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Coherent discourse solves the pronoun interpretation problem*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2008

JENNIFER SPENADER ,
ERIK-JAN SMITS  and
PETRA HENDRIKS
JENNIFER SPENADER*
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
ERIK-JAN SMITS
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
PETRA HENDRIKS
Affiliation:
University of Groningen
*
Address for correspondence: Jennifer Spenader, Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 407, 9700 AK Groningen, The Netherlands. tel: +31-50-3636327; fax: +31-50-3636687; e-mail: J.Spenader@ai.rug.nl.
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Abstract

Many comprehension studies have shown that children as late as age 6 ; 6 misinterpret object pronouns as co-referring with the referential subject about half the time. A recent review of earlier experiments testing children's interpretation of object pronouns in sentences with quantified subjects (Elbourne, 2005) also suggests that there is a ‘Pronoun Interpretation Problem’. In contrast, two experiments addressing English children's pronoun production (Bloom, Barss, Nicol & Conway, 1994; de Villiers, Cahillane & Altreuter, 2006) show almost perfect usage. The aim of this study is to verify this asymmetry between pronoun production and pronoun comprehension for Dutch, and to investigate the effects of coherent discourse and topicality on pronoun production and comprehension. Employing a truth-value judgment task and an elicited production task, this study indeed finds such an asymmetry in 83 Dutch children (age range 4 ; 5–6 ; 6). When object pronouns were clearly established as the topic of the target sentence, the Pronoun Interpretation Problem dissolved entirely. These results are compatible with the asymmetrical grammar hypothesis of Hendriks & Spenader (2005/2006) and suggest, contrary to many previous claims, that children are highly proficient at using pragmatic clues in interpretation.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 23 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

[*]

We are especially grateful to the children, teachers and parents of the Haydnschool and the Nassauschool in Groningen for participating in this study. We would also like to thank Jill de Villiers and the Acquisition Lab at the University of Groningen for discussion of the experiment, Robbert Prins for making the drawings used in the experiment, John Hoeks for his help with the statistical analysis of the data, and the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. Petra Hendriks gratefully acknowledges the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (grant no. 277-70-005) for their financial support.

References

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