Children’s Discourse: Person, Space and Time across Languages

412 Pages·2002·4.61 MB·English

by  Maya Hickmann

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CHILDREN’S DISCOURSE
PERSON, SPACE AND TIME ACROSS LANGUAGES
Thisoriginalcomparativestudyexplorestwocentralquestionsinthestudy
of first language acquisition. What is the relative impact of structural and
functional determinants? What is universal versus language-specific during
development?MayaHickmannaddressesthesequestionsinthreedomainsof
childlanguage:referencetoentities,therepresentationofspace,andusesof
temporal-aspectualmarkings.Sheprovidesathoroughreviewofdifferentthe-
oreticalapproachestolanguageacquisitionandawiderangeofdevelopmental
research,aswellasexaminingallthreedomainsinEnglish,French,German
and Chinese narratives. Hickmann’s findings concern the rhythm of acqui-
sition,theinterplayamongdifferentfactors(syntactic,semantic,pragmatic)
determiningchildren’suses,anduniversalversusvariableaspectsofacquisi-
tion.Herconclusionsstresstheimportanceofrelatingsentenceanddiscourse
determinantsofacquisitioninacross-linguisticperspective.Children’sDis-
coursewillbewelcomedbythoseworkinginpsychologyandlanguage-related
disciplinesinterestedinfirstlanguageacquisition.
  is Research Director at Laboratoire Cognition et
De´veloppement, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Univer-
sityofParisV.Herpublicationsondiscourseincludeavarietyofchaptersin
collectedvolumesandarticlesinjournalsconcerningfirstlanguageacquisi-
tion including Journal of Child Language, First Language and Journal of
Psycholinguistic Research. She is also the editor of Social and Functional
ApproachestoLanguageandThought(1987).
Inthisseries
60  . . :Thesyntaxandsemanticsofmiddleconstructions:astudy
withspecialreferencetoGerman
61  . :Universalgrammarandlanguagelearnability
62  . :A-Morphousmorphology
63  :Switchreferenceanddiscourserepresentation
64  . :Atheoryofaspectuality:theinteractionbetweentemporaland
atemporalstructure
65  . :Thelexiconinacquisition
66  . :Englishauxiliaries:structureandhistory
67 . . :GrammaticaltheoryintheUnitedStatesfromBloomfieldto
Chomsky
68  :Negativeandpositivepolarity:abindingapproach
69 . . . :Ergativity
70  :Thesyntaxandpragmaticsofanaphora
71  :Informationstructureandsentenceform:topic,focus,andthe
mentalrepresentationsofdiscoursereferents
72  :PrinciplesofEnglishstress
73  . :Aperformancetheoryoforderandconstituency
74  .    :Historicalsyntaxincross-linguistic
perspective
75  :Thesyntaxofnegation
76  :Syntaxandparsing
77  :Italiansyntaxanduniversalgrammar
78  :Restrictivenessincasetheory
79 .  :Intonationalphonology
80  :Theraisingofpredicates:predicativenounphrasesandthetheory
ofclausestructure
81  :Historicallinguisticsandlanguagechange
82  . :Anotionaltheoryofsyntacticcategories
83  :Possession:cognitivesources,forcesandgrammaticalization
84  -:Thedynamicsoffocusstructure
85  :Phonologicalrepresentations:theirnames,formsandpowers
86  . :Slavicprosody:languagechangeandphonologicaltheory
87  :Conditionalsandprediction:time,knowledgeand
causationinconditionalconstructions
88  :Creolegenesisandtheacquisitionofgrammar:thecaseof
HaitianCreole
89  :LexicalstratainEnglish:morphologicalcauses,phonological
effects
90  :Morphemeorderandsemanticscope:wordformationandthe
Athapaskanverb
91 ... :LexicalphonologyandthehistoryofEnglish
92  . :Tonesandhi:patternsacrossChinesedialects
93  . :Inflectionalmorphology:atheoryofparadigmstructure
94  :Phonologyandlanguageuse
95  :Morphologicalproductivity
96  :TheSyntaxofadjuncts
97    and  . :Regularityin
semanticchange
98  :Children’sdiscourse:person,spaceandtimeacrosslanguages
Earlierissuesnotlistedarealsoavailable
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS
Generaleditors: . , . , . ,
. , . . , . , . ,
. , . , . . 
Children’s Discourse

CHILDREN’S
DISCOURSE
PERSON, SPACE AND TIME
ACROSS LANGUAGES
MAYA HICKMANN
CentreNationaldelaRechercheScientifique,
Universite´Rene´Descartes,Paris
         
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa
http://www.cambridge.org
©Maya Hickmann 2004
First published in printed format 2002
ISBN 0-511-03886-0 eBook (Adobe Reader)
ISBN 0-521-58441-8 hardback
Contents
Listoffigures pagex
Listoftables xiv
Preface xv
Listofabbreviationsandconventions xvii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Acquiringlanguage 1
1.2 Domainsofchildlanguage 11
1.3 Overviewofcontentsinsubsequentchapters 17
      19
2 Theoreticalissues 21
2.1 Somemaintheoreticalissuesintheoriesoflanguageacquisition 21
2.2 Functionalapproachestolanguage 37
2.3 Functionalaspectsofreferenceincohesivediscourse 43
3 Cross-linguisticinvariantsandvariations 49
3.1 Somegeneraltypologicaldimensions 49
3.2 Denotingentities 56
3.3 Space 67
3.4 Time 77
3.5 Summary 84
4 Coherenceandcohesionindiscoursedevelopment 86
4.1 Macrostructures 86
4.2 Emergenceofthetextualfunction 101
4.3 Summary 105
vii
Contents
5 Children’smarkingofinformationstatus:referring
expressionsandclausestructure 108
5.1 Referringexpressions 108
5.2 Clausestructureindiscourse 134
5.3 Summary 139
6 Theacquisitionofspatialandtemporal-aspectual
devices 141
6.1 Motionandlocation 141
6.2 Temporal-aspectualmarkings 154
6.3 Summary 169
   -  
  173
7 Methodologicalissues 175
7.1 Controlofrelevantvariables 175
7.2 Designofthepresentstudy 183
8 Animateentities 194
8.1 Referentintroductions 194
8.2 Referencemaintenance 207
8.3 Summaryanddiscussion 230
9 Space 240
9.1 Situationtypes 240
9.2 Explicitnessofspatialgrounds 249
9.3 Spatialanchoring 257
9.4 Maintainingreferencetospatialgrounds 274
9.5 Summaryanddiscussion 276
10 Time 282
10.1 Distributionofalltemporal-aspectualdevices 282
10.2 Impactofpredicatetypesonverbaldevices 290
10.3 Discoursedeterminantsoftemporal-aspectualdevices 294
10.4 Summaryanddiscussion 314
11 Conclusions 318
11.1 Summaryoffindingsineachdomain 318
11.2 Generalconclusionsacrossdomains 324
11.3 Implicationsandconcludingremarks 334
viii