| This study deals with the use of the connective "and". It is part of a larger project aimed at assessing the impact of cognitive processes (memory-based and/or inferential) on the establishment of referential links. Seven- to eleven-year-old children who were native speakers of French told "silent" two-character comic strip stories to a same-age peer. In the consecutive-display condition, the comic strip was in booklet format with one frame per page, whereas in the simultaneous-display condition, allframes were on the same page. In the arbitrary-link condition, the events in each comic strip, although presented as a sequence, could have occurred in any order, whereas in the ordered-link condition, the order of the events could not be changed. In the maintained-topic condition, the materials were designed to induce a thematic subject right after the first frame (by the repeated presence of the same character in every picture, up to and including the last one), whereas in the changed-topic condition, the other character appeared alone in the last frame. The analysis focused on cases where and was used at the beginning of the narration of last frame to change the text pattern established so far. The results showed that and was often used in this way in the experimental condition that facilitated event interconnection. In this condition, the 9-year-olds employed and in co-occurrence with another connective to mark the end of the story, whereas the 11-year-olds mainly used it when the topic changed. The discussion deals with the strategic use of "and". |
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1Annie Colas
