How many mental state words can be elicited from the "Frog story"? : An analysis of narratives written in Japanese

概要

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The present study examined written narratives in Japanese elicited from the `Frog Story' with a particular focus on mental state references. Unlike most research that analysed evaluative comments on clauses, the present study is new in the following aspects: 1) analyses were made after narratives were broken into morphemes, which are the smallest meaningful unit of a word and 2) the variety and frequency of word use were identified and evaluated to describe the characteristics of Japanese narratives. The results indicated that Japanese students used a wider variety of mental state words than non-mental state words. However, the frequency of mental word use was significantly less than that of non-mental state words. The results suggest that both indices may be useful for describing and evaluating narratives when studying narrative from developmental and cross-linguistic perspectives.
2010-01-31