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Young (1;9—2;4) children’s use of third person clitic subject pronouns in natural dialogues was examined in both longitudinal and cross-sectional data. Considering that young children mainly use pronouns in the context of referential continuity, this study aims at identifying some of the factors that affect this use. Two possible dialogical factors are examined: (1) the use of clitic pronouns can be interpreted as a reproduction of the adult’s discourse, either by taking up whole utterances containing a pronoun or by taking up only the clitic pronouns without reproducing the adult’s utterance. (2) The use of pronouns could be driven by pragmatic-discursive factors. In order to assess this hypothesis the use of clitic pronouns was observed in the context of dialogical continuity. Three kinds of links were considered: children repeat or reformulate the adult’s utterances, add a new predication on the same topic, or establish a contrast. The results suggest that the reproduction of the adult’s utterance does not significantly influence children’s use of pronouns, whereas pragmatic-discursive factors are found to affect their choice of referential expressions.

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Anne Salazar Orvig, Rouba Hassan, Jocelyne Leber-Marin, Haydée Marcos, Aliyah Morgenstern, Jacques Parés : Young children and anaphora. The use of 3rd person pronouns in early dialogues This article présents the results of a study on the émergence of anaphora in children''s speech. Concentrating on a dialogical perspective we show that the anaphoric value of children''s first pronouns émerges earlier than is usually claimed in the literature. Previous research on language development cornes to the conclusion that cohésion is precocious, but that intradiscursive relations are mastered quite late. Our quantitative results (drawn from the analysis of one hundred and five séquences of adult-child conversations) show that 90% ofchildren's pronouns are used for second mentions of discourse objects. Pronouns appear in contexts of high discursive continuity and shared attention. Thèse linguistic units are thereforespecialized very early. Our conclusion is that children do not start with a deictic use of pronouns and use them anaphorically later on. Moreover, first anaphoric devices are based in dialogue. The unity of the text could therefore spring from the unity of the dialogical exchange.

Our purpose here is to address the question of the relation between grammar and discourse through the lens of early language acquisition, and more specifically, the acquisition of 3rd person pronouns and anaphora. According to previous research in the field, at first pronouns have a deictic value. This interpretation is based on studies of narratives produced by children that are over 3 years old. However, it is important to take into consideration that children begin to use this devices much earlier and within dialogues. After discussing the main arguments in favour of a deictic interpretation, this paper proposes a series of analytical approaches set to allow a complex interpretation of the referential value of early third person pronouns. The analysis of a corpus of dialogues of children aged between 1;8 and 3 leads us to conclude that, contrary to dominant interpretations, these forms are first learned as anaphoric devices, scaffolded by the dialogical relationship.