Types syntaxiques des énoncés de dyades parent-enfant : influence du type d'activité et des séquences discursives

Résumé

Few studies have examined the effects of activities and discursive sequences (i.e. when two speakers interact together, different forms of discourse can be produced in dialogue; these forms can follow one another or be interwoven, thus constituting discursive sequences) during which parent-child dyads interact on the child's syntactic development. This paper aims to analyze the effect of the ongoing activity and the discursive sequences on the production and the uses of certain syntactic types of utterance by mother-child and father-child dyads. Seven 3-4 years old native French-speaking children and their parents were observed during two activities: symbolic play and a picture card game. The different syntactic types of their utterances (with verb or not, utterances with a presentative such as "c'est" or "il y a") were analyzed considering some discursive and pragmatic properties related to the use of these productions: type of activity and discursive sequences. Activities have an effect both on the children's (in dialogue with their mother or their father) and the fathers' utterances (more utterances with verb in the context of symbolic play, more utterances without verb with the picture card game). In parallel, the parents' and children's utterances are influenced by discursive sequences (more utterances without verb in the here and now discourse, more utterances with verb in the fictional discourse). Associated with the configuration of the dyad (mother-child or father-child), these two variables partially explain the children's production of utterances with and without verbs. Our results suggest that the type of activity and the discursive sequences form a body of variables – among others – that should be taken into account in order to better describe children's syntactic uses and their variability.