-本文的目的在試圖了解兒童口說中文敘述文中照應詞的使用是否呈現照應詞和其指涉物之間的四種關係：兩者之間的距離兩者間夾雜的其他指涉詞指涉物是在文本中（ｉｎｔｒａｔｅｘｔ）　或是文本外（ｒｘｔｒａ－ｔｅｘｔ）以及指涉物是否是主題結果顯示幼稚園兒童在照應詞使用上和大人相近但還不夠成熟此外隨年齡增長照應詞的使 用情況較佳 大體上兒童的照應詞使用呈現上述四種因素關係

The Accessibility Theory proposed by Ariel (1988: 68-69) argues that "naturallanguage primarily provides speakers with means to code the accessibility of the reference to the addressee," and accessibility of the antecedent "is the determining principle which accounts for the choice of referring forms".The present study examines the pragmatics of human anaphors in spoken narratives produced by Chinese-speaking adults and children, with particularattention to the factors for the accessibility of antecedents and relationship between the distribution of anaphors and the accessibility of their antecedents.The data used for this study comprises 70 narratives about the Pear film by10 adults, 20 preschoolers, 20 third graders, and 20 sixth graders. Sixanaphoric expressions were examined:(1) zero anaphora; (2) pronouns;(3)numeralNPs; (4)determinate NPs; (5)bare NPs; (6) complex NPs. Various measurements of the relationships between antecedent-anaphor pairs were made in terms of four parameters: distance, unity, competition, and saliency.The results show that the choice of anaphoric forms in the children's narraives correlates in a general way with the accessibility of the antecedents. The most accessible antecedents tend to be referred to by zerosand pronouns, while the least accessible by complex NPs. On this point there is no disagreement between the children's data and those of the adults. Some developmental tendencies in terms of the role of pronouns in narrative structures are found. One is that the frequency of pronouns as discontinuous topic chain-initials decreases with age, and the other is that while the preschoolers and third graders prefer to use pronouns as paragraph-initials,the sixth graders and adults prefer to use detrerminate NPs as paragraph-initials.The rankings of the three nominal anaphoric forms in the children's accessibility hierarchies, determinate NPs, bare NPs, and complex NPs, arebroadly similar to that of the adults, while the same is not true of numeralNPs. Older children, like adults, use numeral NPs in ways that make them as ahigh accessibility marker in terms of referential distance and competition,while preschoolers tend to use them as a low accessibility marker in terms ofreferential distance and competition, referring rigidly like bare NPs.Moreover, it is found that younger children are less competent than older children in manipulating functions of each anaphoric form. For example, younger children tend to use pronouns, instead of determinate NPs, to beparagrapg initials. In addition, preschoolers are found to be less competentin using complex NPs as disambiguation device, and in using numeral NPs asanaphors to refer to sets of individuals.