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French concessive connectives and argumentation: an experimental study in eight- to ten-year-old children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Christian Champaud  and
Dominique Bassano
Christian Champaud*
Affiliation:
C.N.R.S., E.P.H.E., Universite de Paris V
Dominique Bassano
Affiliation:
C.N.R.S., E.P.H.E., Universite de Paris V
*
Laboratoire de Psychologie Expérimentale, 28 rue Serpente, 75006, Paris, France. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

An experimental study examined the comprehension of sentences containing concessive connectives, considered from an argumentative-conclusive point of view, in eight- and ten-year-old French children (24 subjects in each age group). Two tasks were used; subjects had to choose between (1) opposite preceding contexts of sentences (context choice task), and (2) conclusions that could be drawn from the same sentences (conclusion choice task). Results indicated a clear developmental increase in performance. For all concessive items, except mais (‘but’), results of the context choice task were better than results of the conclusion choice task. Older children gave significantly better responses for mais in the conclusion choice task. The ambivalence of the connective mais is discussed; comparisons with production and crosslinguistic data are suggested.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 415 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by a grant from the C.N.R.S.: A.T.P. ‘Nouvelles Recherches sur le Langage’. Part of the data was presented at the Third European Conference on Developmental Psychology, Rome, Italy, 10–13 September 1986. We should like to thank Pierre Gréco, J. C. Anscombre, O. Ducrot, M. Kail and Paul Kay for helpful comments during the study. Françoise Roland provided technical assistance and Catherine Marlot contributed to the English version of the text. Harriet Jisa is also to be thanked for rereading it. Finally we are most grateful to the headmistresses and schoolteachers of the schools 80 Bd du Montparnasse and 24 rue Delambre, 75014 Paris.

References

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