How Children Process Reduced Forms: A Computational Cognitive Modeling Approach to Pronoun Processing in Discourse

Reduced forms such as the pronoun he provide little information about their intended meaning compared to more elaborate descriptions lead singer of Coldplay. Listeners must therefore use contextual recover meaning. Across languages, there appears be a trade-off between informativity form and prominence its referent. For example, Italian adults generally interpret informationally empty null pronouns in sentence Corre (meaning He/She/It runs) referring most prominent referent discourse, informative overt (e.g., lui Lui corre, He less referents. Although children acquiring are known experience difficulties interpreting pronouns, it is unclear how they acquire this division pragmatic labor subject relates development cognitive capacities. Here we show that can account for general interpretation patterns displayed by Italian-speaking adults. Using experimental studies computational simulations framework modeling bounded-rational behavior, argue influenced working memory capacity thus depend on discourse context, whereas processing speed, suggesting listeners reason speaker's choices. Our results demonstrate capacities may constrain acquisition linguistic meanings various ways. The novel predictions generated point out several directions future research.