Acquisition of Discourse Phenomena Across Languages and Populations (ADILP)

Invited Speakers:

• Ira Noveck, French National Centre for Scientific Research
• Elizabeth Peña, University of Texas at Austin, USA
• Carol Westby, University of Vermont and Brigham Young University, USA

Discourse is an essential communicative and cognitive facility of a person to express her thoughts and affections in cohesive and logical utterances in speech and writing. Acquisition of discourse phenomena in preschool children is crucial not only for their reading and writing proficiency and for their further school accomplishment, but also for their successful cognitive and societal development in general.

In recent years various studies have investigated the acquisition of different phenomena at the discourse level and demonstrated that this competence begins to emerge at preschool age (Wijnen, Roeper & van der Meulen 2003; Kühnast, Roeper & Bittner 2009; O’Neill & Holmes 2002; Song & Fisher 2005; Sekerina, Stromswold & Hestvik 2004; Song & Fisher 2007; Pyykkönen, Matthews & Järvikivi 2010, cf. also Westby 2004). Recent cross-linguistic studies show that children at the preschool age are able to master non-overt anaphoric device, to comprehend, distinguish and interpret pronouns, to reintroduce characters while narrating, to use pronouns and connectors in discourse. However, important developments in this domain extend far beyond age four.

The main objective of the conference is to trace the acquisition of various discourse phenomena, such as referential and relational coherence on the level of microstructure and the development of the story grammar, implicatures and mental state language on the level of macrostructure. Studies based on empirical data from monolingual and bilingual children with and without SLI are welcome. In particular, we are interested in combined and separated effects of grammatical properties of the first and the second language, bilingualism and SLI in the domain of referential, relational discourse coherence and the organization­­ of the macrostructural level of texts.

The conference will serve as a communication platform for researchers from different theoretical backgrounds. Additionally, this event aims at building a bridge between language acquisition research and clinical practice: the conference will host a workshop elaborating on the implications of the discourse research and related research projects for clinical practice. 

Program:

Friday, 16 October 2015

09:00-9:45 Registration

09:45-10:55 Plenary 
Elizabeth Peña, University of Texas at Austin
Narratives in Spanish-English bilinguals with and without language impairment

10:55-11:15 Coffee

Session on Discourse BI-SLI, Marie Curie Grant 

11:15-11:30 Elena Tribushinina, Utrecht University 
Introduction 

11:30-12:00 Elena Tribushinina, Utrecht University 
Production of coherence markers by simultaneous bilinguals and monolinguals with SLI 

12:00-12:30 Pim Mak, Utrecht University 
Processing of coherence markers by simultaneous bilinguals and monolinguals with SLI 

12:30-13:00 Natalia Gagarina & Natalie Suermeli, ZAS Berlin  
Who is chasing whom in that story? On the acquisition of referentiality in children's narratives. 

13:00-14:30 Lunch

14:30-15:00 Ute Bohnacker & Josefin Lindgren, Uppsala University 
Inferring intentions and emotions of story characters: Age effects in narrative comprehension

15:00-15:30 Rachel Yifat, Shiran Sharabi, Hanna Mormer, Naomi Adas & Patrice L. (Tamar) Weiss, University of Haifa 
Spontaneous use of referring expressions by children with autism spectrum disorder during computer games with a function of Enforced Collaboration

15:30-16:00 Giang Pham, San Diego State University & Barbara Zurer Pearson, UMass Amherst 
The Weaker First Language Still Matters: Associations between Vietnamese Vocabulary and English Narratives

16:00-16:20 Coffee

16:20-17:20 Plenary 
Carol Westby, The University of Vermont and Brigham Young University 
Telling Tales: The Interactive Roles of Fictional and Personal Stories in Life

18:00 Social dinner at Ristorante LUNGOMARE, Krausenstr. 11 / corner Charlottenstraße

Saturday, 17 October 2015

09:00-10:00 Registration

10:00-11:10 Plenary 
Ira Noveck, French National Centre for Scientific Research, Lyon
What children's choices reveal: Linguistically encoded meaning, inference and mindreading in reference resolution

11:10-11:30 Coffee

11:30-12:00 Marilyn Nippold, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA
Metacognitive verbs in narrative speaking: Acquisition in adolescents

12:00-12:30 Josefin Lindgren, Uppsala University & Jorrig Vogels, Saarland University
Referential cohesion in Swedish pre-school children’s narratives

12:30-14:00 Lunch

14:00-14:30 Josefin Lindgren, Uppsala University 
Exploring character introductions in the narrative production of Swedish-speaking four- to six-year-olds

14:30-15:00 Milena Kuehnast & Viktoria Bartlitz, ZAS Berlin 
Developmental steps in expressing contrast – cross-linguistic experimental evidence

15:00-15:30 Damaris Bartz & Dagmar Bittner, ZAS Berlin 
Expressing adversativity: morphosyntactic properties of early "aber"-sentences in German L1-acquisition 

15:30-16:00 General discussion, Closing