Preface -- List of Tables -- List of Figures -- Chapter One: The Establishment of Narrative Coherence -- 1 Points of departure: A consideration of relevant research trends -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Narrative structures -- 1.3 The development of narrative structures -- 1.4 Coherence and cohesive devices -- 2 The focus of the present study -- 2.1 Background -- 2.2 Picture book narration: The delineation of a discourse mode for developmental research -- 2.3 Method -- Chapter Two: Pronominal and Nominal Markers and the Establishment of Coherence -- 1 Switching and maintaining reference -- 1.1 Pronominal anaphora and discourse segmentation -- 1.2 Deixis and anaphora in the picture book narration task -- 1.3 Some structural properties of German third person pronouns -- 2 Explorations in the acquisition of anaphoric devices -- 3 Introduction to the study -- 3.1 Guiding questions -- 3.2 Coding -- 4 Results -- 4.1 Analysis and discussion of the adult narratives -- 4.2 Analysis and discussion of the children's narratives -- 4.3 Analysis and discussion of multiple strategies in the children's individual narratives -- 4.4 Conclusions -- Chapter Three: The Contribution of Tense to Coherence -- 1 Tense and text -- 1.1 Developmental aspects of "tenses" and "texts" -- 2 The use of tense in "simple narratives" -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Analysis and discussion of the adult narratives -- 2.3 Analysis and discussion of the children's narratives -- 2.4 Summary: Form and function of tenses in simple narratives -- Chapter Four: Conclusions -- 1 Summary -- 1.1 Coherence in adult narrations -- 1.2 Coherence in children's narrations -- 2 Switching and maintaining reference and temporally connecting events: The acquisition of two different systems? -- 2.1 Organizing the systems -- 2.2 Reorganizing the systems -- 3 Concluding comments -- Bibliography.

Appendix A The German tense system -- Appendix B Background utterances that are excluded tense coding -- Appendix C Reduced copy of the picture book -- Index.