Development of Ability for Textual Organization in Written Language

Stories written by Brazilian elementary school students (N = 175, grades one to four) are analyzed for cognitive-discursive strategies of representing direct speech & the use of four resources to mark it in a written text: (1) personal deixis, temporal/spatial reference, or verbal conjugation, (2) verba dicendi, (3) spacing between discourse introduction & its quote, & (4) punctuation marks. It is found that the transition from the narrator's to the character's discourse is marked predominantly with deictic means & verbal inflection, with verba dicendi employed more frequently be older students. Written language acquisition studies reported in Brazilian linguistic literature are surveyed to determine the relationship between the ability to reproduce direct discourse & the development of skills in punctuation, cliticization, & verbum dicendi reiteration. 20 References. Z. Dubiel