This study investigates referent introductions in narratives produced by Spanish children of 6, 9 and 11 years and adults in two situations, where they either could assume mutual background knowledge of the narrated content (Situation MK) or could not make this assumption (Situation NMK), while holding this content constant by means of a picture book. Overall, situation NMK elicits more indefinite first mentions than situation MK and this effect is more marked for the main characters than for the secondary ones. The developmental pattern indicates that 9 years is the critical age at which Spanish children begin to use more indefinite first mentions in both situations. For all animate referents, Spanish children's and adults' introductions occur significantly more often in VN clause structures than in NV ones. 104 communicative device, and contextual, such as shared knowledge, with special attention to their interaction during development.

This study investigates referent introductions in narratives produced by Spanish children of 6, 9 and 11 years and adults in two situations, where they either could assume mutual background knowledge of the narrated content (Situation MK) or could not make this assumption (Situation NMK), while holding this content constant by means of a picture book. Overall, situation NMK elicits more indefinite first mentions than situation MK and this effect is more marked for the main characters than for the secondary ones. The developmental pattern indicates that 9 years is the critical age at which Spanish children begin to use more indefinite first mentions in both situations. For all animate referents, Spanish children's and adults' introductions occur significantly more often in VN clause structures than in NV ones.Situation NMK elicits more VN first mentions than situation MK, but this contrasted effect concerns only the main characters. For these referents, the dominant pattern is Indefinite/Non Subject/VN clause structure; this pattern increases regularly with age. For main characters, Spanish children and adults tend to choose some predicates as a function of the situation: estar + auxiliaries in MK and estar + locations in NMK. These results compared with previous ones obtained with French children in identical conditions (Kail & Hickmann 1992) are discussed in the light of various constraints: linguistic, especially clause structure as a . This research is part of a collaborative programme financed by the Centre National de la Recherche ScientiliqLle and the University of Complutense in Madrid. We thank Xavier Castillo for his help in collecting part of the data.