On the use of the connective ‘and’ in oral narration: a study of French-speaking elementary school children

Abstract

The study deals with children's use of the connective and to end a story. One hundred and ninety-one children (aged 7;0 to 11;0) who were native speakers of French told two-character comic strip stories with no text to a same-age peer. In the consecutive-display condition, the comic strip was in booklet format with one frame per page, whereas in the simultaneous-display condition, all frames were on the same page. In the arbitrary-sequence condition, the events in each comic strip, although presented as a sequence, could have occurred in any order, whereas in the ordered-sequence condition, the order of the events could not be changed. In the maintained-topic condition, the materials were designed to induce a thematic subject right after the first frame (by the repeated presence of the same character in every picture, up to and including the last one), whereas in the changed-topic condition, the other character appeared alone in the last frame.

The analysis focused on cases where the children began the narration of the last frame using and to change the text pattern established so far. The results showed that and was often used in this way (35·2% of the productions), especially in the experimental conditions that facilitated event interconnection (simultaneous display, ordered sequence, maintained topic). The ordered-sequence condition showed that the nine-year-olds in simultaneous display employed and in co-occurrence with another connective, whereas the eleven-year-olds mainly used and more specifically: when the topic changed. The discussion deals with the specialization during development of the use of and within a speaker's discourse.