Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the variability in the interlanguage of NNS-children in dyadic interaction with NS-adults in terms of the use of demonstratives. A quantitative comparison between discourse segments of high vs. low spontaneousness and autonomy in NNS-children speech showed that highly spontaneous and autonomous speech contains more demonstratives than when the speech is more dependent on the initiations and supportive utterances of the the NS-adults. An examination of transcribed speech data suggested that the complicated contents of highly spontaneous and autonomous NNS-children's speech resulted in greater, as well as, erroneous use of demonstratives.
