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Cohesive anaphoric relations in French children's narratives as a function of mutual knowledge

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris

Michèle Kail

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris

Françoise Roland

Université de Nantes

This study examines how French children of 6, 9, and 11 years use referring expressions for reference maintenance in narratives elicited in two situations: children and their interlocutor were looking at a picture book together (mutual knowledge) or the inter locutor was blindfolded (no mutual knowledge). Local coreference has a strong impact on the selection of pronouns (coreferential) vs. nominals (non-coreferential) at all ages and in both situations. However, children from 9 years on produce more pronouns in the absence of mutual knowledge and the extent to which children mark story structure varies as a function of age and situation. Regardless of situation, 6-year-olds mark boundaries across successive pictures (external structure) and episodes (internal structure) by means of nominals. Although a similar pattern can be observed at other ages in the mutual knowledge condition, it gradually disappears with increasing age in the absence of mutual knowledge. It is concluded that discourse-internal functions of referring expressions are a late development characterized by the increasing impact of coreference, which gradually overrides other factors, as children learn to rely maximally on discourse cohesive relations in the absence of mutual knowledge.

First Language, Vol. 15, No. 45, 277-300 (1995)
DOI: 10.1177/014272379501504502


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