Reference: Activity 1


Who is it?

Please read the information aboutreferencebefore working through these activities.

In the Narrative Task, the narrator has to distinguish among three different female characters, and so has to use linguistic expressions that help the listener keep them separate.
  1. Watch Pari’s and Fereshteh’s Narrative tasks (Pari Narrative video;Fereshteh Narrative video) and if needed, read the transcripts (Pari Narrative transcript;Fereshteh Narrative transcript).

    How do Pari and Fereshteh refer to the child in the story, in a sequence where typically they had to first introduce each woman, the child, then refer to the two women conversing in the aisle, and then refer again to the child as she transferred a bottle into an old woman’s purse? Write in the table below the referential expressions used by each speaker to refer for the first time to each woman and the child, then to the women again, and the child again.

    To establish a baseline for comparison, we asked two native speakers of Persian to do these same tasks; in the table below, we have written the referential expressions those native speakers used to refer to the females in the story. Notice that the native speakers did not use exactly the same referential expressions. This kind of variation is typical of both native speaker and learner referential expressions.
Native Speaker 1 Native Speaker 2 Pari Fereshteh
1st mention of the old woman yek zæn-e pir
(an old woman)
yek khanum-e mosen
(一位上了年纪的女士)
2nd mention of the old woman khanum-e pir /
in khanum
(∅ old lady/ this lady)
khanum-e
(the lady (informal))
1st mention of the young woman yek khænum-e jævan
(a young lady)
yek khanum-e hæmsay-æshun
(a lady who is their neighbor)
2nd mention of the young women -------------- -------------
1st mention of child ba dokhtær-e bæcheh-æsh
(with her little girl)
yek dokhtær bæcheh-ye kuchulu
(a little girl )
2nd mention of child in dokhtær bæcheh-ye sheytun
(this little naughty girl)
in dokhtær bæche
(this little girl)
  1. What are some linguistic expressions that the learners use to maintain clear reference to the female characters in their narratives? How effective are they in helping you keep track of whom the narrator is referring to? Please type your answers to the questions in the box below.
When you have finished typing your answer,click to compareyour response with the Learner Language staff response.
  1. Write in the table below the referential expressions used by each speaker to refer for the first time to each woman and the child, then to the women again, and the child again.
Native Speaker 1 Native Speaker 2 Pari Fereshteh
1st mention of the old woman yek zæn-e pir
(an old woman)
yek khanum-e mosen
(一位上了年纪的女士)
ye zæn-e kæmi pir
(a sort of old woman)
maman bozorg
(grand mother)
2nd mention of the old woman khanum-e pir /
in khanum
(∅ old lady/ this lady)
khanum-e
(the lady (informal))
pir zæn
(Æ old woman)
maman bozorg
(grand mother)
1st mention of the young woman yek khænum-e jævan
(a young lady)
yek khanum-e hæmsay-æshun
(a lady who is their neighbor)
yek zæn-e dige
( one other (another) woman)
dokhtær
(daughter)
2nd mention of the young women ----------------- ----------------- in zæn-e dige/
va madær-e in dokhtær
(this other woman/ and this child’s mother)
dokhtær
(daughter)
1st mention of child ba dokhtær-e bæcheh-æsh
(with her little girl)
yek dokhtær bæcheh-ye kuchulu
(a little girl )
yek dokhtær-e khuchulu
(a little girl)
nini
(baby)
2nd mention of child in dokhtær bæcheh-ye sheytun
(this little naughty girl)
in dokhtær bæche
(this little girl)
dokhtære / khuchulu
(the little girl (informal))
nini
(baby)

In order to indicate to the listener whether what is being referred to is old information or new information, where English might use the definite article ‘the’, Persian might use “Æ”, an informal bound morpheme “-e” after the noun, or demonstratives “in/un”. Also, where English uses the indefinite articles ‘a’ or ‘an’, Persian uses the numeral “ye(k)”. For giving new information, both native speakers and Pari used the numeral “yek” plus noun (one + noun) to refer to both adults and the little girl, but Fereshteh did not use the numeral “ye(k) before the nouns to refer to any of the characters. For old information, Persian commonly uses nouns with demonstratives, as shown in both native speakers’ utterances when they mention the child for the second time. Native Speaker 1 used the demonstrative “in” to mention the old woman and Pari used the same demonstrative to refer to the young woman for the second time. Also, Native Speaker 2 and Pari used an informal bound morpheme “-e” in second mentions (N1: khanum-e, 2nd mention of the old woman / Pari: dokhtær-e 2nd mention of child); but Fereshteh did not.
  1. What are some linguistic expressions that the learners use to maintain clear reference to the female characters in their narratives? How effective are they in helping you keep track of whom the narrator is referring to?
Both Pari and Fereshteh used nouns to refer to the three generations of women in the pictures, in both first and second mentions. But their word choices are different from each other. Interestingly, Fereshteh gave names to the characters: grandma, girl, and baby; this made it easy to exactly refer to each one of them. Pari used nouns with adjectives: a sort of old woman, the other woman/the child’s mother, and the little girl. As can be seen in the table above, none of the native speakers referred to the young woman for the second time. On the other hand, both learners did mention her more than once. In this, they may be using what Tarone and Yule (1989: 107) call the strategy of “over-elaboration”, to build in redundancy. Perhaps they lacked confidence and wanted to ensure the message got across. Learners sometimes may give more reasons than native speakers, pay more attention to details, and be overly informative.

Reference:

Tarone, E., & Yule, G. (1989).Focus on the language learner. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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