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This dissertation, Use of Reference in Cantonese Narratives: a Developmental Study by Kit-sum, Carol, To, 杜潔森, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled Use of Reference in Cantonese Narratives: A Developmental Study Submitted by To Kit Sum, Carol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in October 2006. This study investigated how Cantonese-speaking children introduce and maintain referents in narratives. Previous studies revealed how a set of universal factors determined the general pattern of reference development in children learning different languages and how specific language features modified this general pattern. In Cantonese, features that relate to discourse referencing include the absence of an obligatory article system for marking new information status, a pro-drop property which allows omissible sentence subjects and objects, a reduced morphological system with no verb inflections, and a pronominal system that does not mark for gender, case and animacy. A total of seventy-five Cantonese-speaking children aged between 3 and 7 years of age were recruited in Hong Kong. Fifteen native Cantonese adults were included in the control group for developmental comparisons. All participants were required to retell a story after listening to a standard story from a 8-picture wordless story book in a condition where mutual knowledge between the speaker and listener was controlled. All referential expressions in the narrative samples were analysed in terms of linguistic forms and referential functions. Results showed that: (1) mature Cantonese-speakers introduced new referents primarily through word order marking, and the use of a world-introducing verb or an existential verb. Young Cantonese-speaking children failed to mark new referent status using these devices until 5 years of age. The use of an optional indefinite marker emerged as a peripheral strategy for newness marking in young children as well; (2) Given a relatively impoverished morphological system, mature Cantonese speakers used nominal anaphors in potentially ambiguous contexts, and pronominal anaphors to maintain reference in contexts with high topic continuity. Younger children showed an overuse of pronominal anaphors resulting in potential ambiguities and failed to use pronominal forms in high continuity contexts. As a result, listeners had to use extra effort to resolve the intended referent. Only by six years of age did children achieve discourse-internal cohesion through more flexible use of nominal forms in potentially ambiguous contexts. Adult-like pronominal anaphoric use started to emerge at about age seven. Reference development in Cantonese-speaking children accorded with the general universal trend as noted in previous studies. Language-specific features contributed to not only the rate of acquisition but also the developmental pattern. This study contributes to the understanding of the development of reference by highlighting a unique pattern observed. (386 words) DOI: 10.5353/th_b3762781 Subjects: Cantonese dialects - ReferenceChildren - China - Hong Kong - Language

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