Josie Bernicot

Repetition as ratification: How parents and children place information in common ground*

Repetition is used for a range of functions in conversation. In this study, we examined all the repetitions used in spontaneous conversations by 41 French adult-child dyads, with children aged 2 ; 3 and 3 ; 6, to test the hypotheses that adults repeat to establish that they have understood, and that children repeat to ratify what adults have said. Analysis of 978 exchanges containing repetitions showed that adults use them to check on intentions and to correct errors, while children use them to ratify what the adult said. With younger children, adults combine their repeats with new information. Children then re-repeat the form originally targeted by the adult. With older children, adults check on intentions but less frequently, and only occasionally check on forms. Older children also re-repeat in the third turn but, like adults, add further information. For both adults and children, repeats signal attention to the others utterances, and place the information repeated in common ground.

Narratives in Children with Williams Syndrome: A Cross Linguistic Perspective

Over the last years there have been long chats and delicious meals in Ruth’s company. The conversations ranged across books, family, culture, and cooking, but always included discussions on the nature of language and its development. Ruth’s insights invariably struck a resonant chord. Our contribution to this festschrift is intimately tied to Ruth’s encouragement and guidance in cross-linguistic narrative studies and our fascination with the interplay of affect and language. In this chapter, we use narratives to explore the intersection of these two communicative systems, language and affect in a special group, children and adolescents with Williams Syndrome, who have grown up in three different linguistic communities: American English, French and Italian.

Lexical spelling in children and adolescents with specific language impairment: variations with the writing situation.

The goal of this study was to compare the lexical spelling performance of children and adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) in two contrasting writing situations: a dictation of isolated words (a classic evaluative situation) and a narrative of a personal event (a communicative situation). Twenty-four children with SLI and 48 typically developing children participated in the study, split into two age groups: 7-11 and 12-18 years of age. Although participants with SLI made more spelling errors per word than typically developing participants of the same chronological age, there was a smaller difference between the two groups in the narratives than in the dictations. Two of the findings are particularly noteworthy: (1) Between 12 and 18 years of age, in communicative narration, the number of spelling errors of the SLI group was not different from that of the typically developing group. (2) In communicative narration, the participants with SLI did not make specific spelling errors (phonologically unacceptable), contrary to what was shown in the dictation. From an educational perspective or that of a remediation program, it must be stressed that the communicative narration provides children-and especially adolescents-with SLI an opportunity to demonstrate their improved lexical spelling abilities. Furthermore, the results encourage long-term lexical spelling education, as adolescents with SLI continue to show improvement between 12 and 18 years of age.

Pragmatique et compréhension du langage chez l'enfant: une étude des formes non littérales avec un paradigme informatisé

L’objectif de la recherche est d’etudier les aspects pragmatiques du langage en posant la question de l’evolution de la comprehension des differentes formes non litterales avec l’âge. Le but est aussi de concevoir une methode de recueil des donnees adaptee aux caracteristiques du langage non litteral. Quatre formes non litterales (demande indirecte (allusion), expression idiomatique, implicature conversationnelle avec inference semantique et implicature conversationnelle avec inference ironique) sont etudiees chez les memes sujets (enfants de 6 a 10 ans et adultes). Le recueil de donnees est realisee avec une tâche de completement d’histoires, qui prend la forme d’un jeu sur ordinateur (le sujet choisit entre deux images). Globalement, l’ordre d’acquisition est le suivant: implicatures avec inference semantique, demandes indirectes, expressions idiomatiques puis implicatures avec inference ironique. Les resultats sont discutes du point de vue des differences entre les groupes et des processus d’acquisition.

The management of cohesion in written narratives in students with specific language impairment: Differences between childhood and adolescence

The goal of this study was to investigate the management of cohesion by children and adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) when writing a narrative in a communicative situation. Twelve children with SLI (from 7 to 11 years old) and 12 adolescents with SLI (from 12 to 18 years old) were chronological age-matched with 24 typically developing (TD) children and 24 TD adolescents. All participants attended mainstream classes: children in elementary schools and adolescents in middle and high schools. Analyses of cohesion focused on both density and diversity of connectives, punctuation marks and anaphors. Results attested that children with SLI were greatly impaired in their management of written cohesion and used specific forms previously observed in narrative speech such as left dislocations. By contrast, and not expected, the management of written cohesion by adolescents with SLI was close to that of their TD peers. The communicative writing situation we set up, which engaged participants to take into account the addressee, also made possible for adolescents with SLI to manage cohesion in writing.

METALANG. Protocolo franco‑español de exploración de habilidades metalingüísticas en niños de 6 a 9 años: un estudio preliminar

Resumen En este trabajo se exponen los principios de la pragmatica-funcional y las razones para desarrollar un protocolo de exploracion de habilidades metalinguisticas naturales. Se explican las hipotesis de base y la estructura del protocolo METALANG. Este protocolo consta de un test y un cuestionario para padres con dos escalas distintas: A) habilidad y B) frecuencia. Cada elemento del protocolo consta de 6 secciones y 40 items. Se realiza un contraste preliminar con una muestra de 12 sujetos con edades comprendidas entre los 6 y los 9 anos. De los 12 sujetos, 4 estan diagnosticados de disfasia. el protocolo METALANG muestra puntuaciones altas en fiabilidad y consistencia interna. Este resultado confirma la hipotesis de que es posible una exploracion conjunta de diversas capacidades o habilidades metalinguisticas con ninos de 6 a 9 anos. Se obtienen puntuaciones diferenciales para el grupo de sujetos con disfasia, no asi respecto a la edad de los sujetos. Al comparar los resultados obtenidos en el test y en cada una de las escalas del cuestionario, se observan diferencias significativas entre el test y la escala B (frecuencia), y al comparar las dos escalas del cuestionario entre si. Estos resultados confirman que la frecuencia de uso de las habilidades metalinguisticas depende de otros factores ademas de la adquisicion o la presencia de una determinada capacidad o habilidad.