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The Acquisition of Referring Expressions: A dialogical approach
Edited by Anne Salazar-Orvig, Geneviève de Weck, Rouba Hassan and Annie Rialland
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 28] 2021
► pp. 116–139

Chapter 4
Referring in dialogical narratives

A study on children’s use of nouns and pronouns

ORCID logo | Université de Montréal
ORCID logo | Université Paris 8
ORCID logo | Université de Neuchâtel
ORCID logo | Université de Lille
ORCID logo | Université de Lille

In a recent overview of the literature on spontaneous and experimentally-produced speech, Allen, Hughes, and Skarabela (2015) identified many discourse-pragmatic factors that affect the use of referring expressions. In this chapter, we first assess the individual effects and the relative importance of four factors (i.e., position of the referring expression in the referential chain and its syntactic function, the referent’s characteristics – primacy and/or animacy – and the chronological age) in a narrative dialogue between a mother and her child. Second, we describe the joint impact of these factors on the use of nouns and third-person pronouns. A total of 30 typically-developing French-speaking children aged 4 to 7 years participated with their mother in a joint storytelling. Our results corroborate those found in the literature on the factors affecting young children’s use of referring expressions. Furthermore, they show a complex network of relations between the factors, that interestingly, was not the same for nouns and third-person pronouns.

Keywords: third-person pronouns, nouns, position in the referential chain, syntactic function, referent’s characteristics, primacy, animacy, narrative dialogue, mother-child interaction
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Position in the referential chain
    • 1.2Referent’s characteristics
    • 1.3Syntactic function
    • 1.4Aim of the study
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Participants and data collection
    • 2.2Coding
      • 2.2.1Identifying the referents
      • 2.2.2Categories of referring expressions
      • 2.2.3Position in the referential chain
      • 2.2.4Characteristics of the story referents
      • 2.2.5Syntactic function
    • 2.3Intercoder agreement and statistics
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1The use of referring expressions in terms of the different factors
    • 3.2Use of third-person pronouns and nouns
      • 3.2.1Factors of variation in the use of third-person pronouns
      • 3.2.2Factors of variation in the use of nouns
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Effects of the various factors
    • 4.2Factor interdependence
    • 4.3Further perspectives
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 June 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.28.04rez
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Cited by 4 other publications

Marcos, Haydée, Anne Salazar-Orvig, Christine da Silva-Genest & Julien Heurdier
2021. Chapter 7. The influence of dialogue in young children’s uses of referring expressions. In The Acquisition of Referring Expressions [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 28], ► pp. 204 ff. DOI logo
Salazar-Orvig, Anne, Geneviève de Weck, Rouba Hassan & Annie Rialland
2021. Chapter 1. A dialogical approach to the acquisition and usage of referring expressions. In The Acquisition of Referring Expressions [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 28], ► pp. 2 ff. DOI logo
Salazar-Orvig, Anne, Geneviève de Weck, Rouba Hassan & Annie Rialland
2021. Chapter 1. A dialogical approach to the acquisition and usage of referring expressions. In The Acquisition of Referring Expressions [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 28], DOI logo
Vinel, Elise, Anne Salazar-Orvig, Geneviève de Weck, Salma Nashawati & Somayeh Rahmati
2021. Chapter 10. The impact of speech genres on the use of referring expressions. In The Acquisition of Referring Expressions [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 28], ► pp. 288 ff. DOI logo

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