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.
Author: | Saskia BrockmannGND, Sara McConnell, Valentine Hacquard, Jeffrey Lidz |
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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): | Creative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0 |