From sentential to discourse functions: Detection and explanation of speech repairs by children and adults

Although it has been established that children progressively develop metalinguistic awareness about certain aspects of the linguistic system, nothing is known about their awareness of discourse functions. We distinguish between textual coherence and textual cohesion and present a new methodology for studying children's and adults' metalinguistic knowledge of the cohesive, discourse-level properties of spoken language. Discourse-level properties (e.g., use of pronouns or nouns) often violate sentential-level properties (e.g., antecedence, ambiguity, etc.). A two-part experimental design was used: a reaction-time task in which subjects had to detect a series of naturally sounding lexical, referential, and discourse repairs in narratives, followed by a structured metalinguistic interview about the repairs. The detection part established that the three types of repair were differentiated and were easily detected at all ages. The metalinguistic part indicated that, while both children and adults could furnish very adequate explanations of lexical and referential repairs, all age groups performed poorly with respect to awareness of the discourse-level functions of the same linguistic markers. We explore a number of hypotheses about why the discourse-level functions of these markers are not open to metalinguistic reflection. We also suggest how the new methodology might be extended to other discourse processes of spoken language.