BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Experimental evidence for preschoolers’ mastery of topics - Ceci
 le de Cat (Leeds University)
DTSTART:20080429T150000Z
DTEND:20080429T163000Z
UID:TALK11494@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Napoleon Katsos
DESCRIPTION:Discourse competence is the linguistic knowledge that enables 
 the adequate encoding of information in a given context\, reflecting what 
 the speaker assumes the hearer to know or believe. In first language acqui
 sition research\, lack of discourse competence is often cited as the sourc
 e of target-deviant production affecting various aspects of grammar (see e
 .g. Chien and Wexler 1991\, Schaeffer and Matthewson 2005)\, but little is
  known of the actual competence of children in this area.  \n\nThis resear
 ch is based on new\, theoretically motivated diagnostics to identify evide
 nce of early discourse competence. In particular\, it aims to demonstrate 
 that preschool children master the discourse notion of topic\, in spite of
  difficulties in evaluating the salience requirement necessary for its ade
 quate encoding.  \n\nI present results from an elicitation task conducted 
 on 45 monolingual children acquiring French as their L1 (between 2\;6 and 
 5\;6 years of age). Each child was prompted to produce 27 utterances\, eit
 her in a context forcing a topic interpretation of the target referent\, o
 r in a context forcing a focus interpretation. In Spoken French\, this req
 uires that the target referent be obligatorily dislocated in the former co
 ndition\, but obligatorily not in the latter.  \n\nThis experiment provide
 s overwhelming evidence for the mastery of the discourse/pragmatic notion 
 of topic by preschool children\, even in the youngest age group. In the di
 scussion\, I try to tease apart the linguistic from cognitive underpinning
 s of target-like usage\, based on a Theory of Mind test performed on the s
 ame children. 
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR