Simultaneity in children's narratives: the case of when, while and as

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Co-temporal connectives (when, while, as) are crucial for narrative sequencing.
• Understanding children's acquisition of these connectives provides insight into language development.
• Previous research suggests a developmental continuum for simultaneity connectives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the developmental use of co-temporal connectives (when, while, as) in children's elicited narratives.
• To compare children's connective usage with adult data.
• To explore the relationship between connective usage, predicate aspect, and information flow in narrative construction.

Main Methods:

• Elicited narrative production task using story pictures with 71 children (4;10–11;11) and 26 adults.
• Analysis of connective placement (preposed vs. postposed) and predicate types (durative vs. punctual).
• Comparison of connective and aspectual usage between children and adults.

Main Results:

• Adults preferred preposed 'when' clauses; older children increasingly adopted this pattern.
• Children used durative predicates with 'when' more frequently than adults and avoided 'as'.
• Adults showed differential aspect distribution across 'when', 'while', and 'as'.

Conclusions:

• Children's acquisition of co-temporal connectives follows a developmental sequence: 'when' before 'while', and 'while' before 'as'.
• This acquisition is influenced by increasing syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic awareness.
• Children's narrative strategies differ from adults, particularly in predicate choice with 'when'.