Home language variation in the narratives of urban First Nations Australian children in their first year of school

Figures & data

Table 1. Number of participants using each HL feature and frequency.

HL Features	Frequency
	Nil	Once	2–5	5–10	>10
Verb Phrase
Alternative irregular past tense	9	9	8	1	0
Zero regular past tense	9	6	12	0	0
Zero irregular past tense	11	6	10	0	0
Zero subject-verb agreement	15	4	7	1	0
Zero auxiliary	21	5	0	0	1
Alternative past tense form	25	0	2	0	0
Double negative	26	1	0	0	0
Noun Phrase
Alternative pronoun	10	7	8	0	2
Zero determiner	15	7	5	0	0
Alternative preposition	21	6	0	0	0
Zero preposition	25	2	0	0	0
Clause Structure
Zero copula	21	6	0	0	0
Zero subordinate clause	26	1	0	0	0
Alternative form of existential there	26	1	0	0	0
Topicalization	26	1	0	0	0

Table 2. Percentage of dialect density.

Features	%Mean (SD)
Verb Phrase: total	22.20 (14.83)
Zero Irregular Past Tense	5.36 (7.03)
Zero Regular Past Tense	5.16 (5.37)
Alternative Irregular Past tense	5.09 (6.10)
Zero subject-verb agreement	4.03 (6.47)
Zero auxiliary	1.57 (4.28)
Alternative past tense forms	0.92 (3.42)
Double negative	0.07 (0.37)
Noun Phrase: total	9.23 (9.07)
Alternative pronoun	5.73 (7.31)
Zero determiner	2.18 (2.82)
Alternative preposition	0.81 (1.63)
Zero preposition	0.27 (0.96)
Zero plural	0.24 (0.87)
Clause Structure: total	1.12 (1.79)
Zero copula	0.82 (1.72)
Topicalization	0.12 (0.60)
Zero subordinate clause	0.10 (0.49)
Alternative form of existential there	0.09 (0.46)
TOTAL	32.55 (19.12)

Dialect density = proportion of HL features per utterance.