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

Abstract

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.