Chapter 12. Development of discourse competence: Spatial descriptions and narratives in L1 French

Marzena Watorek

Chapter

Chapter 12. Development of discourse competence

Spatial descriptions and narratives in L1 French

Marzena Watorek

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John Benjamins Publishing Company

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This chapter is in the book Sources of Variation in First Language Acquisition

Abstract

This paper examines the development of discourse competence through the oral production of two text types: spatial descriptions and film retellings, collected from French children (aged 4, 7, and 10) and a control group of adult French speakers. Results suggest that for young children the construction of a static spatial description is intrinsically more complex and poses more difficulties compared to the production of narratives. The construction of a description of a multidimensional configuration implies a heavier cognitive load than the construction of a narrative based on a chronological – inherently linear – event structure. Based on the analysis of reference to entities, we identify phenomena reflecting specific difficulties for children when performing a descriptive vs. a narrative task.

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Abstract

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Chapters in this book

Prelim pages i
Table of contents v
List of authors (alphabetical) vii
Introduction. What can variation tell us about first language acquisition? 1
Part I. Universals and cross-linguistic variation in acquisition
Chapter 1. Templates in child language 27
Chapter 2. Phonological categories and their manifestation in child phonology 45
Chapter 3. Bootstrapping lexical and syntactic acquisition 63
Chapter 4. Retrieving meaning from noun and verb grammatical contexts 81
Chapter 5. Language-specificity in motion expression 103
Chapter 6. Cross-linguistic variation in children’s multimodal utterances 123
Chapter 7. Gesture and speech in adults’ and children’s narratives 139
Part II. Variation in input and contexts during acquisition
Chapter 8. Conversational partners and common ground 163
Chapter 9. Invariance in variation 183
Chapter 10. New perspectives on input-output dynamics 201
Chapter 11. Referential features, speech genres and activity types 219
Chapter 12. Development of discourse competence 243
Chapter 13. Texting by 12-year-olds 265
Part III. Variation in types of acquisition and types of learners
Chapter 14. A unified model of first and second language learning 287
Chapter 15. Online sentence processing in simultaneous French/Swedish bilinguals 313
Chapter 16. The blossoming of negation in gesture, sign and oral productions 339
Chapter 17. Motion expression in children’s acquisition of French Sign Language 365
Chapter 18. Early predictors of language development in Autism Spectrum Disorder 391
Chapter 19. Spoken and written narratives from French- and English-speaking children with Language Impairment\ 409
Chapter 20. Non-literal language comprehension 427
Language index 439
Subject index 440

https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.22.13wat

Chapters in this book

Prelim pages i
Table of contents v
List of authors (alphabetical) vii
Introduction. What can variation tell us about first language acquisition? 1
Part I. Universals and cross-linguistic variation in acquisition
Chapter 1. Templates in child language 27
Chapter 2. Phonological categories and their manifestation in child phonology 45
Chapter 3. Bootstrapping lexical and syntactic acquisition 63
Chapter 4. Retrieving meaning from noun and verb grammatical contexts 81
Chapter 5. Language-specificity in motion expression 103
Chapter 6. Cross-linguistic variation in children’s multimodal utterances 123
Chapter 7. Gesture and speech in adults’ and children’s narratives 139
Part II. Variation in input and contexts during acquisition
Chapter 8. Conversational partners and common ground 163
Chapter 9. Invariance in variation 183
Chapter 10. New perspectives on input-output dynamics 201
Chapter 11. Referential features, speech genres and activity types 219
Chapter 12. Development of discourse competence 243
Chapter 13. Texting by 12-year-olds 265
Part III. Variation in types of acquisition and types of learners
Chapter 14. A unified model of first and second language learning 287
Chapter 15. Online sentence processing in simultaneous French/Swedish bilinguals 313
Chapter 16. The blossoming of negation in gesture, sign and oral productions 339
Chapter 17. Motion expression in children’s acquisition of French Sign Language 365
Chapter 18. Early predictors of language development in Autism Spectrum Disorder 391
Chapter 19. Spoken and written narratives from French- and English-speaking children with Language Impairment\ 409
Chapter 20. Non-literal language comprehension 427
Language index 439
Subject index 440

Chapter 12. Development of discourse competence

Abstract

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Abstract

Chapters in this book

Chapters in this book

Chapters in this book