Children’s acquisition of discourse markers in English, Hindi, Mandinka and Spanish: Effects of optionality, grammaticalization and narrative elicitation

We compared the production of discourse markers by 5-year-old children and adults across four languages: Hindi, English, Mandinka and Spanish. As predicted, Experiment 1a revealed that obligatory markers are acquired earlier, resulting in more adult-like referential expressions. Interestingly, Hindi appears to be undergoing a process of grammaticalization of their numeral ‘one’ into an indefinite article, which resulted in a protracted acquisition of the corresponding discourse function. Supporting this hypothesis, Experiment 1b revealed that older adults from a rural area failed to use the numeral to introduce new characters, whereas 10-year-old children’s production was comparable to that of younger adults in the city and higher than 5-year-olds’. Experiment 2 revealed that Mandinka speakers made full use of the markers available in their language when tested on a familiar story, without pictorial prompts. These findings highlight the importance of using culturally-appropriate tasks and diverse samples when investigating the acquisition of discourse-pragmatic functions.