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Re-introduction of referents in Italian children's narratives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Margherita Orsolini ,
Franca Rossi  and
Clotilde Pontecorvo
Margherita Orsolini*
Affiliation:
Università La Sapienza, Roma
Franca Rossi
Affiliation:
Università La Sapienza, Roma
Clotilde Pontecorvo
Affiliation:
Università La Sapienza, Roma
*
[*] Address for correspondence: Dipartimento di Psicologia, N. 38, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185 Rome, Italy. E-mail: orsolini@unich.it
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Abstract

In this study we investigate the re-introduction of referents in the Frog stories told by Italian children aged 4–10 (N = 100). We found that for every age group full nouns are the most frequent forms used for reference re-introduction. Null forms, such as clitic pronouns or person/number inflection on the verb, are the second most frequent forms. A detailed analysis of null forms shows that children of different ages exploit different properties of the verbal and non-verbal context which can make a referent predictable. Compared to preschoolers, elementary school children are more likely to use null forms when the semantic content of the verb, or the structure of the preceding text make referents inferrable. On the other hand, preschoolers tend to exploit the importance of a character in the story plot, or the visual availability of the referent in the non-verbal context, as properties that make an entity salient enough to prevent the speaker from using overt linguistic forms such as full nouns. Our study confirms results of previous research, showing that elementary school children are more competent than preschoolers in integrating the semantic content of the current utterance into the context generated by previous discourse.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 465 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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