Following a usage-based approach of language acquisition, the goal of this article is to make a detailed analysis of other and self-repairs targeting a French child's non-conventional productions between 1;09 and 4;0. The study's hypotheses were that (1) the mother would start by offering repairs and later in development use strategies to lead the…

This study investigates vocal imitation of prosodic contour in ongoing spontaneous interaction with 10- to 13-week-old infants. Audio recordings from naturalistic interactions between 20 mothers and infants were analyzed using a vocalization coding system that extracted the pitch and duration of individual vocalizations. Using these data, the…

Investigated the use of relative clauses in French children's narrative monologues. Narrative texts, based on a picture book without text, were collected from monolinguals age 5, 7, and 10 years and adults. Researchers coded relative constructions. Use of relative clauses in general-discourse functions preceded use in more specific narrative…

Two studies investigated developmental changes, and inter-linguistic and inter-individual variations, in the expansion and composition of young French children's early lexicons. Results indicated that lexical productivity strongly increased with age, whereas lexical diversity showed little developmental progression. Inter-individual variability in…

Examined how French mothers' gestures and prosody contributed to their infants' conversational competence, investigating how they used ostensive marking to point out common references at different developmental stages. Longitudinal observations of mother/infant dyads during free play at three developmental stages indicated that mothers adapted…

This document reviews a number of recent studies written in French that investigate the nature of communication between 2-year-old infants and others. The review includes three parts. The first part focuses on studies aiming to constitute a behavioral catalog of the child. Characteristically, these studies offer a posteriori interpretations of…