Co-constructing devices in narrative sequences of multilingual preschool children

Abstract

Abstract The following paper aims at analysing co-constructing devices used in adult-child narrative interaction both in the first and in the second language. In order to build a “common ground” for communication and comprehension, adult speakers often need to rely on supporting strategies that provide the child with narrative, grammatical and lexical help. When investigating speakers in multilingual settings, these devices become even more crucial. The present study is based on a corpus which contains data from six multilingual children at preschool age from the Ladin valleys in South Tyrol. The analysis outlines both the adults’ devices used to support the child as well as the children’s self-adopted strategies to enable the interaction to be performed. As far as the adult part is concerned, the focus is put on initiating, replying and expanding devices. Children’s devices, instead, are mainly influenced by the multilingual setting they are involved in. In this sense code-mixing and code-switching phenomena emerge as main strategies.