Referential Development in Storytelling and in Storywriting of Catalan and Italian Children

Abstract

Children's use of referential expressions is far from being firmly identified. The main objective of the study was to examine children's development between first and fifth grade in theuseof referential expressionsin oral and writtennarratives. Westudiedhow children maintain and reintroduce animate entities by employing different linguistic forms,looking attheinteractionbetweenlinguisticformsandfunctions.Asecondobjective was to analyse a new context of use, written narrative, and compareit to the oral one. The third aim was to compare the development of referential expressions in children of two Romance languages, Italian and Catalan. Results show that first grade children are already able to master the distinction between maintenance and reintroduction functions. On the other hand, even fifth grade children are not fully aware of possible referential ambiguities. Whereas no significant differences in managing the referential system emerged between the two languages, a few differences were found between oral andwrittenmodes.However primary school childrenare in general morefocused on the narrative genre than on the differences between the two modes.