TY  - CHAP
A1  - Brockmann, Saskia
A1  - McConnell, Sara
A1  - Hacquard, Valentine
A1  - Lidz, Jeffrey
T1  - Children’s comprehension of pronouns and definites
T2  - Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, Vol. 1 / eds. Uli Sauerland and Stephanie Solt. Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft: ZAS papers in linguistics ; Nr. 60
N2  - We present an experiment which tests children’s comprehension of the requirements of use of pronouns and definites. An adult-like use of definites and pronouns imposes different but related requirements. In the case of definites, a unique referent is required in the context, whereas in the case of a pronoun, the referent in the context has to be salient. In this experiment, we use a novel word task to test three-year-olds’ sensitivity to these requirements. Our results show that children are adult-like in their sensitivity to salience in their comprehension of pronouns, compared to definites. However, they failed to show sensitivity to the uniqueness requirement on the use of definites.
KW  - pronouns
KW  - definiteness
KW  - language acquisition
KW  - uniqueness
KW  - familiarity
KW  - salience
Y1  - 2020
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/55812
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-558127
SN  - 1435-9588
SN  - 0947-7055
SP  - 259
EP  - 276
PB  - Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS)
CY  - Berlin
ER  -