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Early discourse competence in preschool children: An elicitation study

学龄前儿童的早期话语能力：一项启发研究

基本信息

批准号：
AH/D001099/1
负责人：
Cecile De Cat
金额：
$ 9.21万
依托单位：
University of Leeds
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2006
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2006 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FD001099%2F1
关键词：
Early discourse competence preschool children

项目摘要

Discourse competence is the linguistic knowledge that enables the adequate encoding of information in a given context, reflecting what the speaker assumes the hearer to know/believe. It is commonly assumed that preschool children lack the discourse competence necessary to encode information in an adult-like fashion. Experimental studies have argued for instance that preschool children use definites (such as 'the duck') rather than indefinites ('a duck') in contexts where only indefinites are possible in the adult language (see e.g. Maratsos 1974; Emslie & Stevenson 1981; Hickmann et al1996).This research proposes new, theoretically motivated diagnostics to identify signs of discourse competence. In particular, it aims to ascertain whether preschool children master the discourse notion of topic - a claim put forth in De Cat (2002) which has never been confirmed experimentally. Topics express what the sentence is about. In Spoken French, topics are obligatorily dislocated: they appear at the periphery of the sentence - indicated by the comma in (1) - and are resumed by an element inside it (here: 'il'). Topics have to correspond to information that is salient and recoverable in the context to enable the hearer to identify what is being talked about. In most cases, they must be definite.(1) Le monsieur, il lui donne sa balle. the man he to-her gives her ballTwo elicitation tasks will be carried out to ascertain (i) whether preschool children master the discourse notion of topic and from what age and (ii) whether they encode new vs old information like adults and from what age. A third, non-linguistic task will assess children's Theory of Mind in an attempt to disentangle linguistic from cognitivesources of target-deviance in the encoding of information. Each task will target the same 45 monolingual preschool children acquiring French (3 groups, aged 2.5, 3.5 and 4.5 respectively), plus 15 adult controls.Task 1 will reveal the extent of their knowledge of the notion of topic. The test material will consist of 8 sets of 3 pictures setting up a scenario which will prompt the child to produce two types of sentences, depending on whether the subject is new or old information: sentences requiring a dislocated subject because a topic interpretation is obligatory (as in (1)); and sentences with a subject in its non-dislocated position because a topic interpretation is impossible (as in (2)).(2) Un monsieur lui donne sa balle. a man to-her gives her ballTask 2 will test children's ability to encode new discourse items (or referents) like adults. The general outline of this task is as in Hickmann et al (1996): the child is made to blindfold the interviewer and to explain to her what happens in two sequences of 5 pictures representing an event. A new referent is introduced in each picture (as an additional character). Children's productions will be analysed in two respects: (i) to evaluate whether they know the rules of new referent encoding and (ii) to evaluate the impact of non-linguistic factors on their encoding of new referents.The Theory of Mind task will assess children's ability to distinguish their listener's perspective from their own. The proposed study seeks to demonstrate the need to distinguish linguistic from cognitive underpinnings of discourse competence. Based on the applicant's previous research (including a longitudinal study of spontaneous production and a pilot experiment for Task 1), it is expected that children will be able to encode obligatory topicslike adults and that the contexts yielding errors in the encoding of information contrasts will be those requiring certain milestones to have been reached in Theory of Mind development. This research will contribute to narrowing down significantly the search space for causes of children's defineness errors, which have been widely reported but remain little understood.

话语能力是一种语言知识，它能够在给定的语境中对信息进行适当的编码，反映说话者假设听者知道/相信的内容。人们普遍认为，学龄前儿童缺乏以成人方式编码信息所必需的话语能力。例如，实验研究表明，学龄前儿童在成人语言中只有不确定词才有可能的语境中使用确定词（如“鸭子”）而不是不确定词（如“鸭子”）（见Maratsos 1974； emslie&stevenson 1981; Hickmann et al1996）。本研究提出了新的、理论上有动机的诊断方法来识别语篇能力的迹象。特别是，它旨在确定学龄前儿童是否掌握了话题的话语概念，这是De Cat（2002）提出的一个从未得到实验证实的主张。主题表达了句子的内容。在法语口语中，话题必然是错位的：它们出现在句子的边缘——在(1)中用逗号表示——然后由句子内部的一个元素（在这里：‘il’）重新开始。话题必须与上下文中突出和可恢复的信息相对应，以使听者能够识别正在谈论的内容。在大多数情况下，它们必须是明确的。Le monsieur, i lui donne sa ballle。通过两个启发任务来确定(i)学龄前儿童是否和从什么年龄开始掌握话题的话语概念，（ii）他们是否像成年人一样编码新信息和旧信息，从什么年龄开始。第三，非语言任务将评估儿童的心理理论，试图从信息编码的目标偏差的语言和认知来源中分离出来。每个任务都将针对同样的45名学习法语的单语学龄前儿童（3组，分别为2.5岁，3.5岁和4.5岁），以及15名成人对照。任务1将揭示他们对主题概念的了解程度。测试材料将包括8组3张图片，设置一个场景，根据主题是新信息还是旧信息，提示孩子产生两种类型的句子：句子需要一个错位的主题，因为主题解释是强制性的（如(1)）；还有一些句子的主语处于非错位位置，因为不可能解释主题（如(2)）。unmonsieur lui donne sa ballle。任务2将测试孩子们像成年人一样编码新话语项（或指称物）的能力。这项任务的大致大纲如Hickmann等人（1996）所述：孩子被要求蒙住采访者的眼睛，并向她解释在代表一个事件的两组5张图片中发生了什么。在每张图片中引入一个新的参考对象（作为一个额外的字符）。我们将从两个方面对儿童的作品进行分析：(i)评估他们是否知道新指称物编码的规则；（ii）评估非语言因素对他们对新指称物编码的影响。心智理论任务将评估儿童区分倾听者观点和自己观点的能力。本研究旨在证明区分语篇能力的语言基础和认知基础的必要性。根据申请人之前的研究（包括自发产生的纵向研究和任务1的试点实验），预计儿童将能够像成人一样编码强制性主题，并且在信息对比编码中产生错误的上下文将是那些需要达到心理理论发展的某些里程碑的上下文。这项研究将有助于显著缩小对儿童定义性错误原因的搜索空间，这些错误已被广泛报道，但仍知之甚少。