This page intentionally left blank CHILDREN’S DISCOURSE PERSON, SPACE AND TIME ACROSS LANGUAGES Thisoriginalcomparativestudyexplorestwocentralquestionsinthestudy of first language acquisition. What is the relative impact of structural and functional determinants? What is universal versus language-specific during development?MayaHickmannaddressesthesequestionsinthreedomainsof childlanguage:referencetoentities,therepresentationofspace,andusesof temporal-aspectualmarkings.Sheprovidesathoroughreviewofdifferentthe- oreticalapproachestolanguageacquisitionandawiderangeofdevelopmental research,aswellasexaminingallthreedomainsinEnglish,French,German and Chinese narratives. Hickmann’s findings concern the rhythm of acqui- sition,theinterplayamongdifferentfactors(syntactic,semantic,pragmatic) determiningchildren’suses,anduniversalversusvariableaspectsofacquisi- tion.Herconclusionsstresstheimportanceofrelatingsentenceanddiscourse determinantsofacquisitioninacross-linguisticperspective.Children’sDis- coursewillbewelcomedbythoseworkinginpsychologyandlanguage-related disciplinesinterestedinfirstlanguageacquisition.   is Research Director at Laboratoire Cognition et De´veloppement, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Univer- sityofParisV.Herpublicationsondiscourseincludeavarietyofchaptersin collectedvolumesandarticlesinjournalsconcerningfirstlanguageacquisi- tion including Journal of Child Language, First Language and Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. She is also the editor of Social and Functional ApproachestoLanguageandThought(1987). Inthisseries 60  . . :Thesyntaxandsemanticsofmiddleconstructions:astudy withspecialreferencetoGerman 61  . :Universalgrammarandlanguagelearnability 62  . :A-Morphousmorphology 63  :Switchreferenceanddiscourserepresentation 64  . :Atheoryofaspectuality:theinteractionbetweentemporaland atemporalstructure 65  . :Thelexiconinacquisition 66  . :Englishauxiliaries:structureandhistory 67 . . :GrammaticaltheoryintheUnitedStatesfromBloomfieldto Chomsky 68  :Negativeandpositivepolarity:abindingapproach 69 . . . :Ergativity 70  :Thesyntaxandpragmaticsofanaphora 71  :Informationstructureandsentenceform:topic,focus,andthe mentalrepresentationsofdiscoursereferents 72  :PrinciplesofEnglishstress 73  . :Aperformancetheoryoforderandconstituency 74  .    :Historicalsyntaxincross-linguistic perspective 75  :Thesyntaxofnegation 76  :Syntaxandparsing 77  :Italiansyntaxanduniversalgrammar 78  :Restrictivenessincasetheory 79 .  :Intonationalphonology 80  :Theraisingofpredicates:predicativenounphrasesandthetheory ofclausestructure 81  :Historicallinguisticsandlanguagechange 82  . :Anotionaltheoryofsyntacticcategories 83  :Possession:cognitivesources,forcesandgrammaticalization 84  -:Thedynamicsoffocusstructure 85  :Phonologicalrepresentations:theirnames,formsandpowers 86  . :Slavicprosody:languagechangeandphonologicaltheory 87  :Conditionalsandprediction:time,knowledgeand causationinconditionalconstructions 88  :Creolegenesisandtheacquisitionofgrammar:thecaseof HaitianCreole 89  :LexicalstratainEnglish:morphologicalcauses,phonological effects 90  :Morphemeorderandsemanticscope:wordformationandthe Athapaskanverb 91 ... :LexicalphonologyandthehistoryofEnglish 92  . :Tonesandhi:patternsacrossChinesedialects 93  . :Inflectionalmorphology:atheoryofparadigmstructure 94  :Phonologyandlanguageuse 95  :Morphologicalproductivity 96  :TheSyntaxofadjuncts 97    and  . :Regularityin semanticchange 98  :Children’sdiscourse:person,spaceandtimeacrosslanguages Earlierissuesnotlistedarealsoavailable CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS Generaleditors: . , . , . , . , . . , . , . , . , . , . .  Children’s Discourse CHILDREN’S DISCOURSE PERSON, SPACE AND TIME ACROSS LANGUAGES MAYA HICKMANN CentreNationaldelaRechercheScientifique, Universite´Rene´Descartes,Paris           The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom    The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org ©Maya Hickmann 2004 First published in printed format 2002 ISBN 0-511-03886-0 eBook (Adobe Reader) ISBN 0-521-58441-8 hardback Contents Listoffigures pagex Listoftables xiv Preface xv Listofabbreviationsandconventions xvii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Acquiringlanguage 1 1.2 Domainsofchildlanguage 11 1.3 Overviewofcontentsinsubsequentchapters 17       19 2 Theoreticalissues 21 2.1 Somemaintheoreticalissuesintheoriesoflanguageacquisition 21 2.2 Functionalapproachestolanguage 37 2.3 Functionalaspectsofreferenceincohesivediscourse 43 3 Cross-linguisticinvariantsandvariations 49 3.1 Somegeneraltypologicaldimensions 49 3.2 Denotingentities 56 3.3 Space 67 3.4 Time 77 3.5 Summary 84 4 Coherenceandcohesionindiscoursedevelopment 86 4.1 Macrostructures 86 4.2 Emergenceofthetextualfunction 101 4.3 Summary 105 vii Contents 5 Children’smarkingofinformationstatus:referring expressionsandclausestructure 108 5.1 Referringexpressions 108 5.2 Clausestructureindiscourse 134 5.3 Summary 139 6 Theacquisitionofspatialandtemporal-aspectual devices 141 6.1 Motionandlocation 141 6.2 Temporal-aspectualmarkings 154 6.3 Summary 169    -     173 7 Methodologicalissues 175 7.1 Controlofrelevantvariables 175 7.2 Designofthepresentstudy 183 8 Animateentities 194 8.1 Referentintroductions 194 8.2 Referencemaintenance 207 8.3 Summaryanddiscussion 230 9 Space 240 9.1 Situationtypes 240 9.2 Explicitnessofspatialgrounds 249 9.3 Spatialanchoring 257 9.4 Maintainingreferencetospatialgrounds 274 9.5 Summaryanddiscussion 276 10 Time 282 10.1 Distributionofalltemporal-aspectualdevices 282 10.2 Impactofpredicatetypesonverbaldevices 290 10.3 Discoursedeterminantsoftemporal-aspectualdevices 294 10.4 Summaryanddiscussion 314 11 Conclusions 318 11.1 Summaryoffindingsineachdomain 318 11.2 Generalconclusionsacrossdomains 324 11.3 Implicationsandconcludingremarks 334 viii