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Playing with pronouns in French maternal speech to prelingual infants*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Jacqueline Rabain-Jamin  and
Emilie Sabeau-Jouannet
Jacqueline Rabain-Jamin*
Affiliation:
Université Paris V Sorbonne, Centre national de la recherche scientifique
Emilie Sabeau-Jouannet*
Affiliation:
Université Paris V Sorbonne, Centre national de la recherche scientifique
*
Laboratoire de psychologie du développement et de l'éducation de l'enfant, 46 rue Saint-Jacques, 75005 Paris, France.
Laboratoire d'études sur l'acquisition et la pathologie du langage chez l'enfant, 12 rue Cujas, 75005 Paris, France.
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Abstract

Conventional and displaced uses of pronouns in maternal speech to refer to the baby were investigated in a developmental study of six mother—infant dyads using video-recordings of their free play at three, seven and ten months. These pronominal uses were analysed in a number of semantic contexts to determine how interactive situations influence the use of different types of pronouns. Results show that third- and first-person pronouns occur significantly more often in the semantic context of affect-oriented activities than in the semantic context of goal-directed activities. For second-person pronouns the results are the opposite. The contrast found between these two contexts, i.e. where the child is presented as the agent of a meaningful activity or not, shows how the place constructed for the baby as an interlocutor in maternal speech evolves with age. This study underlines the part the third person plays with its descriptive value in the acquisition of the system of pronouns.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , June 1989 , pp. 217 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank H. Feider, P. M. Greenfield, E. Ortigues and A. Streri for their comments on the manuscript. Special thanks are extended to the staff of the Hôpital Notre Dame du Bon Secours (Paris 14e) and the Essone district mother and child care centre (PMI).

References

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