Preschoolers' comprehension of pronouns and reflexives: the impact of the task.

Preschoolers' comprehension of pronouns and reexives: the impact of the task

Pronouns seem to be acquired in an asymmetrical way, where children confuse the meaning of pronouns with reflexives up to the age of six, but not vice versa. Children’s production of the same referential expressions is appropriate at the age of four. However, response-based tasks, the usual means to investigate child language comprehension, are very demanding given children’s limited cognitive ...

When production precedes comprehension: An optimization approach to the acquisition of pronouns

Data from child language comprehension shows that children make errors in interpreting pronouns as late as age 6;6, yet correctly comprehend reflexives from the age of 3;0. On the other hand, data from child language production shows that children correctly produce both pronouns and reflexives from the age of 2 or 3. Current explanations of this asymmetric delay in comprehension have either rej...

Comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in sequential bilingual children: do they pattern similarly to L1 children, L2 adults, or children with specific language impairment?

From Group Results to Individual Patterns in Pronoun Comprehension

A well-studied phenomenon in language acquisition is the acquisition of pronouns and reflexives (e. The adult use of reflexives and pronouns can be described by Principles A and B of Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981). (1) a. Principle A: a reflexive must be bound in the local domain. b. Principle B: a pronoun must be free in the local domain. Here, the local domain is defined as the minimal clause...

Perception of spectrally degraded reflexives and pronouns by children.

Speech perception skills in cochlear-implant users are often measured with simple speech materials. In children, it is crucial to fully characterize linguistic development, and this requires linguistically more meaningful materials. The authors propose using the comprehension of reflexives and pronouns, as these specific skills are acquired at different ages. According to the literature, normal...