post

[Dan I. SLOBIN]

The frog story has been used in a wide range of cultures, and appears to
be useful in eliciting basic information about both linguistic and
narrative structure.  In Berman & Slobin (1994, Appendix III) we listed
the following non-Western field sites where the frog story has been used:
Morocco (Arabic), Australia (Arrernte, Guugu Yumithirr, Warlpiri),
Botswana (Kgalagadi), US (Kickapoo, Lakhota), Papua New Guinea (Kilivila,
Yupno), Solomon Islands (Longgu), Malaysia (Malay), China (Mandarin),
Japan (Japanese), Belize (Mopan), Gabon (Myene), Uganda (several Western
Nilotic languages), India (Tamil), Mexico (Totonac, Tzotzil, Tzeltal,
Yucatec), Turkey (Turkish).  It has also been used in several sign
languages (American Sign Language, Sign Language of the Netherlands), as
well as with various populations of language-impaired and
developmentally-impaired speakers.

(Berman, R. A., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). _Relating events in narrative: A
crosslinguistic developmental study_.  Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.)

For a useful discussion of cultural factors in use of the frog-story
method, see:  Wilkins, D. P. (1997).  The verbalization of motion events
in Arrernte (Central Australia).  In E. V. Clark (Ed.), _The proceedings
of the Twenty-eighth Annual Child Language Research Forum_ (pp.
295-308).  Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.

-Dan Slobin
Dept of Psychology
University of California, Berkeley

On Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Kirsten Hodge wrote:

> In the psych lab where I work (I'm a graduate student) we are using the
> Mercer Mayer frog stories to collect child speech.  I have been discussing
> doing a joint thesis with another linguistics student on comparing 1st
> language acquistition of English and the Jamaicaian patois which is based
> on English.  We wanted to collect samples of the patois in the same manner
> that we are collecting the English samples.  However we had some concern
> whether or not those books would translate culturally.  Does anyone know of
> any other books (ones without words) that might be usable for our study?
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> Kirsten Schaper
> Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
>
>