Grammatical Cohesion in Indonesian-Speaking Preschoolers’ Narrative

This chapter discusses the use of Indonesian grammatical cohesive devices in preschoolers’ narrative productions. The participants of this study are three- to six-year-old children (N = 60). All children live in Jabodetabek area and use Indonesian as the first language. We use a wordless picture book to elicit the use of reference, ellipsis, substitution, and conjunction in children's storytelling. Cohesive devices in children’s narration of the picture story are identified and analyzed with quantitative and qualitative approaches. The result indicates a tendency of increasing use of reference, ellipsis, substitution, and conjunction in older children, especially in lexical variation. We also find that children still use inappropriate cohesive devices. We also find correlations between reference, ellipsis, and substitution; when participants did not use reference, they preferred to omit the character from the story. Nevertheless, there is no significant difference between the age groups.