INTRODUCING REFERENTS IN FRENCH - COGNITI VE CONSTRAINTS AND DEVELOPMENT OF NARRATIVE SKILLS

We studied how referents are introduced in oral discourse under variou s production conditions. Children aged 7 to 11 and adults told stories from ''silent'' two-character comic strips to a same-age peer who did not know and could not see them. The comic strips varied as to : 1) t he frame presentation mode; 2) the explicitness of the event sequence across frames; and 3) thematic continuity. We analyzed the ways in whi ch the characters were named when introduced into the discourse for th e first time. The results Indicated : a) a progression in the speakers ' referential and narrative skills, as shown in previous studies : the characters were usually marked as ''new'' referents by the age of sev en, but it was not until after nine years old that intra-linguistic ma rking became systematic; b) a presentation mode effect : showing the e ntire conic strip on a single page triggered more narration, whereas p resentation of the frames one at a time in. a booklet led to more desc riptions at age seven; and c) an effect of frame sequencing explicitne ss : not very explicit sequencing led the 11-year-olds and the adults to express the assumed links between the characters as soon as they we re introduced into the discourse. The production conditions manipulate d here turned out to be a good means of assessing the solidity or labi lity of the acquired skills.