Pc. Girouard et al., THE ACQUISITION OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS IN FRENCH-SPEAKING AND ENGLISH-SPEAKING CHILDREN, Journal of child language, 24(2), 1997, pp. 311-326
This paper presents a longitudinal study on the acquisition of first,
second, and third person pronouns in twelve French-speaking and twelve
English-speaking children. Comprehension and production data were col
lected every two months, beginning when the subjects were aged 1;6 and
ending once pronouns were fully acquired. Three hypotheses concerning
the rules children develop in learning pronouns were tested: (1) the
person-role hypothesis (Charney, 1980), (2) the speech-role hypothesis
(Clark, 1978), and (3) the name hypothesis (Clark, 1978) An analysis
of children's pronominal confusion when they were addressed listeners
as well as when they were non-addressed listeners was performed. The r
esults indicated that the mastery of pronouns did not follow the devel
opmental sequence predicted by the speech-role hypothesis; they provid
ed evidence for the person-role hypothesis only when children were spe
akers, and partially supported the name hypothesis. The data also sugg
ested that pronominal confusion is not a rare phenomenon among childre
n tested in a non-addressee context. Finally, effects of child gender
and native language were observed. Possible interpretations of the dat
a are discussed.