The purpose of this study was to compare the levels of semantic complexity in children’s oral and written narrative language. This study focused on the narratives produced by students in the fourth grade (N=35) due to the high demand of narrative comprehension and production in the fourth grade curriculum. At the present time, the relevant literature is lacking a combined measure for the development of semantic complexity, with consideration of both vocabulary breadth and depth and performance in both communication modalities (oral and written narratives). I examined whether the oral and written narratives of fourth grade students varied in lexical diversity (number of different words) lexical tiers (number of content words across tiers) and lexical maturity (number of metacognitive verbs). Levels of lexical diversity, and lexical maturity were similar across oral and written narrative tasks. Results showed there was a significant difference between modalities for lexical tiering, wherein more Tier 3 words were in written narratives than in oral narratives. Further analyses revealed children used a greater number of Tier 2 (domain general) words in their oral than in written narratives. These differences in vocabulary used across narrative modalities suggest fourth graders are able to differentiate lexical forms based on the language task, and can incorporate a range of domain general and domain specific vocabulary words within their narrative language production. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Communication Science and Disorders in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Summer Semester 2016. / June 24, 2016. / Literacy, Narrative Language, Oral Language, Semantics / Includes bibliographical references. / Shannon Hall-Mills, Professor Co-Directing Thesis; Carla Wood, Professor Co-Directing Thesis; Hugh Catts, Committee Member; Toby Macrae, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_366452 |
| Contributors | Marante, Leesa (authoraut), Hall-Mills, Shannon S. (professor co-directing thesis), Wood, Carla (professor co-directing thesis), Catts, Hugh W. (Hugh William), 1949- (committee member), Macrae, Toby (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Communication and Information (degree granting college), School of Communication Science and Disorders (degree granting department) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource (28 pages), computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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