A cross-linguistic study of the acquisition of clitic and pronoun production
Journal
Language Acquisition
Date Issued
May 28, 2015
Author(s)
DOI
10.1080/10489223.2015.1028628
Abstract
This study develops a single elicitation method to test the acquisition of
third-person pronominal objects in 5-year-olds for 16 languages. This methodology
allows us to compare the acquisition of pronominals in languages
that lack object clitics (“pronoun languages”) with languages that employ
clitics in the relevant context (“clitic languages”), thus establishing a robust
cross-linguistic baseline in the domain of clitic and pronoun production for
5-year-olds. High rates of pronominal production are found in our results,
indicating that children have the relevant pragmatic knowledge required to
select a pronominal in the discourse setting involved in the experiment as
well as the relevant morphosyntactic knowledge involved in the production
of pronominals. It is legitimate to conclude from our data that a child who
at age 5 is not able to produce any or few pronominals is a child at risk for
language impairment. In this way, pronominal production can be taken as a
developmental marker, provided that one takes into account certain crosslinguistic
differences discussed in the article.
third-person pronominal objects in 5-year-olds for 16 languages. This methodology
allows us to compare the acquisition of pronominals in languages
that lack object clitics (“pronoun languages”) with languages that employ
clitics in the relevant context (“clitic languages”), thus establishing a robust
cross-linguistic baseline in the domain of clitic and pronoun production for
5-year-olds. High rates of pronominal production are found in our results,
indicating that children have the relevant pragmatic knowledge required to
select a pronominal in the discourse setting involved in the experiment as
well as the relevant morphosyntactic knowledge involved in the production
of pronominals. It is legitimate to conclude from our data that a child who
at age 5 is not able to produce any or few pronominals is a child at risk for
language impairment. In this way, pronominal production can be taken as a
developmental marker, provided that one takes into account certain crosslinguistic
differences discussed in the article.