Factors affecting young children's use of pronouns as referring expressions

Most studies of children's use of pronouns have focused either on the morph ology of personal pronouns or on the anaphoric use of pronouns by older chi ldren. The current two studies investigated Factors affecting children's ch oice of pronouns as referring expressions-in contrast with their use of ful l nouns and null references. In the first study it was found that 2.5- and 3.5-year-old children did not use pronouns differentially whether the adult (a) modeled a pronoun or a noun for the target object or (b) did or did no t witness the target event (although there was evidence that they did notic e and take account of the adult's witnessing in other ways). In the second study it was found that children of this same age (a) do not use pronouns t o avoid unfamiliar or difficult nouns but (b) do use pronouns differently d epending an the immediately preceding discourse of the experimenter (whethe r they were asked a specific question such as "What did X do?" or a general question such as "What happened?"). In the case of specific questions, chi ldren prefer to use a null reference but use some pronouns as well (almost never using full nouns); in the case of: the generic questions, children us e pronouns even more often (and use nouns more as well). This finding was c orroborated by some new analyses of children's use of pronouns in specific discourse situations in previously published studies. These findings sugges t that children's choice of pronouns as referring expressions in early lang uage development is influenced more by the immediately preceding discourse than other kinds of factors.