The Comparison of discourse markers in the narrative discourse of 7 and 10 –year-old Persian-speaking children with adults

Discourse markers determine how the addresseechr('39')s perceptions are different from or similar to each other. Considering the importance of discourse markers in increasing of childrenchr('39')s verbal and linguistic skills and increasing the coherence level of their discourse (Gerhardt, 1990), the purpose of this study is to use the Hansen model (1998) to study the production process of discourse markers in the narrative of 7 and 10-year-old Persian speaking children and adults. The present research is descriptive and analytic. 37 of children were 7 years old and 40 were 10 years old. Children were selected purposefully from elementary schools of Tehran. Also, 18 adults were selected in  order to compare childrenchr('39')s performance with them. The retelling experiment was performed according to the method of Choi (2007) and Kyratizis and Ervin Tripp (1999). The results showed that the subjects were able to use different types of discourse markers in their narrative discourse. Total use of discourse markers in children was more than that of adults. It seems that sometimes coherence compensates cohesion, and sometimes logical and semantic relationships based on prior knowledge play role instead of discourse markers.