Chapter published in:
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. 142–161

Referring expressions and developmental language disorders

| Université de Montréal
| Université de Neuchâtel
| Université de Neuchâtel
| Université de Lorraine
| Université de Neuchâtel
This study investigated the relation between morphosyntactic and discourse-pragmatic features in the production of referential expressions by French-speaking children with developmental language disorders (DLD) as compared to their typically developing peers (TD). Fifteen TD children and 15 children with DLD, age 4;6 to 7;5 were asked to tell a picture-book story with their mother. The type of referring expression, the position in the referential chain, and the syntactic function were coded. Both groups of children were sensitive to discourse and syntax. Children with DLD differed from their peers in the use of object clitic pronouns in subsequent mentions, the proportion of nouns produced without a determiner, and null subjects. Null subjects only appeared in a particular discursive and pragmatic context.
Keywords: developmental language disorders, clitic pronouns, nouns, discourse, morphosyntax
Published online: 16 June 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.28.05rez
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