Young (1;9—2;4) children’s use of third person clitic subject pronouns in natural dialogues was examined in both longitudinal and cross-sectional data. Considering that young children mainly use pronouns in the context of referential continuity, this study aims at identifying some of the factors that affect this use. Two possible dialogical factors are examined: (1) the use of clitic pronouns can be interpreted as a reproduction of the adult’s discourse, either by taking up whole utterances containing a pronoun or by taking up only the clitic pronouns without reproducing the adult’s utterance. (2) The use of pronouns could be driven by pragmatic-discursive factors. In order to assess this hypothesis the use of clitic pronouns was observed in the context of dialogical continuity. Three kinds of links were considered: children repeat or reformulate the adult’s utterances, add a new predication on the same topic, or establish a contrast. The results suggest that the reproduction of the adult’s utterance does not significantly influence children’s use of pronouns, whereas pragmatic-discursive factors are found to affect their choice of referential expressions.
Allen, S.E.M. ( 2000). A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut. Linguistics, 38, 483-521.
2.
Allen, S.E.M., & Schöder, H. (2003). Preferred argument structure in early Inuktitut spontaneous speech data. In J. W. Du Bois, L. E. Kumpf, & W. J. Ashby (Eds.), Preferred argument structure: Grammar as architecture for function (pp. 301-338). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
3.
Apothéloz, D. ( 1995). Rôle et fonctionnement de l’anaphore dans la dynamique textuelle. Genève: Droz.
4.
Ariel, M. ( 1988). Referring and accessibility. Journal of Linguistics, 24, 65-87.
5.
Bakhtin, M. ( 1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.
6.
Bamberg, M. ( 1986). A functional approach to the acquisition of anaphoric relationships. Linguistics, 24, 227-284.
7.
Bennett-Kastor, T. ( 1983). Noun phrases and coherence in child narratives. Journal of Child Language, 10, 135-149.
8.
Blanche-Benveniste, C., Bilger, M., Rouget, C., & Van den Eyden, K. (1990). Le français parlé. Etudes grammaticales. Paris: CNRS Editions.
9.
Brown, R. ( 1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10.
Bruner, J.S. ( 1978). From communication to language: A psychological perspective . In I. Marková (Ed.), The social context of language (pp. 17-48). Chichester: John Wiley.
11.
Campbell, A.L., Brooks, P., & Tomasello, M. ( 2000). Factors affecting young children’s use of pronouns as referring expressions. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 43, 1337-1349.
12.
Clancy, P. ( 2003). The lexicon in interaction: Developmental origins of preferred argument structure. In J. W. Du Bois, L. E. Kumpf, & W. J. Ashby (Eds.), Preferred argument structure: Grammar as architecture for function (pp. 81-108). Amsterdam : John Benjamins.
13.
Cornish, F. ( 1999). Anaphora, discourse and understanding. New York: Oxford University Press.
14.
De Cat, C. ( 2004a). A fresh look at how young children encode new referents . International Review of Applied Linguistics, 42, 111-127.
15.
De Cat, C. ( 2004b). Early ‘pragmatic’ competence and the null subject phenomenon. In R. Bok-Bennema, B. Hollebrandse, B. Kampers-Manhe , & P. Sleeman (Eds.), Romance language and linguistic theory 2002. Selected papers from Going Romance 2002 (pp. 17-32). Amsterdam: John Benjamins .
16.
De Cat, C. ( 2005). French subject clitics are not agreement markers. Lingua, 115, 1195-1219.
17.
Dik, S.C. ( 1997). The theory of functional grammar. Part 2: Complex and derived constructions. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
18.
François, D. ( 1981). Syntaxe du français et pédagogie. Rapport de synthèse du groupe de recherche sur la syntaxe de l’oral. Paris: Université René Descartes.
19.
Givón, T. ( 1995). Functionnalism and grammar. Amsterdam : John Benjamins.
20.
Hamann, C., Rizzi, L., & Frauenfelder, U.H. (1996). On the acquisition of subjects and object clitics in French. In H. Clahsen (Ed.), Generative perspectives on language acquisition (pp. 309-334). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
21.
Hickmann, M. ( 2002). Children’s discourse: Person, time and space across languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
22.
Hugues, M., & Allen, S. ( 2006). A discourse-pragmatic analysis of subject omission in child English. In D. Bamman, D. T. Magnitskaia, & C. Zaller (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 293-304). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
23.
Jakubowicz, C., & Rigaut, C. ( 1997). L’acquisition des clitiques nominatifs en français . In A. Zribi-Hertz (Ed.), Les pronoms. Morphologie, syntaxe et typologie (pp. 57-99). Saint-Denis : Presses Universitaires de Vincennes.
24.
Jakubowicz, C., & Rigaut, C. ( 2000). L’acquisition des clitiques nominatifs et des clitiques objets en français. Canadian Journal of Linguistics , 45, 119-157.
25.
Jeanjean, C. ( 1980). L’organisation des formes sujet en français de conversation: Etude quantitative et grammaticale de deux corpus. Recherches sur le français parlé, 3, 99-134.
26.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. ( 1985). Language and cognitive processes from a developmental perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes, 1, 61-85.
27.
Levy, E.T. ( 1989). Monologue as development of the text-forming function of language. In K. Nelson (Ed.), Narratives from the crib (pp. 123-161). Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
28.
Levy, E.T. ( 1999). A social-pragmatic account of the development of planned discourse. Human Development, 42, 225-246.
29.
McTear, M. ( 1985). Children’s conversation. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell .
30.
Martinet, A. ( 1979). Grammaire fonctionnelle du français. Paris: Didier.
31.
Matthews, D., Lieven, E.V.M., Theakston, A.L., & Tomasello, M. ( 2006). The effect of perceptual availability and prior discourse on young children’s use of referring expressions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 403-422.
32.
Ninio, A., & Snow, C. ( 1996). Pragmatic development. Boulder, CO : Westview Press.
33.
Ochs, E., Schieffelin, B.B., & Platt, M.L. ( 1979). Propositions across utterances and speakers. In E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (Eds.), Developmental pragmatics (pp. 251-268). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
34.
Parisse, C., & Le Normand, M.-T. (2000). How children build their morphosyntax: The case of French. Journal of Child Language , 27, 267-292.
35.
Peters, A.M. ( 2000). Filler syllables: What is their status in emerging grammar ? Journal of Child Language, 28, 229-242.
36.
Peterson, C., & Dodsworth, P. ( 1991). A longitudinal analysis of young children’s cohesion and noun specification in narratives. Journal of Child Language , 18, 397-415.
37.
Pickering, M., & Garrod, S. ( 2004). Toward a mechanistic psychology of dialogue. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 27, 169-190.
38.
Prince, E. ( 1981). Towards a taxonomy of given-new information. In P. Cole (Ed.), Radical pragmatics (pp. 223-255). New York: Academic Press.
39.
Salazar Orvig, A. ( 2002). Remarques sur la continuité et l’engagement dialogique chez le jeune enfant. In L. Danon-Boileau , C. Hudelot, & A. Salazar Orvig (Eds.), Usages du langage chez l’enfant (pp. 61-81). Paris: Ophrys.
40.
Salazar Orvig, A. ( 2003). L’inscription dialogique du jeune enfant: Evolution, diversité et hétérogénéité. Tranel, 38-39, 7-24.
41.
Salazar Orvig, A., Fayolle, V., Hasan, R., Leber-Marin, J., Marcos, H., Morgenstern, A., et al. (2004). Emergence des marqueurs anaphoriques avant 3 ans: Le cas des pronoms de troisième personne. Calap. La Cohésion Chez L’enfant, 24, 57-82.
42.
Salazar Orvig, A., Hasan, R., Leber-Marin, J., Marcos, H., Morgenstern, A., & Pares, J. ( 2006). Peut-on parler d’anaphore chez le jeune enfant?Langages, 163, 10-24.
43.
Salazar Orvig, A., Marcos, H., Morgenstern, A., Hassan, R., Leber-Marin, J., & Parès, J. (2010). Dialogical beginnings of anaphora: The use of third person pronouns before the age of 3. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 1842-1865.
44.
Scollon, R. ( 1979). A real early stage: An unzippered condensation of a dissertation on child language. In E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (Eds.), Developmental pragmatics (pp. 215-227). New York: Academic Press.
45.
Serratice, L. ( 2005). The role of discourse pragmatics in the acquisition of subjects in Italian. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 437-462.
46.
Slobin, D.I. ( 1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar . In C. A. Ferguson & D. I. Slobin (Eds.), Studies of child language development (pp. 175-209). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
47.
Tomasello, M. ( 1999). The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press .
48.
Veneziano, E. ( 2000). Interaction, conversation et acquisition du langage dans les trois premières années. In M. Kail & M. Fayol (Eds.), L’acquisition du langage. Vol. I. Le langage en émergence. De la naissance à trois ans (pp. 231-265). Paris: PUF.
49.
Veneziano, E. ( 2003). The emergence of noun and verb categories in the acquisition of French. Psychology of Language and Communication, 7, 23-36.
50.
Veneziano, E., & Sinclair, H. ( 2000). The changing status of ‘filler syllables’ on the way to grammatical morphemes. Journal of Child Language , 27, 461-500.
51.
Wittek, A., & Tomasello, M. ( 2005). Young children’s sensitivity to listener knowledge and perceptual context in choosing referring expressions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 541-558.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
