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Information tracking and encoding in early L1: linguistic competence vs. cognitive limitations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

CÉCILE DE CAT
CÉCILE DE CAT*
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
*
Address for correspondence: Dr Cecile De Cat, Department of Linguistics & Phonetics, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. E-mail: c.decat@leeds.ac.uk
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Abstract

This study provides experimental evidence for preschool children's competence in basic information structure, with particular attention to the notions of topic and focus. It investigates their mastery of structural and definiteness distinctions to encode the information status of discourse referents, and seeks to distinguish linguistic competence from cognitive development as the source for children's ‘errors’. Evidence comes from a story-telling experiment performed on 45 children acquiring French (between the ages of 2 ; 6·22 and 5 ; 6·15). The article demonstrates continuity between the child and adult systems of basic discourse representation. It further argues that children's definiteness errors are not due to a lack of knowledge of the adult rules of information encoding. Rather, such errors stem from cognitive limitations and from assuming a wider common ground than adults would.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , September 2011 , pp. 828 - 860
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by an AHRC grant (D001099/1), which is gratefully acknowledged. I would like to thank the children who participated as well as their parents and the teachers of the E-J School (Nivelles, Belgium) for their collaboration and their interest. Thanks to Cécile Brich for the transcriptions.

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