Children’s comprehension of pronouns and definites

Abstract

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.
Keywords: pronouns, definiteness, language acquisition, salience, uniqueness, familiarity.