baby Goats”) can be considered rather complicated: There are three main characters (two baby goats and their mother) and two other characters (the fox and the crow). Therefore, 6- to 7-year-old children would not be expected to have full mastery over the introduction of a new reference.

Every character presented in pictures can be first introduced as a new referent. There were five characters in the pictures that could be introduced as new: the mother goat and her two baby goats (all introduced in the first picture; baby goats can be referred to as one plural referent), the fox (in the second picture), and the crow (in the fourth picture). The children were able to introduce more than five new referents and sometimes even seven referents. There were three reasons why the number of introduced referents was higher than the number of characters in the pictures. First, children sometimes grouped characters and used one introducing device for more than one character, for example, kitsepere “family of goats” or kaks kitse “two goats,” or children referred to all characters of the story as kõik “all” using a quantifier. Some children did not understand that one, and the same character appears in several pictures (see Figure 1) and they introduced some characters again as new (e.g., referring to the mother goat in the second picture as a new referent with NP teine ema “another mother”). In some cases, children invented a new character, for example, they started the story by introducing a farmer who had two baby goats (example 6).

Concerning the types of construction used by children with the first mention of a story character, a preference for argumentative construction (the character is introduced as a subject or an object) was prevalent. Only five children used typical narrative presentation (the character is introduced as part of a typical narrative beginning, such as “once upon a time”) at the beginning of their story (example 7); other children started with argumentative constructions (example 8). Labelling (or naming) was not used for the introduction of the (first) character by Estonian children.

The children used 112 expressions in total to introduce new referents. The type of references did not depend on the score the children got from the story. Children whose narratives were shorter than 40 tokens did not use NPs with modifiers to introduce new referents (CHI4, CHI5, CHI6, CHI13).

The characters were generally introduced with bare nouns without any determiners (51 tokens, see Table 2), among nouns, common nouns, i.e., natural terms (e.g., rebane “fox” and vares “crow”), were used most frequently by the children (example 9).

This means of reference seems to be used in picture narratives in general (reported also by Hint et al. 2013, 177) and also for CDS (Vihman 2015). In some cases, children used some higher terms instead of specific words: ema “mother” for the mother goat, lind “bird” for the crow, or laps “child” for a baby goat.

NPs consisting of a noun and determiners were the second most frequently used device for introducing a new referent (24 instances). The usage of an indefinite determiner (üks “one”) in NPs to introduce a new referent is reported to be common in Estonian narratives (Hint et al. 2013, 171), as well as in Estonian spoken language in general (Pajusalu 1997, 2000), although this typical device for introducing a new character in Estonian was used only seven times by children in this study (examples 10 and 11).

Other indefinite determiners used by children to introduce a new referent were not as frequent: children used indefinite pronouns such as mingi “some (sort of)” and teine “another,” for example, mingi lind “some (sort of) bird,” teine rebane “another fox,” teine kits “another goat.” A non-typical device for the introduction of a new referent, an NP consisting of a noun and the demonstrative pronoun see “this,” was used once: see vares “this crow” (example 12). A similar strategy was noted by Hint et al. (2013, 177). It is difficult to guess why the child uses such a non-typical device to introduce a new referent in his narrative. One reason could be that he used the demonstrative pronoun see in the meaning of “this one,” indicating that he is talking about the particular crow presented in the picture, drawing the experimenter’s attention to the crow. Looking at the child’s previous utterance we can see that he also uses the inappropriate NP teine rebane “another fox” for the second mention of the fox. (Despite the fact that the same fox appears in all the pictures, the child introduced it as a new referent in the second picture.)

NPs with adjectives used as modifiers were quite rare when introducing new referents, being used only five times by all the children: väike kitsekene “small goat,” väike tüdruk “small girl.” One possible explanation could be the general paucity of adjectives in the children’s lexicons (for Estonian, see Kütt and Argus 2017, 89–93, Argus and Kõrgesaar 2014; for English, see Li and Fang 2011). Another explanation could be that NPs with adjectives are not the most typical means of introducing a new referent in Estonian.

Possessive pronouns, as members of NPs, were used three times by children: nende poju-ke “their son-DIM,” oma lapsed “one’s children,” and ta ema “her/his mother.”

Pronouns or determiners alone, that is, without nouns, were used six times to introduce new referents with the determiner üks “one” being used most frequently. In example 13, we can see that the child is using the indefinite determiner üks “one” for the wolf (fox in the picture) at the end of a very long utterance and a little bit later after some hesitation and the experimenter’s feedback (jaa “yes”) used the NP kuri hunt “wicked wolf.”

The pronoun teine “another” was used two times (example 14) and only for baby goats.

Quantifier phrases were used three times (kaks last “two children,” kolm kitse “three goats” and kitsetallekesed kolm “three baby goats”) and only for baby goats. A personal pronoun (ta “she/he”), which is not a typical way of referring to a new referent, was used three times (example 15).

The quantifier kõik “all” was also used once to introduce all the characters in the pictures as a group.

A new referent was introduced using zero reference once in the narratives (example 17). Although Estonian allows a zero reference and a verb in present tense form, it usually contains the personal suffix: the omission of overt reference to a new referent is uncommon. According to Hint et al. (2020, 59), speakers use zero to refer to subject referents in Estonian when the same referent is mentioned in the preceding utterance. In the next example, the child has not yet mentioned the crow in the narrative.

Different characters were introduced differently: to introduce the crow or the fox, the children most frequently used bare nouns, only six times were NPs used with modifiers. At the same time, baby goats, as the main characters of the narrative, were introduced with a number of different NPs (bare nouns and noun phrases consisting of determiners, pronouns and quantifier phrases).

Analysing the use of pragmatically driven word order in children’s reference introductions, we can see that there were 72 introductions of a new referent with a referential unit (i.e., a word or phrase) in the role of subject in the children’s narratives. The word order in 61% of these constructions was the neutral SVO, for example, the subject was in a pre-verbal position (see example 12), while in 39% of referential constructions, the subject was in post-verbal position (example 18 and also examples 9, 10 and 13).

2.2.2 Referring to a familiar referent

The children used 145 words or phrases in total to refer to familiar referents (see Table 3). The children’s narratives contained various numbers of references to familiar referents and individual variation between children was extensive: a child’s narrative could consist of 0 to 22 references to a familiar referent.

The usage of nouns without modifiers was the most frequent way to refer to a familiar referent (in total 65 times), a device that was used in approximately half of the cases.

Although pronouns, especially the personal pronoun ta “she/he,” are the most common way to refer to a person or an animal that has already been introduced in the discourse (see Hint et al. 2020, 50), the children used pronouns in narratives less frequently (32% vs 45%, see Table 3) than full lexical items, that is, bare nouns. There were five different pronouns used for familiar referents in the children’s narratives. Apart from the most common pronoun, ta, the third person plural pronoun nemad “they” for the baby goats and teine “another” for one baby goat were also used. The pronoun teine “another” is common in Estonian as a second reference in situations where some kind of group has already been introduced (see Pajusalu 2017, 578). The reflexive pronoun ise “him-/her-/itself” was also used to refer to the crow (e.g., CHI7: ise hammustab rebast sabast “him-/her-/itself bites the fox on the tail”). The pronoun mina “I” was used in a reported speech by one child to refer to a baby goat:

The short personal pronoun ta “she/he” is used for the most salient and activated referents with this pronoun more probably referring to the subject than to any other constituent of the previous clause (Pajusalu 2017, 580, Hint et al. 2020, 44). The children in this study used it mainly for the main characters of the story (the goats) and also for the fox. The personal pronoun ta was mainly used for the subject, and only eight usages out of a total of 46 were for other clause constituents (mostly direct objects). One exceptional usage of NP can be found in one narrative where the child used the long form of the personal pronoun tema “she/he” with a noun functioning as a post-positive apposition (example 20). This kind of usage is stylistically marked and generally more characteristic to fiction texts and not to spoken narratives.

Sentences with zero reference were also used for the familiar reference by three children (see Table 3). This device was used only once for the introduction of a new referent but seven times for familiar referents (only for the fox and crow). Zero reference was quite common in adult’s narratives: according to Hint et al. (2020, 44), as many as 37.1% of references can be without an overt subject. The past tense form was used predominantly by children with a variety of different verbs (examples 21 and 22).

One child used a relative clause to refer to a familiar referent, to a baby goat:

Noun phrases were used for reference to familiar referents with lesser frequency than when introducing new referents (see Tables 2 and 3). Although the noun phrase with an indefinite determiner (e.g., üks tall “one lamb”) is a typical device for the introduction of a new referent, the children also used it four times for familiar referents. The definite determiner see “this” is a very common demonstrative pronoun for referring to a familiar referent in Estonian, with children in this study using it only four times in NPs. See “this” was used to refer to the mother goat (e.g., see isa “this father”) and to the baby goat (e.g., see kits “this goat”).

Unlike for new referents, indefinite pronouns and demonstrative pronouns without a noun (e.g., see “this”) as well as quantifier phrases were not used for familiar referents (see Table 3). Thus, the results were in some places very similar to those of the previous study by Hint et al. (2013), and we can argue that children refer to familiar referents most often by using lexical items and less often with pronouns and verb forms. The distinction between definite and indefinite referents in children’s narratives is manifested by more frequent use of personal pronouns when referring to familiar referents than when referring to new referents. Differentiation between old and mentioned subjects is not always clearly distinguishable: children do not sometimes rely on typical lexical means for expressing definite subjects (NPs consisting of nouns and definite pronouns were used only four times).

Looking at pragmatically driven word order for expressing definiteness, we could expect children to use mainly referential constructions with SVO order for reference maintenance, that is, the opposite word order is not typical for introduced referents. In example 23, the baby goat was introduced by the child in the same utterance, but still the child uses the non-typical word order referring to the baby goat with the pronoun ta “she/he.”

Still, among all constructions referring to already introduced characters, 92% were with the subject in pre-verbal position (SVO order), and in only 8% of cases did children use non-typical word order for reference maintenance.

2.2.3 Chains of reference

Chains of reference are described as all referential units used for the same referent during one story (despite possible distractions by other reference chains). The length and the number of reference chains demonstrate the child’s ability to create a coherent narrative, to convey the activities of the same character throughout the whole story. The children’s narratives consisted of 92 reference chains. On average, the reference chain consisted of 2.9 reference units (Table 4).

Children who had longer narratives also had longer reference chains (there was a positive correlation between the length of reference chains and the whole narrative of the child, r = 0.66, p = 0.006). The shortest chain consisted of only one element (to introduce a new character). At the same time, the longest reference chain had nine members and was used to refer to the fox: rebane “fox” > rebane > rebane > rebane > rebane > taht-is “want-PST.3SG” > rebane, haara-s “catch-PST.3SG,” rebase > “fox.GEN” > rebane. No correlation was found between the story structure score and the length of reference chains (r = 0.39, p = 0.133) and between story structure score and the length of the story (r = 0.20, p = 0.452).

The densest reference chain consisted of five different means of referring to the same character: rebane “fox” > vaata-s “look-PST.3SG” > hüppa-s “jump-PST.3SG” > hakka-s taga ajama “start-PST.3SG to catch” > ta-l she/he-ADESS’ > rebas-t “fox-PARTIT,” (Chi4). The reference chains could also consist of only one element: There were 12 reference chains that consisted of only one lemma, a repetition of the same bare noun. A similar tendency was also observed in the study by Hint et al. (2013). Some children’s individual profiles of narratives concerning the length of their reference chains can be observed: those children who had longer reference chains (more than two words) used longer chains throughout the whole narrative (e.g., CHILD7, CHILD10, CHILD12, CHILD16); there were some children who used only very short reference chains consisting of only of one or two members, usually only reference introductions.

Devices for the maintenance of reference were different according to the characters in the story. The main characters (the mother and baby goats) were referred to using a greater variety of linguistic elements, while the children used reference chains consisting of only a bare noun mainly for the fox and the crow. Children used the same noun three to seven times for the same character. For the baby goats, several children used such a chain consisting of only the pronoun ta “she/he” (three to five times in the same narrative). At the same time, the mother and baby goats (as the kitsepere “goat family”) were referred to using the same noun only once. Using only one element to refer to the same character can be an individual preference to some extent: one child (CHI3) used this strategy for three characters in the story and also had the longest reference chain consisting of only one bare noun (rebane “fox” seven times).

Reference chains for different characters differ to some extent. Baby goats as main characters of the story were referred to with 16 reference chains consisting of 1–9 items (3.2 items per chain on average). To introduce the baby goat, children mainly used (six times) nouns without modifiers (e.g., kitsetall, kitsepoeg, tall “baby goat”) or NPs with an indefinite pronoun as a modifier, for example, üks lammas “one lamb” or üks laps “one child” (three times). Noun phrases with adjectives as a modifier were also used, for example, väike kitsekene “small goat,” väike tüdruk “small girl.” In the second mentioning of the same referent, the personal pronoun ta “she/he” was used in most cases (11 times) and a noun without a modifier was used with lower frequency, 6 times. Three children of 16 only used personal pronouns to maintain the reference to the baby goats (e.g., CHI6 in example 24).

One child (CHI16), who had the longest reference chain for a baby goat, introduced the baby goat with NP, then maintained the reference with personal pronouns and then continued with nouns without modifiers: nende pojake “their little son” > ta “he” > talle “to him” > ta “he” > neid “them” > kitsepoeg “baby goat” > tall “baby goat” > kitsepoeg “baby goat” > kitsepoeg “baby goat.”

The other main character in the pictures was the mother goat. The chains of reference used for the mother goat were shorter and consisted of 1–6 units (2 units on average). For the introduction of the referent, the children mainly used nouns (e.g., ema “mother” eight times, kitseema “mother goat,” three times). To maintain the reference, that is, in the second mention of the mother goat, the children used significantly more nominal rather than pronominal forms, for example, nouns without modifiers (ema “mother” or isa “father,” four times); there were many fewer instances of the personal pronoun ta “she/he” (only one child). The third mention was quite similar, children preferred bare nouns (e.g., ema, three times), with only one child using the pronoun ta “she/he,” and one child NP consisting of a personal pronoun as a modifier (e.g., tema ema “her/his/its mother”). Compared with the reference to the other main characters of the story, the baby goats, the main difference is in preference for bare nouns instead of personal pronouns.

The third character, the fox, was referred to with much longer chains than the mother goat: reference chains consisted of 0–9 items and the average chain consisted of 3.8 units. For the introduction of the fox, the noun rebane “fox” was most frequently used (14 times). For the maintenance of the reference, both the personal pronoun ta “she/he” and noun rebane “fox” were used equally often. Although the length of the reference chains were long, the number of different linguistic devices for the maintenance of the reference to the fox was restricted: children used only the bare noun rebane “fox” and the personal pronoun ta “she/he.”

Children used much shorter reference chains when referring to the crow (1–4 items, 1.9 units per chain). When introducing the crow, the bare noun was generally used (e.g., vares “crow” nine times, lind “bird” four times). Other means of reference, for example, NPs with different modifiers (mingi lind “some sort of bird,” and kuri vares “wicked crow”) were used only occasionally. Children tend to maintain the reference to the crow with bare nouns (e.g., vares “crow” six times); the most typical device for the maintenance of the reference in Estonian, the personal pronoun ta “she/he,” was used only once.

Regarding the differences in reference maintenance of different characters, both differences in the length and linguistic means used for the second mention can be observed. The longest chains of reference were used for the fox. In the second mention of the baby goats and fox, generally the personal pronoun ta “she/he” was used and a bare noun for the mother goat (e. g. ema “mother”) and crow (e. g. vares “crow”) was preferred by the children. This result coincides with Karmiloff-Smith’s (1981) claim that the most topical character in the story (the baby goats in this case) tends to be pronominalised, while other less topical characters are more likely to be re-introduced with a noun phrase.

If there are two competing referents in the picture, the newest referent is usually referred to by an NP consisting of a modifier and the familiar referent with a bare noun. In example 24, the crow is a new referent and was referred to by the NP kuri vares “wicked crow,” while the fox had already been introduced in the previous picture and was referred to now with the bare noun rebane “fox.”

In a situation where there are two competing referents (fox and goat) both of which have already been introduced, the last-mentioned referent (fox) was referred to using a pronoun and the other with bare noun (example 25).

Regarding individual children’s profiles, some differences in the length of reference chains and strategies used for reference maintenance can be observed. One child (CHI5) referred to all the characters only once during his story, that is, he introduced characters but did not maintain references. His story was short and without coherence. Two children differed from others with a higher preference for zero reference, both using verb forms without subjects two to three times in their stories. Children preferred to use nouns without modifiers or personal pronouns to re-introduce and maintain the reference. Other devices such as NPs with determiners or adjectives as modifiers were also used but with much less frequency. Some children differed from others in their usage of the personal pronoun ta “she/he” to maintain the reference: one child (CHI16) used only the personal pronoun ta in subsequent mentions of a referent in her story, while another child CHI3 had only one personal pronoun among 27 referring units in his story.