La référence aux entités dans les récits d’enfants avec TDL de 7 à 10 ans : un problème de pragmatique ?

¹ Centre dÉtudes des Langues et Littératures Anciennes et Modernes Université de Rennes 2 : EA3206, Université de Rennes 2
Université de Lorraine Universté de Lorraine, CREM

Abstract

This study aims at examining the narrative behaviors of children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) at an age when typically developing children (TD) usually begin to master pragmatic skills. Narratives produced by children with DLD generally reveal morphosyntactic and expressive difficulties that lead to pragmatic issues, particularly reference management (Rezzonico et al., 2021). These children more frequently use referring expressions that are poorly adapted to the listener’s knowledge when (re)introducing referents, compared with their TD peers (de Weck & Jullien, 2013). They also show weaker control of discourse continuity, resulting in fragmented narratives, often based on an image-by-image structure (de Weck, 1993). 22 French-speaking children with DLD aged 7 to 10 and 22 age-and-gender-matched TD children were videorecorded while recounting a cartoon sequence to a parent who had not seen the excerpt. Referring expressions were coded according to their form (lexical, pronominal) and their position within the referential chain (introduction, maintenance, switching). Results show few structural differences between the two groups’ narratives. However, children with DLD use more lexical forms to express referential continuity. TD children relied on a wider range of determiners depending on the referential position. Overall, these findings suggest a reduction of between-group differences with age.