Comprehension of Some Connectives in Spoken Arabic by Children

By

Mutasim Mohammad AL-Deaibes

Abstract

This study sheds light on some Arabic connectives as acquired by Jordanian

Children. The connectives that were investigated are qabl (before), ba9d (after), wa
(and), 9ašan (because) and bas (but). A series of tasks were used to test the children’s
comprehension of these connectives. The sample of the study consisted of thirty
Jordanian children who belonged to five age groups. The first age group involved
children aged about three years old, whereas the last age group involved children aged
.about seven years old

The study aims at specifying the age at which Jordanian children start acquiring a
certain connective. One variable was tackled throughout the study, that is, age. The
findings of the study revealed that age plays a very crucial role in the development of
connectives. Furthermore, it was found that the additive connective “wa” was the
simplest to be acquired. Yet, “ba9d 2” was the most difficult to be mastered by children.
For future research, it is recommended to study the production of connectives rather
.than the comprehension

INTRODUCTION 1.1

Language has various mechanisms to show relationships among and between ideas.

At the level of discourse, for example, a speaker communicates the relative importance

of individual ideas by expressing them in a particular sequence. One of these

mechanisms is ‘cohesion’. Cohesion refers to “[t]he grammatical and/or lexical

relationships between the different elements of a text. This may be the relationship

between different sentences or between parts of a sentence” (Richards, 1992: 62). One
1
of the devices that make such lexical or grammatical relationships between sentences is

.connectives

Warner (1985: 57) asserts that connectives are, like other grammatical objects,

formal devices that allow speakers to accomplish certain tasks posed by the

.requirements of communication

AFTER, BEFORE, AND, BUT and BECAUSE are very common examples of

connectives that link sentences together in order to make them clearer and more relative.

According to Warner (ibid), these connectives signal to the hearer the connections

between the sentences of a discourse and make sentences sound like they hang together.

Furthermore, they have the function of linking pairs of sentences within discourse.

Consequently, the absence of connectives makes full sentences fragments and can

.distort the cohesion of a discourse

Connectives are of several types, each of which is different from the other and at the

same time carries a different function and meaning. In this regard, Halliday and Hasan

(1976:238) in their chapter on connectives which they include under the term

:conjunction, note that

Various suggestions could be taken up for classifying the

phenomenon which we are grouping together under the heading of

conjunction. There is no single, uniquely correct inventory of the

types of conjunctive relation; different classifications are possible,

.each of which would highlight different aspects of facts

2
Apparently, Halliday and Hasan identify conjunctions as one type of cohesive

relations that occur in discourse. They classify connectives into four categories:

temporal, additive, causal and adversative. Each category branches into some

.subcategories that also has different functions and meanings

Temporal Connectives1.1.1

Temporal connectives refer to the representations that include information about the

basic structure and sequence of events. According to Piaget (1969), “achievement of the

concept of time involves ability to represent durations, order of successions, and

simultaneity”. As for the order of successions or events, they are of great importance

because they specify the exact time of the event, i.e., which event comes first and which

one follows. The most commonly used connectives in specifying the sequence of events

are “before” and “after”. They, as subordinating temporal conjunctions, relate two

events in time. One event is utilized as a reference point in indicating a temporal

relationship between two events. For example, “before” indicates prior events and

“after” indicates succeeding events. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that the

connectives “before” and “after” are found either sentence-initially or sentence-

.medially, e.g

.Before the boy pushed the car, the girl fell down-1

.The girl fell down before the boy pushed the car-2

From the first sentence, we can notice that the connective “before” occurs sentence-

initially and the clause that immediately follows it is considered to be a subordinate

clause, whereas the following clause is called the main clause. On the other hand, the

3
connective “before” in the second sentence appears in the middle of the sentence

.connecting two clauses

Additive Connectives 1.1.2

Halliday and Hasan (1976:234) describe the additive relation as “ a generalized

semantic relation in the text-forming component of the semantic system, that is based

on the logical notion of ‘and’ ”. As a matter of fact, the notion of “and” is one of the

principal recursive devices of all languages. In addition, it is known to develop quite

.early in the first language acquisition process

And” as an additive connective plays a significant role in coordinating two“

sentences or phrases together, which, in turn, makes the discourse of a speaker more

cohesive. Consequently, the connective “and” can be either sentential where it

coordinates sentences, or phrasal where it coordinates phrases, such as nouns, verbs,

adjectives, etc. The following two examples illustrate the difference between sentential

:coordination and phrasal coordination

.The kittens hide and the dogs hide-1

.The kittens and dogs hide-2

In the first example,”and” as a device of coordination links two full sentences

whereas in the second example, it links two phrases within a full sentence and these two

phrases are embedded in the subject. In support of this, Halliday and Hasan (1976:234)

: assert that

4
 t]he coordination relation which is represented by the word and]

may obtain between pairs (or among sets) of items functioning

more or less anywhere in the structure of the language. They may

be nouns, or nominal groups; verbs, or verbal groups; adverbs, or

.adverbial or prepositional groups; or may be clauses

Causal Connectives 1.1.3

Causal connectives are those connectives that link two items in a cause-and-result

relation. While item A, for example, is the cause of item B, item B is found to be a

result of item A, and the converse is true. This relationship is always expressed by the

use of “because” or any equivalent causal connective that carries out this relationship.

Warner (1985: 28) confirms this by saying that “ the presence of discourse connective

realizing causation entails that the state of affairs described by one of the sentences is

the cause of the state of affairs described by the other.” Accordingly, the notion of

“because” is always taken as a connective that links a cause-clause on the one hand and

:a result-clause on the other. The following example illustrates this relationship

.John had two meals because he was very hungry–

In this sentence, the first clause reflects the result-relationship while the second clause

.reflects the cause-relationship

Adversative Connectives 1.1.4

5
The notion of adversative connectives lies in the relation between two events, which

is a relation of contrast, i.e., the relation between clauses is one of opposition, in which

one clause negates or opposes the other. The most commonly used adversative

:connective is BUT. In this respect, Halliday and Hasan (1976:250) add that

The basic meaning of the adversative relation is ‘contrary to

expectation’. The expectation may be derived from the content of

what is being said, or from the communication process, the

speaker-hearer situation, so that here too, as in the additive, we find

.cohesion on both external and internal phrases

Basically, one has to distinguish two types of adversative connectives, that is,

contrastive and substitutive. Kail and Weissenborn (1984) describe and differentiate

these two types on the basis of two parameters: the nature of the denied element and the

:focus of denial. The following two sentences may clarify the difference

(The car is old but it runs well. (Contrastive-1

(The car is not red but blue. (Substitutive-2

In the first example, the second clause (it runs well) is contrary to expectation, since

it is known that old cars do not run well. Unexpectedly, in this clause, old cars run well,

which is contrary to the expectation. By contrast, in the second example which shows a

substitutive relationship carried out by but, the element ‘red’, explicitly denied by not, is

.’substituted by ‘blue

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 1.2

6
Based on the previous studies that have dealt with connectives, the researcher

started to realize the importance of connectives, that were used by children. However,

the literature on comprehension of connectives is diverse with regard to the age at

.which children start comprehending and using connectives

Besides, there were diverse conclusions about children’s ability to comprehend

and use connectives. In addition, there were diverse conclusions about the age at which

children can understand and use certain types or even sub-types of connectives.

Accordingly, there is a felt need to investigate the beginning of children’s

comprehension of connectives. Furthermore, we need to investigate the age at which

.children can use a certain type or sub-type of connectives

Consequently, the researcher investigates the effect of age on children’s

development of connectives. Jordanian children are expected to have had some practice

of how to use certain connectives during their interaction with their parents or their

peers. This calls for a detailed study of the growth of linguistic devices and the function

these connectives serve when children of different ages begin to use them in their

.interaction

QUESTIONS OF THE STUDY 1.3

:In this study the following two questions were answered

? Does age significantly affect the development of connectives (1

7
Are all the types or sub-types of connectives equivalent in terms of order of (2

? acquisition

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY 1.4

: This study aims at

.Detecting the differences between age groups’ comprehension of some connectives (1

It also aims at investigating the stages that Jordanian children pass through when (2

.they move from their early comprehension of connectives to adult-like comprehension

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that influence the acquisition of (3

.connectives and the order in which these connectives are acquired

This study also aims at detecting the sub-types of connectives and the order in which (4

.these sub-types of connectives are acquired

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.5

Actually, what gives this study its significance is the fact that (to the researcher’s

knowledge) no study has been conducted on the acquisition of connectives by children

in Jordan. Accordingly, this study may lead to a better understanding of what goes on

Jordanian children’s early comprehension of connectives. Furthermore, it is hoped that

this study will bridge the gap in the literature on child language in general and in

.spoken Arabic in particular

8
The findings of this study may give support for or against some universal claims

and constraints on the use or understanding of connectives. Moreover, the findings of

this study will provide implications for teachers and experts who deal with children or

who are interested in child language development. Finally, this study addresses one

.variable that was not addressed in studying the acquisition of connectives, that is, age

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY 1.6

The findings of this study may not be generalized to all Jordanian children. That is,

aphasics, mentally retarded children, and children, who are living, or once lived, abroad

and whose exposure to another language may have affected their acquisition of

.Jordanian Arabic, are excluded

CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE 2.1

The present study is mainly concerned with the acquisition of connectives in Spoken

Arabic. Studies on the acquisition of connectives have flourished in recent years.

Unfortunately, most of these studies have focused on one type of connectives, that is,

temporal and gave little attention to the other types. To the best of the researcher’s

9
knowledge, no study has dealt with Arabic connectives from a first language acquisition

perspective or as a developmental study. In contrast, there are a lot of studies

.concerning the development of connectives in other languages

Winskel (2003) conducted another study on forty children aged between 3.6 and 7.6

from each of three languages, English, Thai and Lisu. The subjects were asked to repeat

sentences containing relations signaled by then, before, after, when, while, since, and

until. Performance on the elicited imitation task revealed that then has a relatively early

acquisition and until has a late acquisition. Besides, language specific effects were also

found, namely a relatively early acquisition of until in Lisu, and a relatively early

acquisition of before and late acquisition of after in Thai. The results showed that

sequentiality (before, after and then) occurs prior to simultaneity (while), and for a

.(relatively late acquisition of sequence and duration (since and until

Winskel (2004) conducted a study to investigate the acquisition of temporal events

referencing, encoded by the temporal connectives: then, after, when, while, together,

until and since in English, Thai and Lisu. In this study, two acting-out comprehension

tasks were used: a Marble task and a Toy task. Forty children aged 3.6 to 7.6 years from

each language participated. The results showed that then, before and together were

relatively early in acquisition whereas after and since were relatively late in acquisition.

The results also confirmed that characteristics of task and test sentences affect

.children’s comprehension of sentences expressing temporal relations

10
Seller (1999) conducted a study to investigate in particular the implications that a

Reichenbachian theory of time may have on understanding children’s acquisition of

before, after and when, as first suggested by Stevenson and Politt (1987). Two aspects

of the data were focused on for analysis in this study: the frequency of the connectives

throughout the selected files and the proposing of temporal when-clauses. The overall

frequency results clearly indicate that after is more frequent than before in the speech of

all subjects, and that when is overwhelmingly the most frequent connective across

subjects. As argued by Stevenson and Politt (1987), the acquisition of before and after

.seems to be governed by the final event representation of the sentences

French (1988) carried out a study on 30 children aged 5 to 8 years to assess their

comprehension of because and so on both enactment and sentence completion tasks.

The pattern of results provided evidence against a componential model for the

acquisition of causal connectives. This model holds that the two meaning components

(cause, order) are acquired separately, with the order component being acquired several

years later than the causal component. The results were also in accord with predictions

derived from a contextual model of children’s developing understanding of terms

expressing logical relationships. This model posits that the understanding of relational

.term is initially context-dependent

Donaldson (1987) investigated children’s comprehension of causal connectives

“because” and “so” in empirical and intentional modes where “because” introduces a

description of a cause, whereas “so” is used to introduce a description of an effect. The

subjects who participated in this study were 24 children aged between five and eight.

The findings indicated that by the age of five years children have a good grasp of how

11
“because” is used in the empirical and intentional modes, and also how “so” is used in

.the intentional modes

In his study of adversative connectives, Kail (1984) investigated the development of

adversative connectives in French and German. Thirty six children aged 7.8 to 9.11

were tested in a Completion and Judgment task. The results of the study revealed that

the substitutive but is easier and earlier acquired than the contrastive but. The findings

also showed that the children show an increasing ability to produce correct completions

by using the contextual information. It was also found that by age 9, the task is

.completely mastered

Trosborg (1982) conducted a study on sixty children whose ages were between 3.0

and 7.5. The study was mainly concerned with children’s comprehension of before and

after and the difficulty in comprehending these two conjunctions. The results revealed

that the after-sentences were more difficult than before-sentences. Furthermore, he

came up with the result that before2 and after2 were more difficult than before1 and

.after1

In their research on the development of coordination, Lust and Mervis (1980)

studied the natural speech of 32 young children from 2.0 to 3.1 for evidence of use of

coordination by and. Analyses of the structure of coordinative expressions reflected

development in structural variants as well as amount of coordination. The results

confirmed that the use of coordination increased gradually from 1% at level one to 17%

at level four. Besides, it was found that sentential coordination constituted a slightly but

consistently high proportion of coordination usage over development, except at level

one and level four where proportions of sentential and phrasal coordination were nearly

12
equivalent. In addition, the precedence of sentential coordination over phrasal

.coordination was most marked at level three

Feagans (1980) examined the comprehension of thirty four children of all concepts

of order, duration and simultaneity as reflected in certain linguistic structures. The

children in this study were 3.5 and 7 years old. Temporal order was examined through

children’s comprehension of two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions before,

after, since and until. Temporal duration was examined through children’s

understanding of one-clause sentences containing the progressive aspect and two-clause

sentences containing the conjunction since and until. The results revealed that the order

sentence structures before and after were generally comprehended by the children

before the duration or simultaneous sentences, although at the age of seven children

were still not performing above chance on the order relation in since and after and until

sentences. The duration sentence structures were comprehended by the children before

.the simultaneous sentence structures

A study, which tackled the four types of connectives, was that of Bloom et al

(1980). In this study they investigated the four types of connectives: additive, temporal,

causal and adversative. The major results of the study included the developmental

intersections between syntactic connectives and meaning relations. The first syntactic

connective the children learned was the additive (and). The subjects of the study were

four first-born children aged 1.7 to 3 years old. The results revealed that the connective

forms used most frequently by the four children were and, because, and when. . The less

frequently used connective forms were but. In addition, the additive and was the first

.connective to emerge, and the remaining connectives emerged subsequently

13
Johnson (1972) (cited in Keller-Cohen,1975) administered sentence effect using

two tests, the comprehension test with declarative sentences and the comprehension test

with command sentences. She sampled 18 children from 4.2 to 5.2. She found that C1

before C2 elicited fewer errors than after C1 C2. She also observed that in the two-

clause imperative sentences, the first clause is the only one that is directly commanded

as in (Move X after you move Y.). Hence, the child may attend only to the directly

commanded clause. She concluded that the findings reflect an understanding of

temporal order while omissions do not, hence the comprehension test is a better

.measure of the child’s knowledge of time

Clark (1971) (cited in Keller-Cohen,1975) conducted a study in which she studied

simultaneity and sequentiality and made inferences about simultaneity. She examined

forty children from3 to 5 years for their comprehension of sentences with before and

after. Clark found no differences between C1 before C2 and After C1 C2. However,

.before C1 C2 was easier than C2 After C1

As can be seen from these studies, the conclusions are diverse. Also, all of these

studies have been conducted on different languages, not including Arabic. The present

study will include all the types of connectives. Further, It will investigate the influence

.of age on the comprehension of these connectives

CHAPTER THREE

METHOD .3

It is a requirement of conducting any developmental study to have data that are

comparable over large spans of cognitive development. In this study, the researcher has

conducted a series of comprehension tests to investigate Jordanian children’s

comprehension of some Arabic connectives. This chapter talks about the methods

14
 adopted in gathering the data and the purposeful sample as well as the tasks used in

.testing the children’s comprehension of connectives

POPULATION AND SAMPLING 3.1

The population to which the findings of this study may be generalized are normal

Jordanian children who were born and raised in Irbid-Jordan. By these specifications,

aphasics, the blind, the mentally retarded, and children living abroad whose exposure to

another language may influence their acquisition of Jordanian Arabic, are thus

.excluded

The subjects on whom the study was conducted were thirty Jordanian children

(15 boys and 15 girls) from the Province of Irbid. The sample of the study was

purposeful. All the children came from middle class families, and their primary care-

takers were their mothers. The children were divided into five age groups as shown in

:the table below

Table (1) Distribution of the Subjects According to their Age and Gender

Mean Age Subjects Age-Group

Girls Boys
3.4 3 3 1
4.3 3 3 2
5.1 3 3 3
6.1 3 3 4
7.4 3 3 5

DATA COLLECTION 3.2

:Procedures

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 The data for this study are based on a series of comprehension tasks. Children

were visited and individually experimented upon at their homes, kindergarten or school.

Each child received between two and four visits until the experiments were completed.

Each visit included a one-hour session. The number of visits and sessions depended

mainly on the child's cooperation and socialization with the researcher. With some

young children, almost nothing was accomplished in the first visit. But, such visits

served as preliminary acquaintance sessions between the researcher and the children.

Although some children said almost nothing in the first visits, others were more

communicative. It was important that one member of the child's family (especially with

3-5-year children) was present during the experiments, to work as a co-experimenter.

Thus, when a child refused to communicate with the researcher, the instructions of the

tasks were conveyed to him through this co-experimenter. Furthermore, it provided the

child, specially the young, with relief and confidence to know that his brother or father,

for example, was sitting next to him. It is worth mentioning that the language used in

.the instructions was Jordanian Spoken Arabic

Whenever the researcher felt that the child was feeling tired or bored, the

experiment was stopped, and when possible, a second session was initiated after a

recess. The child was always allowed to play with the toys even in the middle of the

experiment. Children who were most active and troublesome were three and four-year

olds. Naturally, the older the child, the more cooperative and communicative he was.

Direct commands were avoided as much as possible, and the child was rewarded a piece

of candy whether his responses were right or wrong. The purpose was to keep boredom

.and frustration at minimum

16
Pilot Study 3.3

A pilot study was conducted on 12 children to establish the validity and

reliability of the method. In the light of the findings of this study, the following

:adjustments were made on the experiments of the main study

Connectives were exclusive to comprehension experiments because the children-1

.did not lend themselves easily to production tasks

The sex variable was excluded because there were no differences between males-2

.and females answers

:The study included the following experiments

Toy-task for temporal connectives-1

The purpose of this experiment was to test children’s comprehension of qabl1, qabl2,

ba9d1 and ba9d2. The experiment which is similar to that used by Trosborg (1982),

consists of one task. In this task, seven toys were placed in front of the child who was

instructed to take one toy before or after another in each instruction. The child was told

to listen carefully to the instructions to hear which toy he/she should take first. Four sets

of instructions were used. Each set included four constructions in which the two

connectives were used once in the middle (qabl1 and ba9d1) and once at the beginning of

the construction( qabl2 and ba9d2). The total number of instructions was sixteen. The

:following are examples on the four sets of instructions

(Take the bear before you take the ball. (qabl1 -1

( Take the ball after you take the duck. ( ba9d1 -2

( Before you take the truck, take the bear. ( qabl2 -3

17
 ( After you take the dog, take the turtle. (ba9d2 -4

If a child acted-out the instruction given to him/her on one construction, he was

.given one score. If he did not act-out properly or got stuck, he got no score

Toy-task for additive connectives-2

The purpose of this task was to test children’s comprehension and conception of

the additive connective wa. In this task, the subjects were instructed to act-out with the

toys. The experimenter ordered the subjects to do a certain thing with the toys to check

their understanding of the phrasal or sentential coordination implied in the connective

:wa. Here are two examples of the instructions on each type

(Put the dog and the ball with each other. ( phrasal-1

(Let the bear beat the dog and let the dog escape. ( sentential -2

If a child acted-out the instruction given to him on one construction, he was given one

score. If he did not act-out properly or got stuck, he got no score. The number of the

.instructions on each type was six

Why-question task for the causal connective 9ašan -3

In this task, the subjects were asked a set of why-questions in order to test their

understanding of the causal connective 9ašan. If a child responded properly using

9ašan, he was given one score. If he did not answer properly or got stuck, he was given

no score. The number of the questions was six. Here are two examples of the why-

:questions

?Why do you eat food-1

18
 ?Why do you wear a jacket in winter -2

Sentence-completion task for adversative connectives-4

In this task, subjects were expected to respond to sentence-completion task.

Each child was given a sentence where the adversative connective bas was used. In turn,

the child should complete it in order to make the contrastive relationship. Each subject

was given twelve sentences where the first six sentences are reversed by other six

:sentences. The following are two examples of the task and reversibility

.………A lemon tastes sour, but an apple tastes-1

. .…… An apple tastes sweet, but a lemon tastes -2

DATA ANALYSIS 3.4

The following statistical techniques were applied to analyze the data of the

:comprehension task

Basic statistical description through means and standard deviations of the types of(1

connectives were applied to find if there is any difference between the five age

.groups

An ANOVA-test was used to measure the significant difference between the five(2

.age groups' comprehension of the types connectives

A Tukey-test of multiple comparisons was used to measure the significance of the (3

difference between each age group and the others in comprehending the types of

.connectives

CHAPTER FOUR

19
 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .4

Introduction 4.1

This chapter presents and discusses children’s comprehension of the following main

:categories of connectives and their sub-categories

.Temporal: qabl1, qabl2, ba9d1, ba9d2-1

.Additive: wa -2

.Causal: 9ašan -3

.Adversative: bas -4

Temporal Connectives 4.1.1

Table (2) shows the means and standard deviations of the correct usages of each

temporal connective in different positions of the sentences. The subjects were instructed

to act-out four sentences on each type. Therefore, the mean value 4.00 for a certain type

of temporal connectives means that all the subjects of the age group have comprehended

the four sentences of the relevant temporal connective. By contrast, the mean value .00

for a certain type of temporal connectives means that all the subjects did not

.comprehend the four sentences of the temporal connective in question

Table (2) Means and Standard Deviations of Children’s Comprehension of the

.Types of Temporal Connectives

Type AGE
of 1 2 3 4 5 Total

20
 M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D
Conn
qabl 1 3.83 408. 4.00 000. 4.00 000. 4.00 000. 4.00 000. 3.97 183.
ective
qabl 2 3.17 983. 3.17 1.169 3.83 408. 3.83 408. 3.97 516. 3.59 776.
ba9d 1 83. 408. 1.17 408. 1.67 816. 1.83 753. 3.50 584. 1.80 1.095
ba9d 2 00. 000. 1.00 1.095 1.67 1.211 1.83 1.329 3.33 1.455 1.57 1.455

According to Table (2), it is obvious that the majority of the subjects in all age

groups have comprehended the temporal connective qabl1 regardless of their gender.

Apparently, the subjects acted excellently on this type of sentences containing qabl1,

and they reached the full-mastery stage by the age of four. Even the errors committed

by three-year old children were very few, and the majority of the subjects in this age

group produced correct responses. Consequently, the mean value of the first age group,

that is, three-year old children, was 3.83 which is very near to the full-mastery stage in

comparison with the older age groups 2,3,4 and 5. These age groups scored the mean

value 4.00, which is considered to be a full-mastery stage, and the development stops at

this age group. It is worth mentioning that, according to Table (2), the total mean value

for all age groups was 3.97 and the standard deviation was .183 which is regarded as a

very high value and, therefore, confirms the assumption that the use of temporal

connective qabl1 is acquired very early and easily. This is due to the canonical order

( first mentioned, first acted upon) that was preserved through the instructions given to

.the subjects

It should be emphasized that errors committed by children when using qabl1 should

never in any case be attributed to difficulties that may be inherent in this connective

itself. This connective is a true indicator of time and order of events; and its

comprehension might be influenced by several factors. The pilot tests, carried out by the

researcher, showed for example, that context was extremely important for

comprehension of this type of connectives when it was used in logical sentences.

21
Children relied on their knowledge of the world when they acted upon such sentences

.in which, one event was dependent on the other

As for the second type of temporal connectives, that is, qabl2, Table (2) shows that

the performance on this sub-type was a little bit different from the previous one, i.e.,

qabl1. The mean values of the first two age groups were 3.17 for both. On the other

hand, the third and fourth age groups scored the mean value 3.83. The last age group

scored the mean value 3.97. To put it differently, these mean values of these age groups

indicate that the development of this sub-type, qabl2, was not gradual from one age

group into another, rather, the development was achieved through every two age groups.

Thus, the first two age groups achieved a similar mean value and this also applies to age

groups 3 and 4. Hence, we can come up with the fact that qabl2 develops every two

.years not every year until it reaches the full-mastery stage

In fact, what makes this type of connectives more difficult than the previous one,

that is, qabl1, is the syntactic complexity of the sentence. Sentences in which the

temporal connectives was used in the beginning are considered syntactically complex.

This is because the structure of such sentences involves a departure from the ordinary

structure in which the connectives is placed in the middle of the sentence, and in which

a pause is not needed. Further, the syntactic complexity of such sentences have an

influence on the comprehension of this type of connectives. This is because the children

began to act upon each sentence as soon as they heard the first part, picking the toy that

was first mentioned, and found it difficult to reverse their choices after the heard the

.second part

22
With regard to ba9d1 sentences, Table. (2) shows that this sub-type scored a very

low mean value, especially in the first age group which scored the mean value .83

which means that very few subjects have comprehended this type of temporal

connectives at the age of three. Even the following mean values of the other older

groups have not scored high. If we look at the mean value of the last age group, one can

.notice that there was a somehow big jump from 1.83 to 3.50

This leads us to say that the development was slow but gradual throughout the first

four age groups until it reaches the age of seven where the development becomes faster.

However, the total mean value, which is 1.80, indicates that children, especially

preschoolers and those who enroll in the first grade, do not easily acquire ba9d1. So this

type of temporal connectives takes the children a relatively long time to master and

.fully comprehend

Based on the mean value of ba9d2 in the first age group which is .00, one can tell

that by the age of three there is no development at all because the subjects did not act-

out any sentence that instructed them to do so. In other words, they did not comprehend

.the instructions and they acted-out the sentences improperly

However, in the following three age groups 2,3, and 4, there was a slight

development regarding the use of ba9d2. This development, though very little, was

gradual and by the age of seven, the subjects prepared themselves to master this type.

This means that this type is not easily acquired; instead, it needs a long period to reach

.the full-mastery stage, maybe at the age of 8 or 9

According to the findings drawn from the statistics, it seems that age plays a very

significant role in comprehending certain temporal connectives. Moreover, the

23
there is statistically researcher has conducted ANOVA-test in order to make sure if

.significant difference regarding the scores of the subjects in the comprehension task

Table (3) ANOVA-Test to Show the Significant Difference in the Types of

Temporal Connectives

Type of Sum of Mean

Connectives Squares df Square F P
qabl 1 Between
133. 4 033. 1.000 426.
Groups
Within Groups 833. 25 033.
Total 967. 29
qabl 2 Between
20.800 4 502. 1.193 338.
Groups
Within Groups 14.667 25 587.
Total 17.467 29
ba9d 1 Between
25.467 4 6.367 17.054 (*)000.
Groups
Within Groups 9.333 25 373.
Total 34.800 29
ba9d 2 Between
35.867 4 8.967 8.791 (*)000.
Groups
Within Groups 25.500 25 1.020
Total 61.367 29

The value of significant difference is 0.05 or less. According to Table (3), the P-

values of the dependent variables are diverse; some of them are more than 0.05 and

some are less than this value. Let us start investigating them one by one to see which

difference is statistically significant and which is not. For qabl1, the statistics show that

its development throughout the age groups is statistically insignificant. Thus, we can

conclude that it is acquired early and easily because the P-value of difference is .426,

which is greater than 0.05. This also indicates that since P-value is the highest one

among the other sub-types, it is the easiest and earliest to acquire in comparison with

.other types

24
Similarly, The P-value of difference for qabl2 tells us that this difference among the

five age groups is statistically insignificant. The P-value of difference for qabl2 is .338

which is much more than 0.05. This is also an indication that the development of qabl2

is very early and easy. Since the children start acquiring qabl2 very early and easily, one

can say that the children tend to be adult-like very early concerning the comprehension

.of these two sub-types of temporal connectives

With regard to ba9d1, its P-value of difference among the age groups scored .000.

This P-value, since it is less than 0.05, is considered to be statistically significant. In

other words, this sub-type of temporal connectives is very difficult to be acquired by

children and is acquired at late stages as opposed to qabl1 and qabl2. It follows that this

.sub-type is very rare especially in the first four age groups

Similarly, as Table (3) shows, ba9d2 scored the P-value of difference .000 which is

considered to be statistically significant. Again, this sub-type is very rare and takes a

long time to be mastered. It follows that this sub-type is very difficult and is acquired

late by children. In comparison with ba9d1, ba9d2 is more difficult and late in

.acquisition than the former one due to its syntactic complexity

Having come up with the conclusion that age plays a significant role in the

development of temporal connectives in general and ba9d1 and ba9d2 in particular, the

researcher has adopted the Tukey-test of multiple comparisons. This kind of test was

adopted in order to investigate the difference between each age group and the following

age groups concerning ba9d1. Table (4) shows these differences between every two age

.groups

25
Table (4) Tukey Test of Multiple Comparisons to Show the Differences between

Age Groups for ba9d 1

Mean
Dependent Difference
Variable I) AGE) J) AGE) ((I-J .P
ba9d1 1 2 33.- 354.
3 83.- (*)026.
4 1.00- (*)009.
5 2.67- (*)000.
2
3 50.- 169.
4 67.- 070.
5 2.33- (*)000.
3
4 17.- 641.
5 1.83.- (*)000.
4
5 1.67- (*)000.

According to Table (4), there is no significant difference between age group one and

age group two because the P-value of difference is .356. Further, the difference between

age group one and age group three is statistically significant (P=.026). The same thing

applies to all the following age groups if compared with the first age group. Table (4)

also shows that the second age group has a difference that is considered to be

.statistically significant if compared only with the last age group, aged 8 years old

As for age group three, it has a P-value of difference that is considered to be

statistically significant if compared with the last age group. As for the difference

between age group three and the other age groups except age group five, there are some

.differences, but these differences are not significant

Table (5) Tukey Test of Multiple Comparisons to Show the Differences between

Age Groups for ba9d 2

Dependent I) AGE) J) AGE) Mean .P

26
 Difference
Variable ((I-J
ba9d2 1 2 1.00- 099.
3 1.67- (*)008.
4 1.83- (*)004.
5 3.33- (*)000.
2
3 67.- 264.
4 83.- 165.
5 2.33- (*)000.
3
4 17.- 777.
5 1.67.- (*)008.
4
5 1.50- (*)016.

As Table (5) shows, there is a difference between age group one and age group

two. However, this difference is not statistically significant. It scored a P-value of

difference that is more than 0.05. By contrast, the P-value of difference between age

group one and age group three is statistically significant due to the fact that P < 0.05.

Moreover, the same thing applies if we compare the P-value of difference of age group

one and those of age groups four and five. Again, as the Table shows, age group two

has some differences if compared with the age groups 1,3 and 4. However, these

differences are not statistically significant. Instead, if we compare the P-value of

difference of age group two with that of age group five, we can conclude that there is a

.difference and this difference is statistically significant

As for age group three, the difference between this age group and age group four

is significant because it is less than 0.05. However, the difference between this age

group and age group five is statistically significant. It has the P-value of difference .008.

Similarly, if we compare the P-value of difference of age group four with that of age

group five, we can conclude that, according to Table (5), the difference is statistically

significant because it scored less than 0.05. According to the previous discussion, we

can conclude that qabl1 and qabl2 in general are much easier and earlier to be acquired
27
by children than ba9d1 and ba9d2. Moreover, qabl1 and ba9d1 are easier than qabl2 and

.ba9d2

The results of this study are in agreement with that of Wiskel’s (2003). He states

that in his study children’s score for before is slightly higher than after. He also adds

that the age of children tested is an important factor in the acquisition of these temporal

terms. This conclusion is also confirmed by Trosborg (1982: 390). He says that “[o]n

the task the children found after2 significantly more difficult than before2, which is

contradictory to expectations deriving from the syntactic distribution of the two terms.”

However, the results of the present study are not in accord with those of Seller (1999:

207). He concludes his study saying that “[t]he overall frequency results clearly indicate

that after is more frequent than before in the speech of all subjects.” Similarly, my

results are also against those of Johnson (1972) who comes with the claim that c1

.before c2 elicit fewer errors than c1 after c2

Additive Connectives 4.1.2

Table (6) shows the means and standard deviation of each sub-type of the

additive connective wa. The subjects were instructed to act-out six sentences on each

type. Therefore, the mean value 6.00 for a certain type of additive connectives means

that all the subjects of the age group have comprehended the six sentences of the

relevant additive connective. In turn, the mean value .00 for a certain type of additive

connectives means that all the subjects did not comprehend the six sentences of the

.additive connective in question

28
 Table (6) Means and Standard Deviations of Children’s Comprehension of the

.Two Types of Additive Connectives

Type of AGE

Connec 1 2 3 4 5 Total
M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D
tives
Sentential 4.17 753. 4.50 548. 5.17 753. 5.17 753. 5.67 516. 4.93 828.
Phrasal 5.83 408. 5.83 408. 5.83 408. 6.00 000. 6.00 000. 5.90 305.

According to Table (6), it is obvious that this type of additive connectives is not

too complicated to be easily acquired by children. If we take the first age group, we can

notice that its mean value is 4.17 and a standard deviation .753. This means that the

children aged about three years old are able to deal with sentential coordination, though

.they did not reach the full-mastery stage

The same thing applies to age group two which scored a mean value 4.50 that is

a bit higher than the previous age group. As for age groups three and four, they scored a

mean value 5.17 and 5.17, respectively. This means that the development at these age

groups was not so much active. The last age group, that is 5, moved the development

forward to reach the mean value 5.67 and the standard deviation .516. Regarding to the

mean values of the sentential coordination, we can sum up that the development of this

type moves gradually from one age group to another until it reaches the full-mastery

stage. Although age group five was not considered a full-mastery stage for this type, it

.was very near to be so. In other words it was on the threshold of the full-mastery stage

With regard to the second type of additive connectives, namely phrasal

coordination, Table (6) shows that the mean values of the age groups are notably higher

29
than those for sentential coordination. When investigating the first age group, one can

tell that the mean value 5.83 and standard deviation .753 are considered high scores,

bearing in mind that this is the first age group. According to the Table, the age groups

two and three have scored the same mean value that was scored by age group one. This

means that the development stops at these age groups and indicates that this type of

additive connectives is acquired very early. Similarly, age groups four and five have

scored the same mean value, namely 6.00. This mean value, as mentioned previously, is

the full-mastery stage. Also it is worth mentioning that the total mean value of phrasal

coordination is 5.90. This tells us that phrasal coordination is easier and earlier to be

acquired than sentential coordination. Based on the findings drawn from the statistics,

we can come up with the claim that age plays a very crucial role in comprehending

additive connectives. Thus, the researcher has conducted ANOVA-test in order to make

sure whether the differences between the age groups are statistically significant or not

.regarding the scores of the subjects in the comprehension task

Table (7) ANOVA-Test to Show the Significant Difference in the Two Types of

Additive Connectives

Type of Sum of Mean

Connectives Squares df Square F .P
sentential Between
8.533 4 2.133 4.706 * 006.
Groups
Within Groups 11.333 25 453.
Total 19.867 29
Phrasal Between
200. 4 050. 500. 736.
Groups
Within Groups 2.500 25 100.
Total 2.700 29

The P-value of significant difference is 0.05 or less. According to Table (7), the

P-values of the two dependent variables are somehow diverse; one is more than 0.05

30
and the other is less than this value. As for sentential coordination, the statistics show

that its development throughout the age groups is statistically significant. According to

the above-table, the P-value of difference among the age groups scored .006. This P-

value, since it is less than 0.05, is considered to be statistically significant. This means

.that children pass through this type of additive connectives at late stages

By contrast, the statistics show that the development of phrasal coordination

throughout the age groups is statistically insignificant. Thus, we can conclude that this

type of additive connectives is acquired early and easily because the P-value of

difference is .736, which is more than 0.05. This also indicates that since the phrasal

coordination’s P-value of difference is higher than the sentential coordination’s, we can

infer that it is easier and earlier to be acquired by children. Having come up with the

claim that age plays a significant role in the development of additive connectives in

general and in sentential in particular, the researcher has adopted the Tukey-test of

multiple comparisons. This test was used in order to investigate the difference between

.each age group and the following age groups

Table (8) Tukey-Test of Multiple Comparisons to Show the Differences between

Age Groups

Mean
Dependent Difference
Variable I) AGE) J) AGE) ((I-J .P
Sentential 1 2 33.- 399.
3 1.00- (*)016.
4 1.00- (*)016.
5 1.50- (*)001.
2
3 67.- 099.
4 67.- 099.
5 1.17- (*)006.
3
4 00.- 1.000
5 50.- 210.

31
 4
5 50.- 210.

As Table (8) shows, there is a difference between age group one and age group

two. However, this difference is not statistically significant. The P-value is greater than

0.05. By contrast, the difference between age group one and age group three is

statistically significant due to the fact that P-value is less than 0.05. Moreover, the same

thing applies if we compare the P-value of age group one with those of age groups four

and five. Similarly, age group two has some differences if compared with age groups

.one, three and four. However, these differences are not statistically significant

Again, if we compare the P-value of difference of age group two with that of age

group five, we can conclude that there is a difference, and this difference is statistically

significant. As for age group three, the difference between this age group and age group

four is insignificant because P-value is less than 0.05. However, the difference between

this age group and age group five is statistically insignificant. Also if we compare the P-

value of difference of age group four with that of age group five, we can conclude that

.the difference is statistically insignificant because P-value is greater than 0.05

Based on the previous discussion of additive connectives, we can conclude that

phrasal coordination is easier and earlier in acquisition than sentential coordination.

This result is not in accord with that of Lust (1977: 280). Lust found that the children

acquire sentential coordination before phrasal coordination. He states “young children

(2-3 years old) acquire sentential coordination (i.e. coordination of sentences) before

they acquire phrasal coordination (i.e. coordination of phrases, such as nouns, verbs,

”.(.adjectives, etc

32
 Similarly, this result is also against that of Bloom et al. (1980), who found that

for 3 out of 4 children studied, sentential and phrasal coordination emerged at about the

same time, and that for all children sentential coordinations increased and became most

frequent. By contrast, de Villiers et al. (1977) did not find a developmental primacy of

sentential coordination at early ages but found phrasal coordination earlier. This result is

.in agreement with mine

Causal Connectives 4.1.3

Table (9) shows the means and standard deviations of the causal connective

9ašan. In this task, each subject was asked to answer six why-questions. Based on the

number of items in this task, the mean value 6.00 for the causal connective 9ašan means

.that all the subjects of the age group have comprehended the six items of each task

Table (9) Means and Standard Deviations of Children’s Comprehension of the

.(Causal Connective (9ašan

AGE
9aša )
1 2 3 4 5 Total
(n M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D

Why- 4.00 894. 4.67 816. 5.33 816. 5.83 408. 6.00 000. 5.16 973.

questi

ons

33
From Table (9), it is obvious that this type of connectives is not that much

difficult to be acquired by children if compared with other connectives, e.g. temporal. If

we take the first age group, we can notice that it scored the mean value 4.00 and the

standard deviation .894. This means that the children of this age group are able to

comprehend the causal connective 9ašan, though they did not reach the full-mastery

stage. Similarly, the second age group scored the mean value 4.67 and the standard

deviation .816 which is somehow more than the previous age group. As for age group

three, it scored the mean value 5.33 and the standard deviation .816. The next age group

scored the mean value 5.83 and the standard deviation .408. The last age group, which

is the age of full mastery, scored the mean value 6.00 and the standard deviation is .000.

According to these statistics, we can say that this type of connectives develops

gradually, more or less, every year and reaches the full-mastery stage at the age of

seven. Based on the above-statistics, we can conclude that this type of connectives is

easy to be acquired by children. Furthermore, it is obvious that age plays a very

mandatory role in comprehending and using the causal connective 9ašan. In order to

make certain whether the difference between the age groups is statistically significant or

.not, the researcher has conducted ANOVA-test

Table (10) ANOVA-Test to Show the Significant Difference of the Causal

.(Connective (9ašan

Type of Sum of Mean

Connectives Squares df Square F .P
9ašan Between
15.133 4 3.783 7.669 * 000.
Groups
Within Groups 12.333 25 493.
Total 27.467 29

34
It is worth mentioning that the P-value of significant difference is 0.05 or less.

As Table (10) shows, the value of significant difference of this type is less than 0.05.

The statistics show that the development of the causal connective 9ašan throughout the

age groups is statistically significant. Accordingly, this type of connectives is highly

affected by age and at the same time affirms that it develops gradually every year. Since

we have come up with the assumption that age plays a significant role in the

development of the causal connective 9ašan, the researcher has adopted the Tukey-test

of multiple comparisons. This test, as mentioned previously, was used in order to

.investigate the differences between each age group and the following age groups

Table (11) Tukey Test of Multiple Comparisons to Show the Differences between

Age Groups

Mean
Dependent Difference
Variable I) AGE) J) AGE) ((I-J .P
Sentential 1 2 67.- 113.
3 1.33- (*)003.
4 1.83- (*)000.
5 1.83- (*)000.
2
3 67.- 113.
4 1.17- (*)008.
5 1.17- (*)008.
3
4 50.- 229.
5 50.- 229.
4 .
5 00. 1.000

35
Table (11) shows differences between every two age groups. According to the

table, there is a difference between age group one and age group two. However, this

difference is not statistically significant. By contrast, P-value of difference between age

group one and age group three is statistically significant due to the fact that this P-value

is less than 0.05. The same thing applies to age groups four and five if compared with

.age group one

In addition, age group two has some differences if compared with age groups

one and three. However, these differences are not significant. In turn, if we compare the

P-value of difference of age group two with those of age groups four and five, we can

find that there is a difference, and this difference is statistically significant. As for age

group three, the difference between this age group and age group four is insignificant

because P-values are less than 0.05. Similarly, the difference between age group three

and age group five is statistically insignificant. Based on the previous discussion of the

causal connective 9ašan, we can conclude that the comprehension of this connective is

easy and early in acquisition than other types of connectives. This result is in line with

that of Donaldson (1987). His findings indicate that by the age of five years, children

.have a good grasp of how “because” is used in the empirical and intentional modes

Adversative Connectives4.1.4

Table (12) shows the means and standard deviations of the adversative

connective bas. Each subject was asked to complete twelve sentences using bas to show

the adversative relationship. Accordingly, the mean value 12.00 means that all the

.subjects have comprehended the twelve sentences and reached the full-mastery stage

36
 Table (12) Means and Standard Deviations of Children’s Comprehension of the

.(Adversative Connective (bas

Advers AGE
ative 1 2 3 4 5 Total
Connec M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D M .S.D

tive
8.67 516. 9.00 894. 10.3 816. 11.5 548. 11.8 408. 10.2 1.43
bas
3 0 3 7 7

As the above-table shows, this type of connectives starts somehow difficult at the age of

three and gets easier in the following ages. To make it clearer, let us take the first age

group. This age group scored the mean value 8.67 and the standard deviation .516. This

means that the children of this age group face some difficulty in comprehending the

adversative connective properly. The second age group scored the mean value 9.00 and

the standard deviation .894 which is somehow more than the previous age group. The

third age group scored the mean value 10.33 and the standard deviation .816. Similarly,

the fourth age group scored the mean value 11.83 which is very close to the full-mastery

stage. The last age group, which is considered the full-mastery stage of this type of

connectives, scored the mean value 12.00 and the standard deviation .000. This means

that the children at the age of, approximately, seven found it very easy to comprehend

or use the adversative connective bas. According to the statistics given in Table (12),

we can conclude that this type of connectives starts somehow difficult at early ages and

gets easier to be fully comprehended by children at later stages. In addition, it is quite

obvious that age affects the comprehension and usage of the adversative connective bas.

In order to make sure whether the difference between the age groups is statistically

.significant or not, the researcher has adopted the ANOVA-test

37
Table (13) ANOVA-Test to Show the Significant Difference of the Adversative

.(Connective (bas

Adversative Sum of Mean

connective Squares df Square F .P
bas Between
24.267 4 6.067 9.100 * 002.
Groups
Within Groups 6.667 10 667.
Total 30.933 14

As we mentioned earlier, the value of significant difference is 0.05 or less. Table (13)

shows that the P-value of significant difference is .000, which means that the statistics

indicates that the comprehension or development of bas throughout the age groups is

statistically significant. Thus, this type of connectives is highly affected by age. Based

on the above-claim that age plays a very crucial role in the development of the

adversative connective bas, the researcher has conducted the Tukey-test of multiple

comparisons. This test was used to examine the differences between each age group and

.the following age groups

Table (14) Tukey Test of Multiple Comparisons to Show the Differences between

Age Groups

Mean
Dependent Difference
Variable I) AGE) J) AGE) ((I-J .P
bas 1 2 67.- 145.
3 2.00- (*)001.
4 3.00- (*)000.
5 3.33- (*)000.
2
3 1.33- (*)010.
4 2.33- (*)000.
5 2.67- (*)000.
3
4 1.00- (*)039.

38
 5 1.33- (*)010.
4
5 33.- 448.

Table (14) shows the differences between every two age groups. According to

the table, there is a difference between age group one and age group two. However, this

difference is statistically insignificant because the P-value of difference is more than

0.05. In turn, the difference between age group one and age group three is statistically

significant since P-value is .001. The same story applies to age groups four and five.

Furthermore, age group two has some differences if compared with age groups three,

four and five. Similarly, if we compare the difference of age group three with those of

age groups four and five, we can notice that there is a statistically significant difference

between them. As for the difference between age group four and that of age group five,

it is obvious from the statistics that this difference that holds between these age groups

is statistically insignificant. Based on the previous discussion of the adversative

connective bas, we can conclude that the comprehension of bas reaches the full-mastery

stage at late stages. In addition, this comprehension, even if it appears at early stages,

.does not mean that is fully or properly understood

The findings of the present study are in line with those of Kail (1984) who found

that his subjects reached the full-mastery stage at the age of nine. By contrast, Bloom et

al (1980) found that the adversative connective but was very frequent in the responses

of the subjects. This is also against the results of the present study which indicates that

the adversative connectives bas was somehow rare in the early stages and increase with

.older ages

39
CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .5

CONCLUSIONS 5.1

In light of the findings discussed in the previous chapter, we can conclude that age

was statistically significant in all the tasks of the study. This is because the increase in age

.is usually accompanied by improvement in the linguistic abilities of the child

Furthermore, qabl1 , which appears at the beginning of a sentence is easier to be

acquired than qabl2 which appears in the middle of a sentence. On the other hand, ba9d1 and

ba9d2 are somehow more difficult. As for ba9d2, it was found to be the most difficult

temporal connective to be acquired by children. This connective takes children a relatively

long time to master as opposed to qabl1 . As for their order of acquisition, the results

indicated that qabl1 did not pose much difficulty for children, and would thus be the first to

be acquired. This may be due to the fact that sentences in which it was used preserved the

canonical order, and were syntactically simple. In second place comes qabl2 . This confirms

that qabl whether it appears at the beginning or in the middle is easier to be acquired than

the other temporal connective. The third connective to be acquired was ba9d1. Sentences in

which it was used were syntactically simple, but they violated the canonical order. Last in

40
acquisition was ba9d2 . This may be due to the fact that syntactic complexity is involved in

.its usage

As for the additive connective wa, it was found that phrasal coordination is easier

than sentential coordination. This may be due to the fact that the structure of a phrase ,e.g.,

a word, is easier than that of sentence. As for the order of acquisition, it is quite clear that

phrasal coordination comes first because it is syntactically simple. Then comes sentential

coordination. In addition, the causal connective 9ašan was somehow easy to be acquired.

Also, it was found that this type of connectives is acquired gradually. In other words, there

.is a development in almost every year that the child passes through

Furthermore, it was found that the adversative connective bas starts, more or less,

difficult and then gets easier till it reaches the full-mastery stage, namely, at the age of

seven. It is also worth mentioning that bas is gradually acquired. There is a development

every year as opposed to some other types of connectives which develop sometimes every

two years. Finally, according to the findings that are based on the statistics, we can

conclude that a child at the age of , nearly, seven becomes linguistically mature regarding

.the comprehension of connectives

RECOMMENDATIONS 5.2

Regardless of the comprehensiveness of this study, the door remains wide open for

future research on connectives in Jordanian as well as Standard Arabic. The following

:suggestions may be, therefore, proposed

The development of connectives can be studied by employing other(1

methodologies, suitable for child language. For example, a longitudinal study

41
can reveal in a more specific way the age at which children acquire each type or

sub-type of connectives, by making diaries of the children’s linguistic

.production. However, this method needs a very long time to be conducted

The development of aphasics and children with mental impairments, or who are(2

mentally retarded, can be studied to find out how different their comprehension

or production is from those of normal children. Such studies would be helpful

.for medical research and for therapists who work with such children

Discourse or text connectives can be best studied by employing text analysis.(3

Writings of children above the age of ten can be analyzed to reveal their ability

.to use some connectives

Temporal connectives in particular can be studied by employing other(4

techniques to test children’s ability to seriate more than two events. For this

purpose, series of pictures or related events can be used, and the child is asked to

put these pictures in the right order according to the occurrence of the events in

the pictures. So that, each set of pictures form a short and simple story in the

.end

Other studies can be conducted based on other variables such as the social(5

classes to which children belong and the impact that parents have on their

children. Also, other studies can be conducted including children from other

.nationalities

42
 REFERENCES

Bloom, Lois et al. (1980). Complex Sentences: Acquisition of Syntactic Connectives and the -

.Semantic Relations they Encode. Journal of Child Language, 7, 235-261

de Villiers, J. and Flusberg, H.(1977). Deciding among Theories of Development of -

.Coordination in Child Speech. London: PRCLD

Donaldson, Morag. (1987). Children’s Comprehension and Production of Causal Connectives. -

.Journal of Child Language, 13, 174-187

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44
 Appendix A

Temporal Connectives/ Toy-task

.Take the bear before you take the ball.1

.Take the truck after you take the hen.2

.Before you take the bear, take the truck.3

.After you take the turtle, take the ball.4

.Take the ball before you take the duck.5

.Take the turtle after you take the bear.6

.Before you take the hen, take the bear.7

.After you take the ball, take the truck.8

.Take the dog before you take the ball.9

.Take the duck after you take the ball.10

.Before you take the duck, take the bear.11

.After you take the dog, take the turtle.12

.Take the duck before you take the ball.13

.Take the bear after you take the ball.14

.Before you take the hen, take the duck .15

.After you take the dog, take the truck .16

45
Additive Connectives/ Toy-task

.Let the dog beat the bear and let the bear run away .1

.Let the hen and the bear run with each other.2

.Let the duck touch the hen and let the hen escape.3

.Put the truck and the turtle with each other.4

.Let the bear hit the ball and let the ball stop.5

.Put the dog and the ball with each other.6

.Let the bear beat the dog and let the dog escape.7

.Let the bear and the turtle walk with each other.8

.Let the duck beat the hen and let the hen run.9

.Put the hen and the bear with each other.10

.Let the bear run and let the turtle walk.11

.Let the turtle and the dog walk with each other.12

46
Causal Connectives/ Why-questions Task

?Why do you eat food.1

?Why do you wear a jacket in winter.2

?Why do you want to go to school? Or Why do you go to school.3

?Why do you watch cartoons.4

?Why do you drink milk.5

?Why do you love your parents.6

Adversative Connectives/ Sentence-completion Task

. .……… You are a boy, but ( name of a girl known to the child) is a.1

. ………… A lemon tastes sour, but an apple tastes.2

. ………… ,If you drink milk, you will be strong. But if you don not.3

. ………… Your father is a man, but your mother is a.4

. ……… Your father is big, but you are .5

. ………… ,If you obey your parents, you will be smart. But if you do not .6

……… name of a girl known to the child) is a girl, but you are a).7

. ..……… An apple tastes sweet, but a lemon tastes.8

. ………… ,If you do not drink milk, you will not be strong. But if you drink milk.9

………… Your mother is a woman, but you father is a.10

..…………… You are small, but your father is.11

,If you do not obey your parents, you will not be smart. But if you obey them.12

. ………………

47
48
 ‫بسم ال الرحمن الرحيم‬

‫" استيعاب الطفال لبعض أدوات الربط في اللغة العربية المحكية "‬

‫رسالة ماجستير بجامعة اليرموك ‪ ،‬تخصص لغويات‬

‫إعداد ‪ :‬معتصم محمد الدعيبس‬

‫المشرف ‪ :‬الدكتور لطفي أبو الهيجاء‬

‫الملخص‬

‫لقد ألقت هذه الدراسة الضوء على أدوات الربط التي يكتسبها الطفال الردنيون ‪ ،‬و قد‬
‫تم دراسة أدوات الربط ) قبل ‪ ،‬بعد ‪ ،‬و ‪ ،‬عشان ‪ ،‬بس ( و قد استخدم الباحث سلسلة‬
‫من الجراءات التي مكنته من اختبار فهم و استيعاب الطفال الردنيين لهذه الروابط ‪.‬‬
‫تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى تحديد العمر الذي يبدأ الطفل الردني من خلله اكتساب نوع‬
‫معين من أدوات الربط ‪ ،‬وقد تكونت عينة الدراسة من ثلثين طفل ً أردنيا ينتمون إلى‬
‫خمس فئات عمرية ‪ ،‬حيث تحتوي كل فئة على ستة أطفال تتراوح أعمارهم بين ثلث‬
‫سنوات وسبع سنوات ‪.‬‬
‫لقد كشفت نتائج الدراسة أن العمر يلعب دورا ً مهما ً في تطور أدوات الربط عند الطفال‬
‫‪ ،‬وقد كشفت الدراسة أن أداة الربط ) و ( هي السهل لدى الطفال حيث يتم اكتسابها‬
‫في عمر مبكر ‪ ،‬أما أداة الربط ) بعد ( والتي تظهر في بداية الجملة فقد كشفت‬
‫الدراسة بأنها الصعب لديهم ‪ .‬أما بالنسبة لدوات الربط الخرى ‪ ,‬فقد أشارت النتائج‬
‫بأنها تتباين في صعوبتها من مرحلة عمرية إلى أخرى ‪.‬‬

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