Linguistics Colloquium: Judy Kupersmitt

Judy Kupersmitt, Hadassah College Jerusalem

Title: The development of simultaneity relations in picture-based narratives

Abstract:

Presenting simultaneous events in narratives requires both the cognitive ability to present multiple perspectives and conceptualize events as simultaneous as well as the linguistic ability to shift tense-aspect and use explicit time words and connectors. Studies about the expression of simultaneity in monolinguals’ narratives show a gradual development from preschool through school-age to adulthood in form and function, going from a mono- to a bi-referential system of temporal reference (Aksu-Koç & von Stutterheim, 1994; Kupersmitt & Nicoladis, 2021; Winskel, 2007). In the present study, we examine whether bilingual children differ from monolingual children in presenting simultaneous events in narratives.

            The study compares the expression of simultaneity in narratives produced by 100 English monolinguals, and 75 French-English bilinguals in three age-groups: 4-6, 8-10, and adults. Participants told a story of what happened in a Pink-Panther film rich in simultaneous events at various sites through the episodic structure. Focus was on quantitative and qualitative aspects of simultaneity, from the perspective of forms and functions. Quantitative results showed very little simultaneity at preschool and almost similar expression at school-age and adulthood. Young children in both groups expressed local simultaneity between situations in adjacent clauses, more frequently between unbounded situations that are implicitly simultaneous. Besides, they tended to express more simultaneity in scenes that were perceived in a single screen shot. From age 8, children became more able to express simultaneity across larger stretches of the text, covering a wider scope on situations on parallel timelines. Language forms to express simultaneity showed a long developmental route - via verb semantic and tense-aspect alternations as the widest, basic usage to specific lexical forms like conjunctions (e.g., while), adverbs (e.g., meanwhile) and more sophisticated syntactic configurations. The form-function analyses in monolingual and bilingual narratives enabled an exploration of the cognitive and language abilities in the production of simultaneous relations under the constraints of narrative discourse organization and different linguistic abilities. Qualitative analyses and preliminary results on the bilingual narratives suggest that cognitive developmental factors, such as the ability to present events from various perspectives, are more important than linguistic factors in the expression of simultaneity. Comparing monolinguals with bilinguals will shed further light on the interaction between these factors.

Aksu-Koç, A. & von Stutterheim, C. (1994). Temporal relations in narrative: simultaneity. In Ruth A. Berman & Dan I. Slobin (eds.), Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study, 393-455. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kupersmitt, J. R. & Nicoladis, E. (2021). A developmental study of expressing simultaneous events in film-based narratives. First Language, 41(6), 708-736.

Winskel, H. (2007). The expression of temporal relations in Thai children’s narratives. First Language, 27(2),133-158.

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