A closer look at pronoun comprehension: Comparing different methods
1. Introduction
External input is necessary to acquire language. Consequently, the
comprehension of various constituents of language, such as lexical items or
syntactic and semantic structures should emerge at the same time as or even
precede their production. However, in the case of pronouns this general assumption
does not seem to hold. On the contrary, while children at the age of four use
pronouns and reflexives appropriately during production (de Villiers, et al. 2006), a
number of comprehension studies across different languages found chance
performance in pronoun trials up to the age of seven, which co-occurs with a high
level of accuracy in reflexive trials (for an overview see e.g. Conroy, et al. 2009;
Elbourne 2005).
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