Development of subordination structures in writing: longitudinal study with primary school children

Abstract

The present study investigates the longitudinal development of syntactic complexity in writing at early stages of development. It is based on the hypothesis that the use of subordination structures contributes to the characterization of syntactic complexity in writing, particularly in narratives produced in the first years of schooling. Specifically, we seek to answer the following research questions: (i) What are the most frequent subordination structures in narratives produced at four different moments in the first years of schooling?; (ii) Is there an increase in the number and diversity of the subordination structures used?; (iii) Is it possible to identify different development profiles regarding the production of subordination structures in writing? To answer these questions, we gathered and analyzed a set of written narratives of primary school children to observe how different subordination structures are used over time. The corpus includes 172 texts, produced by 43 children, speakers of European Portuguese, at different times during their school career (beginning and end of 2nd grade, and beginning and end of 3rd grade). The categories considered in the analysis were the type of subordinate clause (adverbial; relative; complement) and the subtype of subordinate clause (e.g., adverbials - temporal, conditional, final, causal; relatives - subject, object, free). Overall, the results allow us to describe children's writing in terms of the type, number and diversity of subordination structures used over time. In addition, by analyzing the children's individual productions, it was possible to identify different development profiles. In general, the study presents evidence to conclude that subordination is a relevant indicator for describing initial written productions.