first language dialogical factors in toddlers’ © the ......(1) young children’s use of pronouns...

FIRSTLANGUAGEArticle

Corresponding author:Anne Salazar Orvig, Institut de Linguistique et Phonétique Générales et Appliquées, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, 19 rue des Bernardins, 75005 Paris, France.Email: [email protected]

First Language30(3-4) 375–402

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Dialogical factors in toddlers’ use of clitic pronouns

Anne Salazar OrvigUniversité Sorbonne Nouvelle – Sorbonne Paris Cité

Haydée MarcosCNRS, France

Aliyah Morgenstern Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Sorbonne Paris Cité

Rouba Hassan Université de Lille 3, France

Jocelyne Leber-Marin and Jacques ParèsEA 1483 - RFC

Abstract

Young (1;9–2;4) children’s use of third person clitic subject pronouns in natural dialogues was examined in both longitudinal and cross-sectional data. Considering that young children mainly use pronouns in the context of referential continuity, this study aims at identifying some of the factors that affect this use. Two possible dialogical factors are examined: (1) the use of clitic pronouns can be interpreted as a reproduction of the adult’s discourse, either by taking up whole utterances containing a pronoun or by taking up only the clitic pronouns without reproducing the adult’s utterance. (2) The use of pronouns could be driven by pragmatic-discursive factors. In order to assess this hypothesis the use of clitic pronouns was observed in the context of dialogical continuity. Three kinds of links were considered: children repeat or reformulate the adult’s utterances, add a new predication on the same topic, or establish a contrast. The results suggest that the reproduction of the adult’s utterance does not significantly

376 First Language 30(3-4)

influence children’s use of pronouns, whereas pragmatic-discursive factors are found to affect their choice of referential expressions.

Keywords

anaphora, clitic pronouns, dialogue, pragmatic-discursive factors, toddlers’ language, topic maintenance

The study of children’s early uses of third person clitic pronouns is a domain in which the morpho-syntactic and pragmatic-discursive levels are closely intertwined. Various studies on the use of referential expressions highlight the sensitivity of young children to pragmatic features such as referent accessibility and its mention in previous discourse, showing that the pragmatic-discursive level is constitutive of emergent grammar.

The purpose of the present research is to examine two competing factors that can be proposed to explain the use of third person clitic pronouns by French-speaking children in a dialogical context. Two main questions are addressed: (1) is the adult’s discourse the model for the child’s utterance and/or (2) does the use of pronouns respond to a pragmatic-discursive choice by the child?

The acquisition of clitic pronounsFrench presents a double series of personal pronouns: clitic pronouns and tonic pro-nouns. Clitic pronouns, which are characterized by their prefixal and unstressed position, are used as subjects (je, tu, il, elle, on, nous, vous, ils, elles), or direct and indirect objects (me, te, le, lui, nous, vous, les, leur). Tonic pronouns (moi, toi, lui, elle, nous, vous, eux, elles) are characterized by an autonomous and stressed position. They can reduplicate the subject pronoun (lui, il court, ‘as for him, he runs’) and are used for all other functions. Since it presents almost no personal verbal inflexion, spoken French is a non null subject language. In spoken French, the subject position is preferentially filled by a clitic pro-noun (Jeanjean, 1980) which can coexist with a noun (Blanche-Benveniste, Bilger, Rouget, & Van den Eyden, 1990; François, 1981). This characteristic leads some authors to consider clitic pronouns as flexional morphemes (Jakubowicz & Rigaut, 1997; but see De Cat, 2005 for a discussion).

Previous research on French shows that clitic pronouns are acquired quite early. Parisse and Le Normand (2000), for example, note that at around 2 years old, pronouns already represent 8% of the linguistic units used by children (the average is about 18% for adults). The sequences pronoun + verb are among the most frequent sequences of syntactic categories in Parisse and Le Normand’s data. In a more specific study on the acquisition of nominative clitics, Jakubowicz and Rigaut (1997) note that, in children aged from 2;0 to 2;7, a majority of utterances include a nominative clitic with a prefer-ence for third person pronouns. However, they identify an important rate of omissions: younger children’s use of clitic pronouns seems to be optional. Authors also stress (Hamann, Rizzi, & Frauenfelder, 1996; Jakubowicz & Rigaut, 2000) the asymmetry between the earlier acquisition of subject clitics and the later acquisition of object clitics.

Salazar et al. 377

Pronouns in discourse and dialogue

Studies of the acquisition of referential expressions such as determiners or pronouns have concentrated predominantly on their use in monologue (Bennett-Kastor, 1983; Hickmann, 2002; Karmiloff-Smith, 1985; Peterson & Dodsworth, 1991), emphasizing both their precocious acquisition and the errors children make, especially in using pro-nouns to introduce new referents. In this perspective, for young children, reference might be a deictic bottom-up process that does not suppose a discursive construction or repre-sentation independent of the situational context.

But long before children can master monological discursive genres, they experience adults’ use of pronouns and determiners in various dialogic contexts. In particular, involve-ment in dialogue supposes the sharing of an intersubjective representation of discourse (Salazar Orvig, 2002), which is constitutive of the anaphoric relation (Cornish, 1999; Givón, 1995). The possibility for children to share such an intersubjective representation has been prepared by their participation in joint attention episodes (Tomasello, 1999). Attentional continuity – which according to Bruner (1978) is at the root of the topic-comment structure – is constructed through joint action and non-verbal communication. On the other hand, studies of children’s very first utterances, during the one word stage, show that the first verbal exchanges correspond to the ‘beginning of shared linguistic meaning’ (Veneziano, 2000, p. 239, our translation) and that children can chain two or more turns within the same communicative intent and, most often, in continuity with the adult’s discourse (Scollon, 1979). More generally, dialogue can be considered as the framework within which children experience, acquire and use linguistic units. The first values of referential expressions might therefore be constructed in this type of context.

Various studies, based on experimental or natural data, have explored the use of referential expressions in dialogue. Experimental studies (Campbell, Brooks, & Tomasello, 2000; Wittek & Tomasello, 2005) on children between 2;6 and 3;6 show that the type of question asked by the interlocutor determines which referring expression is used by the child: when the question mentions the discourse object (What did X do?), English-speaking children from both age groups tend to respond with a null reference, whereas nouns and pronouns tend to be used more frequently when preceded by open questions (What happened?). In German, children mostly use a pronoun or a null form when the question specifically bears on the referent (Where is the broom?) and more general questions (What do we need?) elicit nominal responses.

Studies on non Indo-European languages such as Inuktitut (Allen, 2000; Allen & Schöder, 2003) and Korean (Clancy, 2003) show the impact of the discursive and prag-matic dimensions on children’s use of referential expressions. In Inuktitut, in which arguments are either made explicit by using nouns or are omitted, children ‘produce overt arguments significantly more often if the argument they wish to represent is informative than if it is not’ (Allen, 2000, p. 511). Moreover, Clancy considers that ‘the clusters of semantic, discourse-pragmatic and formal properties of referents organized into A, S and O roles are available to young children as a source of hypotheses about the functional foundations of the morphosyntactically marked categories in the language being acquired’ (Clancy, 2003, p. 104). The results have been confirmed for null subject Indo-European languages such as Italian (Serratice, 2005) and for non null subject


languages such as English (Hughes & Allen, 2006). In this last case, whereas null arguments appear in the context of great accessibility, it is not the case for overt arguments (which include pronouns) for which the distribution is more variable. However, factors such as newness and absence of the referent induce the coding of overt arguments. These studies confirm the fact that the acquisition of grammar is intertwined with pragmatic and discursive aspects of language.

Studies by Salazar Orvig et al. (2004, 2006, 2010) lead to similar conclusions. The authors analyse spontaneous dialogues with children between 1;9 and 3;0 in various situ-ations. Their results show that the children are sensitive to the discursive and attentional context of verbal exchanges : in the majority of cases, predications about an implicit referent concern a referent that has is fact been previously mentioned in the dialogue. Children also use third person clitic pronouns in the context of shared attention and as second or subsequent mentions in the dialogue in the context of discursive continuity. An experimental study also supports this interpretation: 2-year-old children ‘respond to prior mention as an indicator of referent accessibility before they do to perceptual availability’ (Matthews, Lieven, Theakston, & Tomasello, 2006, p. 408).

What do these performances correspond to? Several possibilities can be considered. The first, proposed by Levy (1989, 1999), suggests that the relation between the pro-noun and its antecedent corresponds to the repetition of noun–pronoun strings pro-duced by adults. In this case, since the child does not establish the co-referential relation existing in his or her discourse autonomously, the pronoun does not have an anaphoric value. The second possibility presented by Matthews et al. (2006) – drawing on Pickering and Garrod’s (2004) model – suggests that there is a dissociation between the co-referential links with the interlocutor’s discourse, which would be of a mechan-ical nature, and the child’s representation of the interlocutor’s informational needs. Thus, it could be considered that the co-referential links are not anaphoric (see also Karmiloff-Smith, 1985). Finally, a third alternative (De Cat, 2004a; Salazar Orvig et al., 2010) differentiates the values of referential expressions from the difficulties children may have in the management of discursive sequences, joint attention and common ground. In this case, we can consider that children acquire pronouns with a proto-anaphoric value (maintaining continuity in the context of a shared discursive representation), while they present performance errors, in particular when they have to manage com-plex interlocutive situations.

Aim of this studyThe present research studies aspects of the dialogical context of the use of third person clitic pronouns. In view of the questions raised above, two possibilities are considered: (1) young children’s use of pronouns is prompted by the form of the adult’s utterances; (2) children’s choice of a pronoun as a referential expression could be explained by pragmatic-discursive factors. To address the first option, we analyse how the form of adults’ utterances influences children’s use of referential expressions. The second possi-bility will be tackled through the analysis of the ways in which children’s utterances are anchored in the dynamics of dialogue and, more specifically, the type of continuity between the child’s utterance and the previous utterance of the adult.

Salazar et al. 379

The analysis of these factors will allow us to evaluate the type of relation existing between the pronoun and its antecedent. If the children reproduce the whole utterance (utterance reproduction), we may consider that the coreferential relation is only a side effect of repetition. If the children reproduce only the referential expression (item repro-duction), we may think they take up a model from the adult and establish a basic type of discursive relation, as the reference of the expression they use is grounded in the dia-logical context. Finally, only if the use of pronouns can be related to other pragmatic-discursive factors, we may conclude that these early uses are anaphoric.

We concentrate on the subject function, since, on one side, it is the privileged slot to express topics and, on the other, in French, subject clitic pronouns are acquired long before object clitic pronouns. To determine whether our results are specific to this grammatical category, pronouns are compared to other referential expressions in subject position.

Method

Participants

The data presented here are part of a larger corpus (Salazar Orvig et al., 2004, 2006). For the purpose of the present study we considered only the children (in the cross-sectional corpora) or the sessions (for the longitudinal follow-up) for which there was at least one clitic pronoun in subject position in the data. Three videotaped corpora were used (Table 1):

Corpus 1: A longitudinal corpus of two boys (Daniel and Léonard). For six sessions per child – about one session per month between 1;9 (for Daniel) or 1;11 (for Léonard) and 2;4 – were analysed. The children were observed in different situations at home (play, snack time, picture book reading, bath). Corpus 2: A cross-sectional corpus at 1;11 based on five dialogues of five children (four girls, Alice1, Cécile, Lisa, Pauline1 and one boy, Thibault) with their father or mother during a standardized play session at home.Corpus 3: A cross-sectional corpus at 2;3 based on 10 other children (six girls, Alice2, Chloé, Elodie, Léa, Margaux, Pauline2 and four boys, Arnaud, Maxime, Rémi, Théo) with their mother in various activities (play, snack). For five of those children (Chloé,

Table 1. Population: number of children, age, MLU, number of sessions, number of turns

Corpus Age MLU MLU level

No. of children

No. of sessions

Total no. of turns

Mean no. of turns

Cross-sectional Per child Per child1;11 mean: 1;11

(1;11.3–1;11.26)1.56–2.83 mean: 1.98

1, 2, 3 5 1 306 61.20

2;3 mean: 2;3.5 (2;2.5–2;3.29)

1.32–3.01 mean: 2.07

1, 2, 3 10 2–4 2620 262

Longitudinal (home)

2 Per child Per session

Daniel 1;9–2;4 1.36–2.50 1, 2, 3 6 1603 229Léonard 1;11–2;4 2.04–2.85 2, 3 6 384 647


Elodie, Margaux, Rémi and Théo), play and snack sessions were also recorded at their nursery school.

The utterances of all participants were transcribed and contextual information necessary for the interpretation of the verbal production was noted.

At each step, we first present the results from the longitudinal data and then from the cross-sectional data. The longitudinal data are divided into two-months periods 1;9–1;10, 1;11–2;0, 2;1–2;2 and 2;3–2;4.

In the cross-sectional data, the two corpora present a similar range of mean length of utterance (MLU) (computed in number of words out of 100 utterances per child). In order to draw a developmental trend, it is thus better to contrast children’s productions accord-ing to their MLU rather than their age. Even though there is not necessarily a direct link between MLU and pragmatic development, this method is also appropriate because chil-dren’s use of referential expressions cannot be considered independently of morphological development. The cross-sectional data have thus been divided according to three groups of children, roughly corresponding to Brown’s I, II and III stages (Brown, 1973):

Level 1: Five children whose MLU is between 1.32 and 1.73. Fewer than 17% of their utterances include a verb, with or without arguments; the utterances are either bare nouns (mean 34%), or one- to two-word pre-syntactic predications (mean 14%).Level 2: Five children whose MLU is between 2.04 and 2.44. 30% of their utterances have a verbal predicate (with or without arguments). Nominal utterances are less prevalent (19%) but 15% of their utterances can still be described as pre-syntactic predications.Level 3: Five children whose MLU is between 2.50 and 3.01. The mean number of verbal predicate utterances corresponds to 40%, nominal utterances to 22% and pre-syntactic predications to 9% of their utterances.

The two children from the longitudinal corpus follow a similar trend: at 1;10 they mostly produce non-verbal utterances and a very low percentage of utterances with ver-bal predicates. This proportion is inverted at the end of the recordings: there are between 40% and 50% utterances with verbal predicates.

All children belong to French-speaking middle-class families.

Data analysisIn this section we first present the types of referential expressions and the criteria used to categorize referential continuity between the children’s utterances and their interlocutors’ utterances. Then, we turn to the categories concerning the influence (of the form) of the adult’s discourse and the type of continuity between the speech turns of the adults and of the children.

Referential expressions. Considering any linguistic unit that can refer to an entity or to events processed as entities as a referential expression,1 we contrast clitic pronouns with other referential expressions.

Salazar et al. 381

Clitic pronouns: For this study we have considered all adult-like forms as clitic pronouns ([il], [εl]). Some authors (Jakubowicz & Rigaut, 1997; Veneziano, 2003) con-sider that the forms [i] and [ε] (e.g., [εtɔb̃] ‘e(lle) tombe’ ‘she’s falling’) do not clearly correspond to pronouns. However, in oral French, adults frequently omit the lateral [l] in front of a consonant; we have thus included these forms in the pronominal category. Forms in [l] (e.g., [leasi] ‘(i)l est assis’ ‘he’s sitting’) frequently used by children, were also included.

Other referential expressions: • Nouns: Both proper names and nouns are included in this category. • Demonstrative pronouns: ‘Ça’ ([savala] ‘ça va là’ ‘it goes there’) is the most fre-

quent form of demonstrative pronoun in our data. Other forms such as ‘celui-ci’ (‘this one’) and ‘celui-là’ (‘that one’) are occasionally used.

• ‘C’est’ is considered separately from other demonstratives because it can correspond either to the association of the demonstrative and the copula or to a presentative (Martinet, 1979) and because it is difficult to determine whether children are produc-ing a creative combination or a frozen expression for a given utterance. Besides, ‘c’est’ is used very often (e.g., [seamwa?] ‘c’est à moi?’ ‘is it mine?’] by young children.

• Dislocation constructions: In oral French, pronouns are often used in co-occurrence with a noun (e.g., [anaεlepati] ‘Anna elle est partie’ ‘Anna she’s gone’ or [ifedodoləʃa], ‘il fait dodo le chat’ ‘it is sleeping, the cat’). Dislocations also involve demonstratives (e.g., [sepabõsa] ‘c’est pas bon ça’ ‘it’s not good, that’).2

• Other pronouns: There also are a few occurrences of indefinite and interrogative pronouns.

This study is focused on referential expressions in subject function. As the period under study covers the emergence of syntax, position was not the sole criterion to iden-tify ‘subjects’; semantic criteria have also been used as in (1) where [lapupe], the agent, has been considered as the ‘subject’:

(1) Alice 1;11 – MLU 2.2 Alice: bwa atas lapupe3

‘boit F 4 tasse la poupée’ ‘drinks F cup the doll’

We also include the category of unmarked reference: during the period under study, the subject can be absent.5 This can be the case in ‘pre-syntactic’ productions, such as (2):

(2) Daniel 1;9 – MLU 1.59 Daniel has just put a piece of something in his shirt. He is looking for it.

Mother: où il est? ‘where is it?’Daniel takes out the object and looks at it.Mother: le voilà! ‘here it is!’Daniel: a!6 kaçe ‘ah! cassé’ ‘oh! broken!’


It can also be the case in utterances that are already syntactically fairly advanced, such as (3):

(3) Arnaud 2;3 – MLU 3.01Mother: qu’est ce qu’elle fait la caméra? ‘what does the camera do?’

Arnaud: feε̃pətipəobwi ‘fait un petit peu F bruit’ ‘makes a little bit F noise’

During this period, (proto)verbs can be associated to proto-forms ([atu]: ‘F tou(rne)’ ‘F turn{/s}’) called ‘fillers’ (Peters, 2000; Veneziano & Sinclair, 2000). The morphological status of these units is uncertain: it is particularly difficult to differentiate a proto-pronoun and a proto-auxiliary in preverbal position which implies that it would also be difficult to specify whether these items are referential. We thus include them in the ‘unmarked reference’ category.

Relation to the interlocutor’s discourse. This analysis7 concerns the referential continuity between the children and their interlocutor’s previous utterances. We consider as inter-locutors not only the mother, the father, or the caretaker but also other children (siblings in home recordings, other children in the nursery) and the observer who is recording.8 The referential expression used by the child can be linked to these previous utterances in four different ways:

Immediate explicit mention (IM): the interlocutor has mentioned the referent (with any referential expression, including pronouns) in the immediately preceding utterances:

(4) Léonard 2;4 – MLU 2.45 Mother and child are looking at a book.Mother: Et oui, et Adèle? ‘yes, and Adèle?’

Léonard: [εletõbela əgad] ‘elle est tombée là regarde’ ‘she fell over there look’

Non-immediate explicit mention (NIM): this groups three different categories:• Distant explicit mention: the interlocutor has mentioned the referent in another

topical sequence, which means that there are at least two shifts in the ‘discourse topic’ (Dik, 1997) between the target utterance and the one produced by the inter-locutor:

(5) Léa 2;2 – MLU 2.4 Léa and her mother are playing in the room. They are looking for stuffed animals.

Léa: ijeu ‘il est où’ ‘where is it?’

Mother: je sais pas. tu sais où il est? hum? ‘I don’t know. do you know where it is? hum?’

. . . eight turns involving Léa’s name and age.

Salazar et al. 383

Léa points to something behind her mother’s back.Léa: ejeja . ʃwimbɔmatata. ɔʃõ ‘elle est là. Simba Matata. (c)ochon’ ‘it’s here. Simba Matata. piggy’

In this case, Léa reintroduces the reference to an object that both interlocutors were looking for previously.

• Inferable reference: the referent has not been explicitly mentioned by the inter-locutor but can be inferred from her/his utterance:

(6) Daniel 2;4 – MLU 2.39 Daniel sits on his train. Daniel: vəvwa mɔ̃ {ə} tuʃu {bi bije}. vwεj

vwa {ə} vaʃ vəjvaʃ ‘veux voir mon F tchou tchou {???}. ‘want to see my F tchu

{veux} voi(r) F {vache/va}. veux tchu. {want} see vache’{vache/va} F {cow/go}, want {cow/go}’

Observer: tu t’en vas? ‘are you leaving?’ Daniel: wi ‘oui’ ‘yes’ Daniel: kɔsa isãva ‘comme ça i(l) s’en va’ ‘like that it’s leaving’

The attention of both participants (the observer and the child) is focused on the little train, which has been mentioned only by the child. Even though we can consider that the observer’s utterance ‘tu t’en vas’ is alluding to the train it does not explicitly mention it.

• Absent referent: the referent mentioned by the child is absent from the previous interlocutor’s discourse:

(7) Arnaud 2;3 – MLU 3.01 Arnaud is having his snack with his mother. Mother: tu vas manger une tarte ‘you are going to eat an apple pie’

aux pommes Arnaud: wε ‘ouais’ ‘yeah’ Mother: ouais ‘yeah’ Arnaud: {uwe} klεmari?

‘{ou est} Claire-Marie?’ ‘where is Claire-Marie?’

Influence of the adult’s utterance. In the cases of immediate referential continuity, chil-dren’s use of referential expressions can be influenced by the form of the interlocutor’s utterance. Four cases are considered:


Utterance reproduction: Children reproduce the lexical and syntactic form of the adult’s utterance:

(8) Margaux 2;3 – MLU 2.62Margaux is having her afternoon snack at the nursery school.Adult: non elle est pas là ‘no she’s not here’Margaux: {selasepala{xx}la++ palasalɔt} ‘c’est là c’est pas là {xx} ++ ‘she’s not here, not here.’ pas là Cha(r)lotte’ Adult: Charlotte? ‘Charlotte?’Margaux: εlepala ‘elle est pas là’ ‘she’s not here’

The reproduction may not immediately follow the interlocutor’s utterance, Margaux replicates the adult’s utterance word for word in her second turn.

Item reproduction: The child takes up the referential expression used by the adult but constructs a different utterance. The child’s utterance shares with his or her interlocutor’s utterance the referential expression (e.g., the noun, the pronoun) for the same referent, without it being a replication of the whole interlocutor’s utterance:

(9) Arnaud 2;3 – MLU 3.01Arnaud and his mother are talking about the observer. Mother: elle va revenir dans un petit ‘she’s coming back soon,

moment, tu finis ta tarte finish your apple pie’ aux pommes

Arnaud: lepati ‘(e)lle est partie’ ‘she’s gone’

The cases when the verb is also taken up are included in this category:

(10) Pauline2 2;3 – MLU 2.52 Mother: elle est où la brioche? ‘where is the cake?’Pauline: εledødã) ‘elle est dedans’ ‘it’s inside’

As illustrated in this example, cases where a clitic pronoun follows an adult’s disloca-tion are also included in this category: the child is taking up a form available in the adult’s discourse.

Elicited: A question by the adult can elicit the form used by the child:

(11) Alice 2;3 – MLU 2.44Mother: qu’est ce que tu veux maintenant? ‘what do you want now?’Max: sε ‘(de)ssert’ ‘desert’

Salazar et al. 385

Absence of direct influence: The form of the adult’s utterance is not directly reflected in the referential expression used by the child:

(12) Léa 2;2 – MLU 2.4Mother: tu veux qu’on fasse une ‘you want us to build a house with lego?’

maison avec les legos?Léa: wi {isɔ̃dədã} ‘oui {i(ls) sont dedans}’ ‘yes they’re inside’

Unmarked references are, by definition, not taken up from the interlocutor’s utterances. Nevertheless we have considered the cases where a filler follows a clitic pronoun (alone or in a dislocation construction) produced by the adult, and cases where they appear after an adult’s question.

Types of dialogical continuity. This analysis deals with a pragmatic-discursive factor that can account for the use of referring expressions in the dynamics of dialogue. In narra-tives, the choice of a referential expression depends on the dynamics of the topics. In dialogue, it can also correspond to the maintenance or the change of perspective towards the discourse of the interlocutor. Three categories can be distinguished:

Repetitions and reformulations of a preceding utterance without adding any new predi-cation to the topic:

(13) Arnaud 2;3 – MLU 3.01Mother: ben c’est Nanaud qui ‘well. It’s Nanaud who is hitting

tape sur les boutons the buttons.’Arnaud: nanoitaibutõ ? ‘Nanaud i(l) ta(pe) F boutons?’ ‘Nanaud is hitting F buttons?’

Contrastive sequences: despite referential continuity there is a shift in the way the topic is tackled – with opposition, a change of thematic focusing (14), perspective shifting, explanations, clarifications or requests for clarification:

(14) Chloé 2;3 – MLU 2.71 Adult: c’est Morgane qui l’a ‘Is it Morgane who has the giraffe?’

la + girafe?Chloé: morgan’nenosapεl +

morgan’nenosapεl ‘Morgane [neno] s’appelle ‘Morgane [neno] is called

Morgane [neno] s’appelle.’ Morgane [neno] is called’

Plain continuity: only a new predication is added on the same topic without any change of perspective or genre shifting:

(15) Daniel 2;0 – MLU 2.02Daniel: pupa (noise for fire men trucks)


Observer: ah papoupa oui! ‘oh! pa pou pa, yes.’Daniel: a ka katje pupa ‘{arête} poupa’ ‘{stopped} pupa’ Observer: ça s’est arrêté oui ‘it stopped, yes’

This category also includes answers to questions about the same discourse object, as in (10).

ReliabilityIntercoder agreement for each of the categories under study was tested for 10% of the data from children randomly selected. The rates of agreement were 98% for grammatical categories and 87% for the presence of the discourse object in the interlocutor’s dis-course. The coding of the two last sets of categories was done separately by different coders (the co-authors) and afterwards discussed by the whole group of coders in order to resolve divergences.

A descriptive approach was adopted for the data analysis. This approach seemed preferable for two main reasons: the first is that children strongly differ as to the amount of occurrences in each category; the second is that, even for adults, the use of a given referential expression depends on various factors, and there are no sharp contrasts for the use of referential expressions for each functional category. We present the total in absolute values and the percentages for each group, as well as the mean and standard deviation for each functional category. Tables A1–A6 in the Appendix9 give the data for each child.

Results

Referential expressions

Table 2 presents the distribution of referential expressions and unmarked reference in subject position.

Our data relate to the acquisition process of pronouns in its very beginning. The lon-gitudinal data enable us to observe how clitic pronouns in subject position emerge. Even though the two children under study very quickly use more than two words per utterance on average, the proportion of clitic pronouns does not grow at the same pace (with the exception of Léonard at 2;3–2;4). Nouns and dislocations are (together) the most fre-quent subjects. Unmarked reference, which appears to be prevalent at 1;9–1;10 in Daniel’s corpus, corresponds to a third of both children’s utterances at 1;11–2;0 but still around 11–15% at 2;1–2;2 and 2;3–2;4. The cross-sectional data present a slightly different distribution as there is no predominant category for the subject position: neither clitic pronouns nor nouns (with dislocations), which are more frequent than clitic pronouns for subject function at any stage. Unmarked reference diminishes with the MLU level, from 39% of the utterances at level 1 to 10% at level 3.

Salazar et al. 387

Tabl

e 2.

Ref

eren

tial e

xpre

ssio

ns a

nd u

nmar

ked

refe

renc

e in

sub

ject

pos

ition

: num

ber

and

(per

cent

age)

Cor

pus

Clit

ic

pron

ouns

N

o. (

%)

Nou

ns

No.

(%

)

Dis

loca

tions

N

o. (

%)

C’e

st

No.

(%

)

Dem

. pr

onou

ns

No.

(%

)

Oth

er

pron

ouns

N

o. (

%)

Unm

arke

d re

fere

nce

No.

(%

)

Tota

l N

o. (

%)

Age

M

LU le

vel

Long

itudi

nal

D

anie

l

1;9–

1;10

Le

vel 1

5 (1

1)0

2 (4

)1

(2)

0 0

37 (

82)

45 (

100)

1;

11–2

;0

Leve

l 25

(6)

26 (

31)

16 (

19)

8 (1

0)5

(6)

024

(29

)84

(10

0)

2;1–

2;2

Leve

l 24

(11)

6 (1

7)12

(33

)5

(14)

5 (1

4)0

4 (1

1)36

(10

0)

2;3–

2;4

Leve

l 314

(11

)17

(13

)33

(25

)28

(22

)18

(14

)1

(1)

37 (

15)

130

(100

)

Léon

ard

1;

11–2

;0

Leve

l 22

(13)

5 (3

1)2

(13)

0 1

(6)

06

(38)

16 (

100)

2;

1–2;

2 Le

vel 2

4 (1

1)6

(16)

9 (2

4)9

(24)

1 (3

)4

(11)

4 (1

1)37

(10

0)

2;3–

2;4

Leve

l 315

(30

)2

(4)

17 (

34)

8 (1

6)0

1 (2

)7

(14)

50 (

100)

Cros

s-se

ctio

nal

1;

11/2

;3Le

vel 1

15 (

20)

5 (7

)12

(16

)8

(11)

5 (7

)0

29 (

39)

74 (

100)

1;

11/2

;3Le

vel 2

32 (

16)

21 (

11)

32 (

16)

56 (

29)

9 (5

)3

(2)

41 (

21)

194

(100

)

1;11

/2;3

Leve

l 345

(15

)36

(12

)52

(18

)11

3 (3

8)16

(5)

4 (1

)29

(10

)29

5 (1

00)


Presence of the referent in the interlocutor’s discourse

Tables 3a and 3b present the distribution of the referential expressions used by the children in subject position according to the previous mention of the referent by their interlocutor. In order to simplify the tables, immediate explicit mention (IM) is contrasted with all other categories (NIM), on the one hand, and clitic pronouns (CP) with other referential expres-sions (ORE) and unmarked reference (UR), on the other hand. The last column indicates the distribution of IM and NIM for each age or MLU level. Tables A1 and A2 in the Appendix9 present, in raw numbers (and percentages), the detail for each child and for each referential expression.

The size of the standard deviations indicates that there are considerable individual dif-ferences. However, (see table A2 in the Appendix9 for full data) for the majority of children, the proportion of occurrences in each category follows the same trend as mean percentages. This is also the case for the results we present in Tables 4a and 4b and 5a and 5b. Given that we deal with dialogic data and that we have focused the analyses on the subject position, topical continuity is predominant for all referential expressions and unmarked reference, even if the distribution is less contrasted for the longitudinal data. Tables 3a and 3b also show that clitic pronouns are not used in the same way as the other referential expressions. Longitudinal data show that, even when clitic pronouns are not very frequent in the corpus (before 2;3), children use them more often in immediate continuity with a referent explicitly mentioned by the interlocutor than when the referent has not been immediately mentioned by the interlocutor (with the exception of Daniel at 2;3–2;4, for whom there is just a slight tendency). The opposite is true for the other referential expressions, especially for disloca-tions, nouns and demonstratives. With the same exception of Daniel at 2;3–2;4, they appear fairly less often in the context of immediate explicit mention than in the context of no immediate mention. On the contrary, unmarked reference follows the same trend as clitic pronouns, being more frequent in the IM than in the NIM condition.

In the cross-sectional data the effect of the dialogical context is clear: for all three lev-els, clitic pronouns are more frequently used when the discourse object is immediately present in the interlocutor’s utterance than when this is not the case, the other referential expressions, and more specifically nouns, dislocation constructions and demonstratives, appear more often in the non-immediate explicit mention condition. The examination of individual data (see also Table A2) shows that nearly all the children at the three levels present this pattern. The exceptions are: Lisa (whose referential expressions other than pronouns are very scarce) and Alice2 (who, on the contrary presents a much higher pro-portion of ORE in subject function). Unmarked reference does not present the same con-figuration as clitic pronouns; it appears in level 2 and level 3 as often in IM condition as in NIM condition. Individual data show that for the majority of children unmarked refer-ences are more frequent in the NIM context than in the IM context.

Influence of the adult’s utteranceTables 4a (longitudinal corpus) and 4b (cross-sectional corpus) present the distribution of formal links with the preceding adult utterance for each type of referential expression produced by the children. In order to grasp the prevalence of the direct influence of the

Salazar et al. 389

Tabl

e 3a

. D

istr

ibut

ion

of r

efer

entia

l exp

ress

ions

acc

ordi

ng t

o th

e m

entio

n of

the

ref

eren

t in

the

inte

rloc

utor

’s di

scou

rse

– lo

ngitu

dina

l dat

a (n

umbe

r an

d pe

rcen

tage

)

Chi

ldA

geM

entio

nC

litic

pro

noun

s%

CP

Oth

er

refe

rent

ial

expr

essi

ons

%

OR

EU

nmar

ked

refe

renc

e%

UR

Tota

l%

Tot

al

Dan

iel

1;9–

1;10

IM 4

16 1

420

80 2

5 5

6N

IM 1

5 2

1017

85 2

0 4

4To

tal 1

;9–1

;10

511

3 7

3782

45

100

1;11

–2;0

IM 5

1122

5017

39 4

4 5

3N

IM 0

032

82 7

18 3

9 4

7To

tal 1

;11–

2;0

5 6

5465

2429

83

100

2;1–

2;2

IM 4

2013

65 3

15 2

0 5

6N

IM 0

015

94 1

6 1

6 4

4To

tal 2

;1–2

;2 4

1128

78 4

11 3

610

02;

3–2;

4IM

911

5973

1316

81

62

NIM

510

3878

612

49

38

Tota

l 2;3

–2;4

1411

9774

1915

130

100

Léon

ard

1;11

–2;0

IM 2

22 2

22 5

56

9 5

6N

IM 0

0 6

86 1

14

7 4

4To

tal 1

;11–

2;0

213

850

637

16

100

2;1–

2;2

IM 3

1714

78 1

5 1

8 4

8N

IM 1

515

79 3

16 1

9 5

1To

tal 2

;1–2

;2 4

1129

78 4

11 3

710

02;

3–2;

4IM

1339

1340

721

33

66

NIM

212

1588

0 0

17

34

Tota

l 2;3

–2;4

1530

2856

714

50

100

IM: e

xplic

it im

med

iate

ly m

entio

ned;

NIM

: non

-imm

edia

tely

men

tione

d (d

ista

nt, i

nfer

able

, or

abse

nt).


Tabl

e 3b

. D

istr

ibut

ion

of r

efer

entia

l exp

ress

ions

acc

ordi

ng t

o th

e m

entio

n of

the

ref

eren

t in

the

inte

rloc

utor

’s di

scou

rse

– cr

oss-

sect

iona

l dat

a (n

umbe

r an

d pe

rcen

tage

)

MLU

gro

upM

entio

nC

litic

pro

noun

sO

ther

ref

eren

tial e

xpre

ssio

nsU

nmar

ked

refe

renc

eTo

tal (

%)

No.

%

Mea

n %

SDN

o.%

Mea

n %

SDN

o.%

Mea

n %

SD

Leve

l 1IM

1223

2915

.1 1

631

3514

.124

4635

1952

(70

)N

IM 3

1415

33.5

14

6365

38.7

523

2012

.822

(30

)To

tal L

115

2022

21.1

30

4146

22.8

2939

3217

.774

(10

0)Le

vel 2

IM28

2219

21.6

76

5859

27.9

2620

2224

.113

0 (6

7)N

IM 4

6 4

8.1

45

7073

16.9

1524

2218

.564

(33

)To

tal L

232

1615

16.9

121

6264

15.9

4121

2115

.819

4 (1

00)

Leve

l 3IM

3820

2424

.413

670

6622

.919

1010

2.5

193

(65)

NIM

7 7

1217

.6 8

583

7518

.810

1012

6.3

102

(35)

Tota

l L3

4515

2123

.522

175

6922

.829

1010

2.2

295

(100

)

IM: e

xplic

it im

med

iate

ly m

entio

ned;

NIM

: non

-imm

edia

tely

men

tione

d (d

ista

nt, i

nfer

able

, or

abse

nt).

Salazar et al. 391

Tabl

e 4a

. In

fluen

ce o

f the

inte

rloc

utor

’s ut

tera

nce

on c

hild

ren’

s us

e of

ref

eren

tial e

xpre

ssio

ns –

long

itudi

nal d

ata

(num

ber

and

perc

enta

ge)

Chi

ldA

geIn

fluen

ceC

litic

pr

onou

ns%

CP

Oth

er

refe

rent

ial

expr

essi

ons

%

OR

EU

nmar

ked

refe

renc

e%

UR

Tota

l%

To

tal

Dan

iel

1;9–

1;10

Item

rep

rodu

ctio

n 2

100

00

00

28

No

influ

ence

2

9 1

420

8723

92To

tal 1

;9–1

;10

4 1

6 1

420

8025

100

1;11

–2;0

Utt

eran

ce

repr

oduc

tion

1 3

3 2

670

03

7It

em r

epro

duct

ion

3 3

3 2

224

459

20N

o in

fluen

ce 1

3

1856

1341

3273

Tota

l 1;1

1–2;

0 5

11

2250

1739

4410

0

2;1–

2;2

Utt

eran

ce

repr

oduc

tion

0

0 3

100

00

315

Item

rep

rodu

ctio

n 2

40

360

00

525

No

influ

ence

2 1

7 7

583

2512

60To

tal 2

;1–2

;2 4

20

1365

315

2010

02;

3–2;

4U

tter

ance

re

prod

uctio

n 0

0

810

00

08

9It

em r

epro

duct

ion

4

0 0

00

100

2430

Elic

ited

0 1

720

831

01

1N

o in

fluen

ce 5

10

2165

1225

4859

Tota

l 2;3

–2;4

9 1

131

7213

1681

100

Léon

ard

1;11

–2;0

Item

rep

rodu

ctio

n 0

0

00

310

03

33N

o in

fluen

ce 2

33

233

233

667

Tota

l 1;1

1–2;

0 2

22

222

556

910

02;

1–2;

2U

tter

ance

re

prod

uctio

n 1

50

150

00

211

Item

rep

rodu

ctio

n 2

50

125

125

422

No

influ

ence

0

012

100

10

1267

Tota

l 2;1

–2;2

3 1

714

781

618

100

2;3–

2;4

Utt

eran

ce

repr

oduc

tion

0

0 1

100

00

13

Item

rep

rodu

ctio

n10

83

18

18

1239

No

influ

ence

3 1

710

565

2818

58To

tal 2

;3–2

;413

42

1239

619

3110

0


Tabl

e 4b

. In

fluen

ce o

f the

inte

rloc

utor

’s ut

tera

nce

on c

hild

ren’

s ch

oice

of r

efer

entia

l exp

ress

ion

– cr

oss-

sect

iona

l dat

a (n

umbe

r an

d pe

rcen

tage

)

MLU

gr

oup

Influ

ence

Clit

ic p

rono

uns

Oth

er r

efer

entia

l exp

ress

ions

Unm

arke

d re

fere

nce

Tota

l (%

)

No.

%M

ean

%SD

%N

o.%

Mea

n %

SD %

No.

%M

ean

%SD

%

Leve

l 1El

icite

d0

00

310

040

54.8

00

03

(6)

Item

rep

rodu

ctio

n4

5741

.750

343

46.7

50.6

00

07

(13)

Utt

eran

ce

repr

oduc

tion

00

01

100

2044

.70

00

1 (2

)N

o in

fluen

ce8

19.5

29.3

16.9

922

24.3

20.3

2458

.546

.317

.941

(79

)To

tal L

112

2329

15.1

1631

3514

.124

4635

18.9

52 (

100)

Leve

l 2El

icite

d0

00

110

020

44.7

00

01

(1)

Item

rep

rodu

ctio

n14

5039

37.1

1346

58.5

34.1

10

00.

128

(22

)U

tter

ance

re

prod

uctio

n3

1925

36.3

1381

7536

.30

00

16 (

12)

No

influ

ence

1113

13.5

13.5

4958

58.9

24.3

2529

.427

.627

.285

(65

)To

tal L

228

2219

21.6

7658

5926

.926

2022

24.1

130

(100

)Le

vel 3

Elic

ited

00

03

100

6054

.80

00

3 (2

)It

em r

epro

duct

ion

2649

45.1

32.3

2445

49.8

293

00.

10.

153

(27

)U

tter

ance

re

prod

uctio

n1

525

5021

9575

500

00

22 (

11)

No

influ

ence

1110

10.3

7.3

8877

75.1

7.4

1613

.914

.713

.511

5 (6

0)To

tal L

338

2024

24.5

136

7066

22.9

1910

9.9

2.49

100

Salazar et al. 393

interlocutor’s utterance form in the children’s use of referential expressions, the last column presents the global percentage of each functional category for each age or MLU level.

Tables 4a and 4b show that direct influence of the interlocutor’s utterance is not a homoge-neous phenomenon across children and ages or MLU levels. For both the longitudinal and cross-sectional data, direct influence of the form of the interlocutor’s discourse ranges from 0% to 60% (see also and Tables A3 and A4 in the Appendix9 for full data). In the longitudinal data, item reproduction ranges from 8% to 40% of the children’s utterances, utterance reproduction from 0% to 15% and elicitation is a marginal phenomenon present only in Daniel’s data. These data show that the two children therefore do not behave in the same way as far as this direct influence is concerned. Daniel tends to produce clitic pronouns after the adult has also pro-duced one (item reproduction) in the first months and then use them autonomously, whereas Léonard presents the opposite pattern with item reproduction for clitic pronouns only after 2;1. But for both children, utterance reproduction does not seem to be a privileged context for the production of clitic pronouns. It therefore seems difficult to consider that there is a systematic trend for the influence of the form of the interlocutor’s utterance on children’s utterances.

The cross-sectional data show that utterance reproduction grows from 2% to 12% and that item reproduction grows from 13% at level 1 to 27% of the children’s utterances at level 3. Elicitation by questions appears as a minor process in any case and, as it could be expected, unmarked references are more often associated with an absence of influence. In item reproduction contexts, clitic pronouns seem to be as frequent as the other referential expressions. Individual data confirm that children behave differently with respect to the way they anchor their productions in their interlocutor’s utterance. At each MLU level, some children (two at level 1, two at level 2 and four at level 3) proportionally take up clitic pronouns more often than other referential expressions from their interlocutors’ utterances. The other children either behave equally for clitic pronouns and other referen-tial expressions, or take up the other referential expressions more often.

Types of dialogical continuityTables 5a (longitudinal) and 5b (cross-sectional) present the type of dialogical continuity existing between the children’s utterances and their interlocutor’s immediately preceding utterance (see also Tables A5 and A6 in the Appendix9).

Globally, plain continuity is the most frequent link between the children’s utterances and their interlocutor’s turns. The longitudinal data show that pronouns appear more often, at each age period, in this context whereas the other referential expressions tend to be acti-vated more frequently when there is a contrast, a repetition or a reformulation. With the exception of Daniel at 1;9–1;10 and Léonard at 2;1–2;2, unmarked reference appears more frequently in the context of plain continuity than in the context of contrast sequencing. But it does not show the same pattern as clitic pronouns for repetition – reformulation.

As for the cross-sectional corpus, the data show an evolution between level 1 and level 3. At level 1, there are no differences between plain continuity and contrast for clitic pronouns, but the other referential expressions appear slightly more frequently in the context of con-trast and repetition or reformulation. Two types of profile can be set on the basis of the individual data (Table A6 in the Appendix9): at level 1, three children use clitic pronouns more often in the context of plain continuity and other referential expressions in the context


Tabl

e 5a

. D

istr

ibut

ion

of r

efer

entia

l exp

ress

ions

acc

ordi

ng t

o th

e ty

pe o

f dia

logi

cal c

ontin

uity

– lo

ngitu

dina

l dat

a (n

umbe

r an

d pe

rcen

tage

)

Chi

ldA

geD

ialo

gica

l co

ntin

uity

Clit

ic

pron

ouns

% C

PO

ther

ref

eren

tial

expr

essi

ons

% O

RE

Unm

arke

d re

fere

nce

% U

RTo

tal

% T

otal

Dan

iel

1;9–

1;10

Plai

n co

nt.

327

00

8 73

11

44C

ontr

ast

00

113

7 87

832

Rep

./ref

1 17

00

5 83

624

Tota

l4

161

420

80

2510

01;

11–2

;0Pl

ain

cont

.2

204

404

4010

24C

ontr

ast

2 12

953

635

1742

Rep

./ref

.1

76

437

5014

34To

tal

5 12

1946

1741

4110

02;

1–2;

2Pl

ain

cont

.3

503

500

06

30C

ontr

ast

117

583

00

6 30

Rep

./ref

.0

05

633

378

40To

tal

4 20

1365

315

2010

02;

3– 2

;4Pl

ain

cont

.5

249

437

3321

27C

ontr

ast

312

2285

14

2633

Rep

./ref

.1

326

815

1632

40To

tal

9 11

5772

1316

7910

0Lé

onar

d1;

11–2

;0Pl

ain

cont

.2

501

25 1

25

4 4

4C

ontr

ast

00

150

150

222

Rep

./ref

.0

00

03

100

333

Tota

l2

222

225

569

100

2;1–

2;2

Plai

n co

nt.

2 50

250

00

422

Con

tras

t1

253

750

04

22R

ep./r

ef.

00

990

110

10

56To

tal

3 17

1478

15

1810

02;

3–2;

4Pl

ain

cont

.10

55

528

317

1855

Con

tras

t0

05

712

297

21R

ep./r

ef.

338

338

225

824

Tota

l13

3913

397

2133

100

Salazar et al. 395

Tabl

e 5b

. D

istr

ibut

ion

of r

efer

entia

l exp

ress

ions

acc

ordi

ng t

o th

e ty

pe o

f dia

logi

cal c

ontin

uity

– c

ross

-sec

tiona

l dat

a (n

umbe

r an

d pe

rcen

tage

)

MLU

gro

upD

ialo

gica

l co

ntin

uity

Clit

ic p

rono

uns

Oth

er r

efer

entia

l exp

ress

ions

Unm

arke

d re

fere

nce

Tota

l (%

)

No.

%M

ean

%SD

%N

o.%

Mea

n %

SD %

No.

%M

ean

%SD

%

Leve

l 1Pl

ain

cont

inui

ty8

2824

26.8

724

3841

.514

4837

28.3

29 (

57)

Con

tras

t3

2719

37.5

436

4142

.54

3640

49.0

11 (

22)

Rep

./ref

.1

911

19.2

436

5439

.96

5535

35.7

11 (

22)

Tota

l L1

1223

2915

.116

3135

14.1

2446

3518

.951

(10

0)Le

vel 2

Plai

n co

ntin

uity

1833

2433

2342

4930

.314

2527

29.1

55 (

42)

Con

tras

t4

86

8.1

3672

7616

.410

2018

14.4

50 (

38)

Rep

./ref

.6

2438

46.5

1768

5241

.52

810

22.4

25 (

19)

Tota

l L2

2822

1921

.676

5859

26.9

2620

2224

.113

0 (1

00)

Leve

l 3Pl

ain

cont

inui

ty33

4138

27.3

3644

4424

.312

1518

13.7

81 (

42)

Con

tras

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of contrasts or reformulations, whereas two other children invert this pattern. At level 2, clitic pronouns are clearly more frequent for plain continuity than for contrast and this dif-ference increases at level 3. The pattern is inverted for the other referential expressions. At level 2, one child does not reproduce this pattern and two of them also present pronouns more often in the context of repetition or reformulation. A level 3, there is only one child for whom there is no real contrast between the use of clitic pronouns and other referential expressions.

Unmarked reference is, at each level, more frequent in the context of plain continuity than in the context of contrast sequencing. At level 1 it is a prevalent feature of utterances in repetition or reformulation; this characteristic diminishes dramatically at levels 2 and 3. For these two levels, the unmarked reference pattern is similar to that of the clitic pronouns.

Discussion The data presented in the Results section concern the very first periods in the acquisition of clitic pronouns. In this research, several issues related to children’s use of clitic pro-nouns as opposed to other referential expressions were explored. The analysis was restricted to the subject position. In the first place, the results confirm that most referen-tial expressions tend to code a referent previously mentioned by the interlocutor, which is natural in dialogue. It can be assumed from previous studies (Matthews et al., 2006; Salazar Orvig et al., 2010) that children draw on intersubjective sharing and dialogue to construct their discourse rather than relying on their sole apprehension of the world.

On these bases, two main issues were investigated. The first concerns the links between the child’s production of a clitic pronoun and the forms used by his or her inter-locutor in the immediate context. Four possibilities were considered: the child’s utter-ance is merely a repetition, the child takes up the referential expression (clitic pronoun or other) used by the adult in the immediate context, the referential expression (clitic pronoun or other) is elicited by a question, or the referential expression (clitic pronoun or other) mainly stands for a co-referential relation without directly depending on the form used by the interlocutor. The second main issue concerns the role of a pragmatic-discursive factor in the use of pronouns in contrast to the use of other referential expressions.

The results for the first issue show that this relation does not always correspond to the mere uptake of the interlocutor’s construction. This is true for elicitation by a question, as well as for the exact reproduction of the interlocutor’s utterances. Concerning the use of pronouns by the children just after the adults have used one themselves, our definition of the category ‘item reproduction’ includes several cases of possible direct influence by the form of the adult’s utterance, including when a subject–verb construction produced by the adult (be it assertive or interrogative) shapes the child’s response (example 10). The results form a complex picture. The ‘item reproduction’ phenomenon is not perva-sive throughout the whole corpus and there are considerable differences among the chil-dren in the use of clitic pronouns in this context. The hypothesis of a mere reproduction of an anaphoric link established by the adult (Levy, 1989, 1999) should thus be dis-missed. Even if children anchor their production in the adults’ utterances, they do not always preferentially take up the referential expression used by their interlocutor.

On the other hand, if we go back to the results in Tables 4a and 4b, we can observe that the more linguistically advanced children take up the interlocutor referential expression,

Salazar et al. 397

without reproducing his/her utterance, more often than the less advanced children. Thus, the reproduction of the form does not necessarily correspond to an acquisitional move. It can depend on the dynamics of the dialogue. Therefore factors other than the influence of the form used by the interlocutor might play a part in the use of pronouns in continuity with the interlocutor’s discourse. For instance, the shared construction of a topical sequence could partly explain the use of pronouns. As a matter of fact, fewer children in level 1 take up the clitic pronouns from the interlocutors’ utterances. This could be due to the fact that during the first stages of language acquisition, dialogical exchanges are short (McTear, 1985; Ninio & Snow, 1996; Salazar Orvig, 2003). On the contrary, four of the five children in level 3 show a preference for clitic pronoun continuity. This suggests a correlation between pronoun use and children’s ability to maintain a conversation topic in dialogue.

This leads us to consider pragmatic-discursive factors. The analysis presented here con-cerns the types of continuity between the child’s productions and the previous adult utter-ances in the dynamics of the dialogue. In adult language, the use of pronouns in contrast with other referential expressions depends on referent accessibility (Ariel, 1988; Givón, 1995; Prince, 1981). Similarly, studies on narratives in children (Bamberg, 1986; Hickmann, 2002) show that the use of nouns or dislocations mostly corresponds to shifts and reintro-ductions of topics. However, according to Apothéloz (1995) the choice of referential expressions does not only depend on this factor, it can also be linked to modifications of the discourse genre (for example shifting from description to argumentation). According to our results on dialogical continuity, children’s discourse presents similar phenomena.

In the case of plain continuity, the children’s discourse might be in line with a discur-sive representation (Cornish, 1999) that was previously elaborated and shared. In the case of repetitions and reformulations children do not add anything to the discursive represen-tation, they simply reiterate it. Finally, when children need to express a contrast, they tend to use nouns or dislocations. Their verbal production functions as a new utterance act, either because children change the discourse focus (request for clarification) or because they change perspective, or finally because they need to assert their own positioning as speaker. Level 2 and 3 children (four out of five, each time) favour the use of clitic pro-nouns when a topic is continued and new predications are added in linear progression. They use nouns and dislocations when there is a contrast with the interlocutor’s utterance. This preference seems to be initiated while the children are in the process of mastering the use of pronouns as it appears if we consider cases where there are five or more pronouns in subject position: Lisa (level 1), Léa (level 2), Cécile, Margaux and Pauline2 (level 3) in the cross-sectional data and Daniel at 1;11–2;0 and 2;3–2;4 and Léonard at 2;3–2;4 in the longitudinal data; only Chloé (level 3) presents an undifferentiated pattern.

But the data also show that plain continuity can be expressed as well through forms other than pronouns. This might indicate that the use of a particular referential device follows a more complex pattern. Let us consider the case of nouns (alone or in disloca-tions), on the one hand, and the case of unmarked references, on the other hand.

As far as nouns or dislocations are concerned, they are mostly used in the context of a contrast (shifting topics or points of view) with the preceding discourse. Nevertheless, this can interact with the fact that, in certain cases, children do take up forms previously used by adults (17 out of 29 cases). The following example suggests how these two fac-tors seem to combine:


(16) Léa 2;2 – MLU 2.4

Léa and her mother are talking about a fictional character, a little princess named ‘Poucelina’.Mother 180: Et le prince il est beau le prince? ‘and the prince, he is

handsome, the prince?’Léa 157: wi ‘oui’ ‘yes’Mother 181: c’est vrai? ‘it’s true?’ Léa 158: əpε̃ijepaʒãti ləpε̃s dəpuselina ‘Fp(r)in(ce) il est pas gentil ‘F prince, he is not nice,

le p(r)ince de Poucelina’ Poucelina’s prince’Mother 182: pourquoi il est pas gentil? ‘why isn’t he nice?’Léa 159: pasøkø ijemeʃã ‘pa(r)ce que il est méchant’ ‘because he is mean’. . . talking about other topicsLéa 176: jəpε dəpuselina ijemeʃã

‘le p(r)in(ce) de poucelina ‘Poucelina’s prince, he is il est méchant’ mean.’

Mother 205: oh bien ça! on n’a pas réussi ‘well we haven’t found out à savoir pourquoi il était why he was mean. well, méchant mais bon! pourquoi il why is he mean the prince?’ est méchant le prince?

Léa looks up at the camera and then looks at a toy.Léa 177: pasøkø iiijedijebo meijepabo

‘pa(r)ce que {i i} {il est dit/il ‘because {? ?} {it’s said/he dit/j’ai dit} il est beau mais il says/ I said} he is handsome, est pas beau’ but he isn’t handsome’

In turn Mother180, the mother refers to ‘Poucelina’s prince’ using a double dislocated construction, in turn Léa 158, the child reproduces the double dislocation used by her mother. In the next turns (Mother 182 and Léa 159) referential continuity is marked by the exclusive use of a pronoun, again both by the mother and the child. This could lead us to the conclusion that the child is simply adopting the adult’s model. However, this is not the case in Léa 177 where Léa continues with a pronoun even though her mother did not use it in her question. Returning to the first part of the excerpt, note that in turn Léa 158, there is a slight shift in perspectives. The child adds a predication about the prince, but this predication is in contrast with the one proposed by the mother: as French children usually do, Léa uses here ‘pas beau’ (‘not beautiful, not handsome’) as a synonym of ‘pas gentil’ (‘not nice’). Therefore it can also be considered as being in opposition with the representation the mother was giving of the character. In the third part of the dialogue the referent ‘le prince’ is reintroduced with a dislo-cation (a typical form for reintroductions) by the child and then continued with pronouns both by the child and the mother. The mother’s speech turn (Mother 205) illustrates the dif-ference between plain continuity (we haven’t found out why he was mean) and contrast marked by a new question to the child (why is the prince mean?). The child’s utterance is in continuity with this discursive representation and only the pronoun is used after that turn.

Salazar et al. 399

The results concerning unmarked reference deserve a specific discussion. As far as types of continuity are concerned, unmarked reference is as frequent as clitic pronouns in the dif-ferent contexts, especially in the less advanced children in the cross-sectional data. Therefore before pronouns are mastered, topical continuity seems to be maintained by predications on referents that are implicit in the children’s productions (Tables 5a and 5b) but have been previously mentioned in the discourse, and particularly by the interlocutor. This corrobo-rates the results of the study on English by Hughes and Allen (2006), who consider that pragmatic discursive features of null arguments foreshadow the adult use of pronouns. In a similar vein, De Cat (2004b) suggests that subject omission does not correspond to a lack of pragmatic competence in young children. As a matter of fact, this type of utterance is set in the framework of joint attention episodes, which for Bruner (1978) are the prerequisite for the referential function. When pronouns emerge, children might already master two func-tions: (1) the deictic function, which corresponds in the gestural modality to pointing and in the linguistic modality to devices such as demonstratives; and (2) the topical continuity function, for which children produce predications about unmarked referents (with or with-out fillers) in joint attention episodes. The emergence of clitic pronouns can thus be consid-ered in terms of the well-described process by Slobin: ‘New forms first express old functions, and new functions are first expressed by old forms’ (Slobin, 1973, p. 184). Third person clitic pronouns might not initiate the ‘anaphoric’ function but actually become the privileged tool to convey a function that was already present in the children’s language uses.

Overall, these findings suggest that children’s uses of pronouns reflect early prag-matic skills, which seem to be acquired during the period under study. Children seem to be able to differentiate moves in dialogue and to choose the adequate linguistic devices to express them. Even though differentiation with the use of other referential expressions does not seem to be established for every child at levels 1 or 2 , there are no cases where a greater number of pronouns are used for other types of continuity.

The relation between the discourse of the child and the discourse of the interlocutor is not confined to a mere referential coincidence. On the one hand, children master topical continuity before the use of pronouns (Bruner, 1978; Ochs, Schieffelin, & Platt, 1979; Veneziano, 2000) and, on the other hand, the present findings show that when they start to use pronouns, they tend to contrast them with other referential expressions. Hence, we can consider that third person clitic pronouns have the value of marking topical continu-ity in a shared discursive representation. At a more general level, the results suggest that in the process of acquiring morphological devices, children do not first acquire their strict grammatical values and add their discursive value later on. On the contrary, the discursive values are associated with the grammatical level from the onset.

These findings confirm the relevance of a pragmatic study of the emergence of pro-nouns that takes the dialogical conditions of their acquisition into account. Nevertheless, dialogical conditions must not be understood as mere ‘copying’ of adult productions on the part of the child. Our data suggest that children’s productions are predominantly anchored in an intersubjective space shared in dialogue. Indeed, most referents mentioned by the children were first mentioned by the adult. In a Bakhtinian approach to language (Bakhtin, 1986), this means that children use the interlocutor’s discourse in order to elab-orate their own. This could be the framework for two types of concurrent phenomena that could be explored in further research. First, mediation: adults mediate the construction of


longer and more continuous sequences in their dialogues with children; and second, an ‘integration of interactional episodes’ (Veneziano, 2000, p. 254, our translation). Children, in their communicative experience, grasp the contrasts marked by adults in their choice of referential expressions – and in particular the fact that adults use pronouns in the context of plain continuity, and nouns and dislocations for contrastive sequences.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Edy Veneziano, Kevin Durkin and the three anonymous reviewers for their thorough reading of a first version of this article and their stimulating comments. We would also like to thank Cristina Corlateanu and Gwendoline Fox for their collaboration.

Notes1 We have excluded all first and second person reference as well as metalinguistic utterances.2 The only three cases of tonic third person pronouns appear in dislocations.3 We present an interpretation of the examples in French and a translation in English along

with the phonetic transcription. Braces indicate ambiguities and uncertain transcriptions, translations or interpretations. A slash separates alternative interpretations.

4 We use F to indicate the probable presence of a filler syllable.5 Contrary to English, German or other languages (Allen, 2000; Givón, 1995; Hickmann,

2002), in French null forms are not a syntactic choice for subject function (except when two predications are coordinated).

6 The intonation is clearly exclamatory here, which leads us to interpret this [a] as an interjection and not as a filler.

7 This issue has been treated for all functions in Salazar Orvig et al. (2010).8 Note that in cross-sectional observations, the observer left the room during the recording.9 Appendix available at http://fla.sagepub.com/content/30/3-4/375/suppl/DC1

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