The Influence of Context on Children's Use of Identifying Expressions and References.

Three experiments are reported, each examining young children's ability to use the indefinite article to introduce a new referent to a context of discourse, and the definite article to refer to an already-introduced referent. The context of the speaker's referring expressions is varied in terms of the nature of, and the listener's knowledge of, the referents. The results indicate that children under five years fail to take account of their audience's knowledge of a referent — their referring expressions are predominantly definite. Between five and nine years, children inconsistently introduce referents with indefinite expressions. It is argued that mastery of the introductory function of a requires decentration on the part of the speaker.