Verbatim narrative prompting to children in Nungon

Verbatim prompting is a widespread practice among speakers of the Papuan language Nungon. When Nungon-speaking mothers and children participated in longitudinal studies of child language development, some mothers frequently exhibited verbatim narrative prompting, through which they "fed" the children personal experience narratives to repeat, from the children's perspectives. Verbatim narrative prompting sequences can last for up to six or more minutes, with children dutifully repeating each prompt. The duration and constituency of prompts shows a high degree of consistency across two mothers with minimal literacy and who lack formal education. Nungon verbatim narrative prompting also reveals that individual clauses in clause chains are psychologically salient units, and further showcases adult speakers' ability to maintain impeccable switch-reference marking, even when children's repetitions intervene between clauses in clause chains.