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Main character in children’s narratives

The notion of main character was examined through the systematic variation of three features: degree of agency, frequency of appearance, and first appearance. Narratives from 60 preschool, kindergarten, second, and fourth grade English-speaking children were elicited using ten wordless storybooks. Analysis focused on pronominal and nominal forms used to maintain or switch reference to the story characters. With both the hypothesized main and secondary characters, pronominal forms were strongly favored when maintaining reference. However, when switching reference, the three older groups showed a strong preference to use pronominal forms with the hypothesized main character alone. This finding suggests that degree of agency, frequency of appearance, and first appearance are indeed among the prototypical attributes of main character.