The acquisition of pronouns by French children: A parallel study of production and comprehension

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Serval ID
serval:BIB_7B0054FB04C9
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
The acquisition of pronouns by French children: A parallel study of production and comprehension
Journal
Applied Psycholinguistics
Author(s)
Zesiger Pascal, Zesiger Laurence Chillier, Arabatzi Marina, Baranzini Lara, Cronel-Ohayon Stephany, Franck Julie, Frauenfelder Ulrich Hans, Hamann Cornelia, Rizzi Luigi
ISSN
0142-7164
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2010
Volume
31
Number
4
Pages
571-603
Language
english
Abstract
This study examines syntactic and morphological aspects of the production and comprehension of pronouns by 99 typically developing French-speaking children aged 3 years, 5 months to 6 years, 5 months. A fine structural analysis of subject, object, and reflexive clitics suggests that whereas the object clitic chain crosses the subject chain, the reflexive clitic chain is nested within it. We argue that this structural difference introduces differences in processing complexity, chain crossing being more complex than nesting. In support of this analysis, both production and comprehension experiments show that children have more difficulty with object than with reflexive clitics (with more omissions in production and more erroneous judgments in sentences involving Principle B in comprehension). Concerning the morphological aspect, French subject and object pronouns agree in gender with their referent. We report serious difficulties with pronoun gender both in production and comprehension in children around the age of 4 (with nearly 30% errors in production and chance level judgments in comprehension), which tend to disappear by age 6. The distribution of errors further suggests that the masculine gender is processed as the default value. These findings provide further insights into the relationship between comprehension and production in the acquisition process.
Keywords
LANGUAGE, AGREEMENT, SPEECH, GENDER
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
13/10/2010 15:49
Last modification date
14/02/2022 8:55
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