BORIS Theses

BORIS Theses
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Developing the competence with discourse connectives during teenage years

Tckhovrebova, Ekaterina (2023). Developing the competence with discourse connectives during teenage years. (Thesis). Universität Bern, Bern

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Abstract

Built upon a combination of off-line production experiments and corpus analysis of data, this thesis provides a multifaceted investigation into the level of competence with discourse connectives during teenage years. Firstly, it discerns endogenous factors, related to the linguistic characteristics of connectives, that may render some of them more difficult than others. Secondly, it investigates exogenous factors, related to inter-individual differences in linguistic competence between young speakers, that may influence their mastery of discourse connectives. Thirdly, the current work also explores whether the mastery of connectives hinges on the context in which they are used. Furthermore, this thesis raises the question of young speakers’ sensitivity to different types of coherence signals spread in discourse, and whether they are receptive to non-connective cues when inferring coherence relations. Finally, this work also focuses on the potential for improving competence with connectives through learning activities. The evidence obtained in this work serves to both deepen our understanding of the development of the competence with connectives during a transitional period of teenage years and to enrich the ongoing discussion about the type of meaning that connectives encode, namely, whether this meaning is procedural, conceptual or a combination of both.

Item Type: Thesis
Dissertation Type: Single
Date of Defense: 22 September 2023
Subjects: 400 Language > 410 Linguistics
400 Language > 440 French & related languages
800 Literature, rhetoric & criticism > 840 French & related literatures
Institute / Center: 06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of French Language and Literature
Depositing User: Sarah Stalder
Date Deposited: 10 Apr 2025 08:20
Last Modified: 10 Apr 2025 22:25
URI: https://boristheses.unibe.ch/id/eprint/5994

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