Children’s comprehension of pronouns and definites

  • 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.

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Metadaten
Author:Saskia BrockmannGND, Sara McConnell, Valentine Hacquard, Jeffrey Lidz
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-558127
DOI:https://doi.org/10.21248/zaspil.60.2018.466
ISSN:1435-9588
ISSN:0947-7055
Parent Title (English):Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, Vol. 1 / eds. Uli Sauerland and Stephanie Solt. Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft: ZAS papers in linguistics ; Nr. 60
Publisher:Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS)
Place of publication:Berlin
Document Type:Part of a Book
Language:English
Year of Completion:2020
Year of first Publication:2018
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2020/09/11
Tag:definiteness; familiarity; language acquisition; pronouns; salience; uniqueness
Page Number:18
First Page:259
Last Page:276
HeBIS-PPN:470273941
Dewey Decimal Classification:4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache
4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik
Sammlungen:Linguistik
Linguistik-Klassifikation:Linguistik-Klassifikation: Semantik / Semantics
Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte:ZAS papers in linguistics : ZASPiL / ZASPiL 60 = Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 22, Vol. 1
:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-559256
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0