The choice of referring expressions in adult-child dialogues

Abstract This chapter focuses on the choice of referring expressions in adult-child dialogues, and particularly on the identification of formal and functional conditions promoting the uses of personal and demonstrative pronouns. The study is based on a corpus of 22 parent-child dyads. Children are aged from 21 to 27 months and interact with their interlocutor in various activities. Referring expressions were analysed according to their syntactic function, the activity dyads were involved in, the discourse type and their position in the referential chain. Our results show a strong interaction between formal and functional factors, in adults’ and children’s discourse, and confirm that the acquisition of pronouns’ referential value originates in the uptake of discourse sequences within the frame of familiar activities.