Linguistic Features of Storytelling and Retelling by 4–6-Year-Old Children

Abstract

This study examines the linguistic features of storytelling and story retelling among Lithuanian-speaking children aged 4–6 years. Using the MAIN methodology, data were collected from both storytelling based on picture sequences and retellings of two narratives (‘Dog’ and ‘Baby Birds’). The analysis focused on quantitative measures of narrative microstructure: total number of words, communication units, mean length of utterance, number of different words, and lexical diversity. The results show that narrative structure and linguistic complexity develop with age and are strongly influenced by task type. In the ‘Dog’ narratives, both storytelling and retelling featured fewer but longer and more complex utterances as children grew older. In contrast, the storytelling based on the ‘Baby Birds’ picture sequence involved an increase in communication units but a decrease in mean utterance length, reflecting a preference for simpler clause structures. The retellings of ‘Baby Birds’ demonstrated increased narrative elaboration, as shown by higher numbers of communication units. The analysis of lexical diversity revealed minor overall differences between storytelling and retelling tasks. The analysis showed that verb lexical diversity was highest and most consistent across both storytelling and retelling tasks, highlighting the event-driven nature of the narratives. Noun lexical diversity was slightly higher in retellings, as children reproduced a broader range of less frequent nouns introduced in the stories. While adjective lexical diversity was similar across tasks, retellings included adjectives from a wider array of semantic categories, reflecting more input-based repetition. Overall, the findings suggest that retelling tasks elicit more linguistically advanced narratives than spontaneous storytelling, offering insights into children’s receptive and productive language abilities. These results underscore the value of retelling tasks for assessing narrative and linguistic development, especially in research involving children with language difficulties.