"This book describes the repertoire and uses of referring expressions by French-speaking children and their interlocutors in naturally occurring dialogues at home and at school, in a wide-range of communicative situations and activities. Through the lens of an interactionist and dialogical perspective, it highlights the interaction between the formal aspects of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes, the discourse-pragmatic dimension, and socio-discursive, interactional and dialogical factors. Drawing on this multidimensional theoretical and methodological framework, the first part of the book deals with the relation between reference and grammar, while the second part is devoted to the role of the communicative experience. Progressively, a set of arguments is brought out in favor of a dialogical and interactionist account of children's referential development. This theoretical stance is further discussed in relation to other approaches of reference acquisition. Thus, this volume provides researchers and students with new perspectives and methods for the study of referring expressions in children"--.

• The Acquisition of Referring Expressions
• Editorial page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Table of contents
• List of Figures
  • Figure 1. Distribution (in percentage) of target forms and fillers in the prenominal and preverbal positions by age in months for two longitudinal follow-ups
  • Figure 2. Types of consonants in prenominal forms where le or la (‘the’) was expected (Adrien)
  • Figure 3. Types of consonants in prenominal forms where le or la (‘the’) was expected ­(Madeleine)
  • Figure 4. Types of consonants in preverbal forms where je (‘I’) was expected (Adrien)
  • Figure 5. Types of consonants in preverbal forms where je (‘I’) was expected (Madeleine)
  • Figure 6. Distribution (in percentage) of the different types of forms in preverbal position, by type of referent
  • Figure 7. Distribution (in percentage) of the different types of forms in the preverbal position, by type of referent, for verbs produced both in utterances referring to the self and in ones referring to entities in the same session
  • Figure 1. Binary partition tree for referring uses of nouns
  • Figure 2. Binary partition tree for strong demonstrative pronouns
  • Figure 3. Binary partition tree for strong personal pronouns
  • Figure 4. Binary partition tree for clitic personal pronouns
  • Figure 5. Binary partition tree for fillers
  • Figure 6. Binary partition tree for null forms
  • Figure 1. Binary partition tree for clitic and strong third-person pronouns
  • Figure 2. Binary partition tree for nouns
  • Figure 1. Binary partition tree for clitic pronouns, by position in the referential chain, syntactic function, and population
  • Figure 1. Binary partition tree for third-person pronouns for discourse-given referents
  • Figure 2. Binary partition tree for nouns for discourse-given referents
  • Figure 3. Binary partition tree for strong demonstrative pronouns for discourse-given ­referents
  • Figure 1. Binary partition tree for nouns
  • Figure 1. Binary partition tree for third-person pronouns in the toddler corpus
  • Figure 2. Binary partition tree for nouns in the toddler corpus
  • Figure 3. Binary partition tree for clitic demonstrative pronouns in the toddler corpus
  • Figure 4. Binary partition tree for strong demonstrative pronouns in the toddler corpus
  • Figure 5. Binary partition tree for strong demonstrative pronouns in narrative sequences
  • Figure 6. Binary partition tree for clitic demonstrative pronouns in narrative sequences
  • Figure 7. Binary partition tree for nouns in narrative sequences
  • Figure 8. Binary partition tree for third-person pronouns in narrative sequences
• List of Tables
  • Table 1. Data used
  • Table 2. Data groups for quantitative analyses
  • Table 3. Distribution (in percentage) of forms in the prenominal position (total for all sessions, and maximum and minimum values), by MLU group
  • Table 4. Distribution (in percentage) of forms in the preverbal position (total for all sessions, and maximum and minimum values), by MLU group
  • Table 5. Percentages of unexpected realizations of /l/ in lexical words and in prenominal fillers, across all sessions
  • Table 6. Percentage of unexpected realizations of /ʒ/ in lexical words and in preverbal fillers
  • Table 7. Distribution (in percentage) of the noun and verb lemmas according to the types of occurrences in the prelexical position (total for all sessions, and maximum and minimum values)
  • Table 8. Distribution (in percentage) of noun and verb lemmas associated (or not) to fillers, according to whether or not fluctuation was present in the prenominal and preverbal positions
  • Table 9. Regression tables for clitic pronouns, fillers and no-form in pre-verbal position
  • Table 1. Participants, by MLU group, age and number of sessions
  • Table 2. Distribution (in percentage) of the referring expressions for each MLU group
  • Table 3. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions for each syntactic function
  • Table 4. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions for each type of referent
  • Table 5. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions for each attentional and discursive status
  • Table 6. Regression tables for strong referring expressions (nouns, strong demonstrative pronouns, strong personal pronouns)
  • Table 7. Regression tables for weak referring expressions (clitic personal pronouns, fillers, and null forms)
  • Table 1. Distribution of referring expressions (in percentage) by their position in the referential chain, their syntactic function, the referent’s characteristics, and the child’s age, for all participants pooled
  • Table 2. Distribution (in percentage) of determiners preceding a noun according to their position in the referential chain and the referent’s characteristics
  • Table 3. Regression tables for clitic and strong third-person pronouns and nouns
  • Table 1. Type of referring expression, by population and position in the referential chain (group percentage)
  • Table 2. Regression tables for clitic pronouns, nouns without a determiner, and null subjects
  • Table 1. Distribution (in percentage) of the prosodic contours of the referring expressions used by the children and their mothers, by position in the referential chain
  • Table 2. Distribution (in percentage) of left dislocations, right dislocations, and double dislocations for noun, demonstrative and strong personal pronouns dislocated forms used by the children and their mothers
  • Table 3. Distribution (in percentage) of dislocations by position in the referential chain, used by the children and their mothers
  • Table 4. Distribution (in percentage) of all referring expressions by position in the referential chain, used by the children and their mothers
  • Table 5. Number of occurrences of prosodic contours in left dislocations and right dislocations, produced by the children and their mothers
  • Table 6. Distribution (in percentage) of the referring expressions for all complements and for Mettre+X, Vouloir+X, and C’est+X, used by the children and their mothers
  • Table 7. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions according to their position in the referential chain, for all complements, Mettre+X, Vouloir+X, and C’est+X, used by the children and their mothers
  • Table 8. Distribution (in percentage) of common nouns, according to their position in the referential chain, for all complements, Mettre+X, Vouloir+X, and C’est+X, used by the children and their mothers
  • Table 9. Distribution (in percentage) of clitic pronouns used by the children and their mothers, according to their position in the referential chain for all complements of Mettre+X, and Vouloir+X
  • Table 1. Distribution (in percentage) of the referring expressions for the children and their interlocutors
  • Table 2. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions for each attentional and discursive status of the referents, for the children and their interlocutors
  • Table 3. Regression tables for third-person clitic pronouns, nouns, and strong demonstrative pronouns for all referring expressions used by the children and their interlocutors
  • Table 4. Distribution (in percentage) of children’s referring expressions for discourse- given referents, according to their correspondence with the form used by their interlocutors
  • Table 5. Distribution (in percentage) of children’s referring expressions for discourse-given referents, according to their correspondence category of interlocutor’s antecedents
  • Table 6. Regression tables for third-person clitic pronouns, nouns, and strong demonstrative pronouns for discourse-given referring expressions in the children’s discourse
  • Table 7. Distribution (in percentages) of the children’s referring expressions for given referents, according to the type of dialogical relations
  • Table 1. Distribution (in percentage) of the referring expression categories in the Adult-to-Experimenter and Mother-to-Child contexts, by position in the referential chain
  • Table 2. Overall distribution (in percentage) of NPs (simple and dislocated) in first mentions, in the Adult-to-Experimenter and Mother-to-Child contexts
  • Table 3. Distribution (in percentage) of the referring expressions categories in Home and School contexts, by position in the referential chain
  • Table 4. Distribution (in percentage) of dislocations in Home and School contexts
  • Table 5. Distribution (in percentage) of the referring expressions categories for mothers of typically developing children and mothers of children with DLD, by position in the referential chain
  • Table 1. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions used by the toddlers, in each activity and for all activities pooled
  • Table 2. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions used by the older group, for each activity and for all activities pooled
  • Table 3. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions produced by the older children, for each social setting and for both settings taken together
  • Table 4. Distribution (in percentage) of the referring expressions used by the toddler group at each position in the referential chain, for all activities pooled and for each ­activity taken separately
  • Table 5. Distribution (in percentage) of the referring expressions used by the older children in the two acitvities, and at each position in the referential chain
  • Table 6. Regression tables for nouns used by the older children  
  • Table 7. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions at each position in the referential chain, for the two social settings pooled and for each setting taken separately (home vs. school)
  • Table 1. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions for the two corpora
  • Table 2. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions in the discursive sequences of the toddler corpus
  • Table 3. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions for each utterance genre among the toddlers (with H&N and Nar pooled)
  • Table 4. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions for each position in the referential chain in the toddler corpus (with H&N and Nar pooled)
  • Table 5. Regression tables for third-person pronouns, nouns, clitic demonstrative pronouns and strong demonstrative pronouns in the toddler corpus (Nar and H&N sequences)
  • Table 6. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions for each utterance genre in the narrative sequences for the two corpora taken together
  • Table 7. Distribution (in percentage) of referring expressions for each position in the referential chain, in narrative sequences (for the two corpora pooled)
  • Table 8. Regression tables for third-person pronouns, nouns, clitic demonstrative pronouns and strong demonstrative pronouns in the narrative sequences of the toddlers and the older children
• List of Contributors
• 1. A dialogical approach to the acquisition and usage of referring expressions
  • 1. Formal aspects of the acquisition of the referring expressions: What is involved?
  • 2. Reference and dialogue
    • 2.1 Main studies on the acquisition of reference
    • 2.2 Reference in dialogue
      • 2.2.1 The dialogical roots of reference
      • 2.2.2 Discourse in dialogue
      • 2.2.3 Reference scaffolded by dialogue
      • 2.2.4 Dialogue, genre, activity, and discursive autonomy
    • 2.3 The need for a multidimensional dialogical perspective
  • 3. Dialogical approach: methodological implications
    • 3.1 Varied corpora
    • 3.2 Formal and functional aspects in a multidimensional approach
  • 4. This book
  • Funding
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
• 2. Filler syllables as precursors of referring expressions
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 Fillers in the context of the development of referring expressions
    • 1.2 Construction of the pronoun and determiner categories
      • 1.2.1 Positional and distributional factors in the emergence of pronouns and determiners
      • 1.2.2 Semantic and pragmatic factors in the emergence of pronouns and ­determiners
    • 1.3 Corpora used and outline of this chapter
  • 2. Prenominal and preverbal forms at the onset of language production
    • 2.1 Identifying the forms
    • 2.2 Results
    • 2.3 Discussion and tentative conclusion
  • 3. Formal and distributional properties of filler syllables
    • 3.1 Specific phonological properties of fillers
      • 3.1.1 Method
      • 3.1.2 Results
        • 3.1.2.1 Accurate realizations of consonants and consonant harmonies
        • 3.1.2.2 Inaccurate realizations of consonants in lexemes and in prelexical forms
      • 3.1.3 Discussion and tentative conclusion
    • 3.2 Are fillers lexically specific?
      • 3.2.1 Coding
      • 3.2.2 Results
    • 3.3 Tentative conclusion
  • 4. Functional dimensions of filler syllables
  • 5. Discussion and conclusion
• 3. Young children’s uses of referring expressions
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 Children’s first referring expressions
      • 1.1.1 Factors affecting the use of expressions referring to entities
      • 1.1.2 Factors affecting the uses of expressions referring to the discourse ­participants
    • 1.2 The aim of this study
  • 2. Method
    • 2.1 Participants and data collection
    • 2.2 Coding system
      • 2.2.1 Types of referring expressions
      • 2.2.2 Intercoder agreement and statistics
  • 3. Factors affecting the use of referring expressions
    • 3.1 Impact of linguistic development on the use of referring expressions
    • 3.2 Impact of syntactic function on the use of referring expressions
    • 3.3 Type of referent
    • 3.4 Attentional and discursive status of the referent
    • 3.5 Interactions between factors
      • 3.5.1 Nouns
      • 3.5.2 Strong demonstrative pronouns
      • 3.5.3 Strong personal pronouns
      • 3.5.4 Clitic personal pronouns
      • 3.5.5 Fillers
      • 3.5.6 Null forms
  • 4. Discussion
  • 5. Conclusion
• 4. Referring in dialogical narratives
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 Position in the referential chain
    • 1.2 Referent’s characteristics
    • 1.3 Syntactic function
    • 1.4 Aim of the study
  • 2. Method
    • 2.1 Participants and data collection
    • 2.2 Coding
      • 2.2.1 Identifying the referents
      • 2.2.2 Categories of referring expressions
      • 2.2.3 Position in the referential chain
      • 2.2.4 Characteristics of the story referents
      • 2.2.5 Syntactic function
    • 2.3 Intercoder agreement and statistics
  • 3. Results
    • 3.1 The use of referring expressions in terms of the different factors
    • 3.2 Use of third-person pronouns and nouns
    • 3.2.1 Factors of variation in the use of third-person pronouns
      • 3.2.2 Factors of variation in the use of nouns
  • 4. Discussion
    • 4.1 Effects of the various factors
    • 4.2 Factor interdependence
    • 4.3 Further perspectives
• 5. Referring expressions and developmental language disorders
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Method
    • 2.1 Participants
    • 2.2 Procedure
    • 2.3 Coding
      • 2.3.1 Type of referring expressions
      • 2.3.2 Position in the referential chain
      • 2.3.3 Syntactic function
  • 3. Results
    • 3.1 Discursive and syntactic effects on the use of clitic pronouns
    • 3.2 Effects of the position in the referential chain on nouns without a determiner, and on null subjects
  • 4. Discussion
• 6. Explorations in the relations between reference, syntactic constructions and prosody
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 Dislocations and reference
    • 1.2 Verb frames and reference
    • 1.3 Prosody and reference
    • 1.4 Aim of the study
  • 2. Method and preliminary results
    • 2.1 Participants and data collection
    • 2.2 Coding
      • 2.2.1 Categories of referring expressions
      • 2.2.2 Verb frames
      • 2.2.3 Position within the referential chain
      • 2.2.4 Prosody
      • 2.2.5 Complementary analysis
    • 2.3 Intercoder agreement and statistics
  • 3. Results
    • 3.1 Referring expressions, position in the referential chain, and prosody
    • 3.2 Dislocations
      • 3.2.1 Ratio and dislocation direction across referring expressions
      • 3.2.2 Dislocation and discourse-pragmatic characteristics
      • 3.2.3 Dislocation, position in the referential chain and prosody
    • 3.3 Verb frames
      • 3.3.1 Distribution of referring expressions in verb frames
      • 3.3.2 Distribution of referring expressions according to referential-chain position
      • 3.3.3 Prosody in verb frames
  • 4. Discussion
• 7. The influence of dialogue in young children’s uses of referring expressions
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Distribution and uses of referring expressions
    • 2.1 The distribution of third-person pronouns, nouns, and demonstrative pronouns
    • 2.2 Uses of referring expressions
  • 3. Towards a dialogical account
    • 3.1 The immediate impact of the interlocutor’s discourse
      • 3.1.1 Data analysis
        • Form and category of antecedents
    • Dialogical relations: Coding
    • Statistics
      • 3.1.2 Results
    • Form and category of the interlocutor’s antecedents: Results
    • Dialogical relations: Results
      • 3.1.3 Interaction between interlocutor’s antecedents, and dialogical relations
    • 3.2 Patterns in dialogue
    • Immediate or distant uptake
    • Answering questions
    • Autonomous uses are anchored in previous sequences
  • 4. Conclusion
• 8. Variations in adult use of referring expressions during storytelling in different interactional settings
  • 1. Why study the uses of referring expressions among adults?
  • 2. The diversity of models in child-directed speech
  • 3. Uses of referring expressions by mothers and teachers during joint storytelling
  • 4. Aim of the studies
  • 5. Method
    • 5.1 Corpora
    • 5.2 Situations and materials
    • 5.3 Referents and axes of analysis
    • 5.4 Statistical processing
  • 6. Variations according to the interactional setting and the status of the adult
    • 6.1 Comparison of Mother-to-Child context to Adult-to-Experimenter context
    • 6.2 Comparison of Home context to School context
  • 6.3 Comparison of mothers of children with and without developmental language disorder
  • 7. Conclusion
• 9. Activities and social settings
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 Role of activity type in language production
    • 1.2 Role of social setting in language production
  • 2. Method
    • 2.1 Participants
    • 2.2 Data collection
    • 2.3 Coding system
      • 2.3.1 Selection of referents
      • 2.3.2 Categories of referring expressions
      • 2.3.3 Position in the referential chain
    • 2.4 Inter-coder agreement and statistics
  • 3. Results
    • 3.1 Differences in referring-expression use, by activity and social setting
      • 3.1.1 Daily routines, play, and picture-based activities among the toddlers
      • 3.1.2 Joint storytelling and symbolic play in the older group
      • 3.1.3 Joint storytelling at home and at school
    • 3.2 Position in the referential chain
      • 3.2.1 Daily routines, play, and picture-based activities among the toddlers
      • 3.2.2 Joint storytelling and symbolic play among the older children
  • 4. Discussion
• 10. The impact of speech genres on the use of referring expressions
  • 1. Introduction
    • 1.1 What do we mean by speech genres?
    • 1.2 How do speech genres affect language development?
  • 2. Method
    • 2.1 Participants and data collection
    • 2.2 Coding
      • 2.2.1 Categories of referring expressions
      • 2.2.2 Discursive sequences
      • 2.2.3 Utterance genres
      • 2.2.4 Position in the referential chain
      • 2.2.5 Intercoder agreement and statistics
  • 3. Results
    • 3.1 Distribution of referring expressions
    • 3.2 Impact of discursive sequence, utterance genre, and position in the referential chain among toddlers
      • 3.2.1 Impact of discursive sequence
      • 3.2.2 Impact of utterance genre
      • 3.2.3 Impact of the position in the referential chain
      • 3.2.4 Joint impact of discursive sequence, utterance genre, and position in the referential chain
    • 3.3 Impact of utterance genre and position in the referential chain in narrative sequences, for the two corpora
      • 3.3.1 Impact of utterance genre
      • 3.3.2 Impact of the position in the referential chain
      • 3.3.3 Joint impact of utterance genre and position in the referential chain in the narrative sequences of the two corpora
  • 4. Discussion and conclusion
• 11. The acquisition of referring expressions
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Overall distribution of referring expressions
  • 3. The interaction of formal and discourse-pragmatic factors
    • 3.1 Formal factors
    • 3.2 Discourse-pragmatic factors
    • 3.2.1 The influence of the referent’s characteristics on the use of referring expressions
    • 3.2.2 The impact of the referent’s status in the discourse
    • 3.3 How do formal and discourse-pragmatic factors interact?
  • 4. Communicative experience and dialogue
    • 4.1 Activities and use of referring expressions
    • 4.2 The impact of speech genre
    • 4.3 The influence of social setting
    • 4.4 The influence of the interactional setting: Towards reconsidering models
    • 4.5 Reference in the dynamics of dialogue
  • 5. Conclusion
• Appendix I. Corpora
• Appendix II. Transcription conventions
• Appendix IIIA. Summary of “Ah les belles vacances des petits cochons”
• Appendix IIIB. Summary of “Le voleur de poule”
• Index