Overcoming preferred argument structure in written French

Abstract

Spoken and written French contrast in many ways. Our goal here is to show how later language development is profoundly impacted by experience with written language. More than 120 French-speakers/ writers, one group of children (mean age: 10;9) and two groups of adolescents (mean age: 12;7 and 15;2), participated in this study. Our analysis of noun phrases is inspired by the hypothesis of Preferred Argument Structure (Du Bois 1987) and examines referential cohesion in texts produced in contexts differing in modality (spoken – written) and text type (expository – narrative). Our aim is to demonstrate: (a) that spoken language production is governed by discursive constraints which control the flow of information; and (b) these discursive constraints differ for written and spoken production. Part of learning to become a literate user of French involves overcoming the discourse constraints governing spoken language production.