A Study Of Person Reference In Preschool Children’s Interactive Discourse

In the previous studies,most scholars use experiment and story-telling methods to research the children’s person references,which focus on uni-modal of language.But in the natural discourses,there is no limitation in the topic and with multi-modal forms,which is the cooperation of multi-modal forms in meaning construction.This thesis aims to figure out the synchronic features,diachronic features of the person reference,and how the multi-modal of linguistic and non-linguistic forms collaboratively construct meanings.This thesis studies person reference forms of 10 preschool children(2-5 years old)in natural interactive discourse,which contains three questions:(1)What are the synchronic features of the preschool children’s person references in their natural discourse?(2)What are the diachronic features of the preschool children’s person references in their natural discourse?(3)How are the linguistic and non-linguistic means of person reference used to collaboratively construct meanings in the preschool children’s natural discourse?The present study collects the preschool children’s natural discourse by means of recording by phone,lasting for 7 months.After that,the author transcribes the recorders to words and pictures and then uses the qualitative method to analyze the data.The research findings show:(1)the preschool children use linguistic forms,non-linguistic forms,and both linguistic and non-linguistic forms for person references.The gender difference shows that before three and half years old,the girls develop quicker than the boys.The nation difference reveals that due to the gap of cultural differences,English children develop faster than Chinese children.(2)the age difference proves that the linguistic forms become more and the non-linguistic forms fewer as age goes.(3)there are three types of in the cooperation of multi-modal person references to collaboratively construct meanings: language in primary position,non-language in primary position,and language and non-language in an equal position.