nicole kotras masters thesis

proposed criteria.
Regarding Griffith's (1960) proposed number of descriptive sentences for a child 76
months of age, Allan (1992) found that children from the Coloured group were the least likely
cultural group to correctly elicit the proposed number of descriptive sentences, while children
from the Indian cultural group were the most likely to do so. The findings of Allan (1992) are
contradictory to the present researcher's findings, in that the White cultural group from
sample 1, and both the White and Coloured cultural group of sample 2, elicited the highest
mean number of descriptive sentences.
Griffiths (1960) reported that a child, in telling a story, makes no attempt to relate the
several events into any particular order. Piaget and Inhelder (1969) refer to this as a form of
juxtaposition. For example, in describing the large revised SA picture a child could say, "It's
a boat sailing, there's a man in it, and they're running, and then they go and they swim in the
water, and there's dolphins there and the dolphins eat fish and then the fish swim in the
water." The child describing the picture does not mean to apply that the fish swim after they
are eaten. The child simply uses "and then" as a conjunction, linking his/her phrases
together as the ideas occur to him/her without any sense of the time significance of the
phrases. The child merely wishes to tell about the boat, and the fish, and they swim, etc.
The child makes no attempt to relate these things into their proper sequence. Piaget and
Inhelder (1969) reported the use of "and then" to be common for children of approximately 5
years of age. On a qualitative level, this described language "pattern" was evident with a
large number of pre-schoolers in sample 1 and 2. Relating Griffith's (1960) proposed
scoring criteria for descriptive sentences to Piaget and Inhelder’s (1969) view of a child's
language, it is to be noted that for a child to score positively with regards to a descriptive
sentence on the Griffiths Scales, they are expected to verbalize a single sentence of 6 or
more syllables. Hence, a child may describe the picture in numerous sentences which have
more than 6 syllables, but these sentences are not single, rather they are joined by the "and
then" phrase. This then has implications in scoring the child's descriptive language.
Regarding the proposed number of personal and possessive pronouns for a child 70
months of age, Allan (1992) found that more than 50% of the sample from all four cultural
groups, except the Indian group, were able to elicit Griffith's (1960) proposed number of
personal and possessive pronouns. Allan's (1992) finding is contradictory to the present
researcher's finding, in that none of cultural groups from either sample 1 or sample 2 elicited
102