Pronoun use in normal and language-impaired children

Abstract

The paper investigates children's use of pronouns in two types of unconstrained speech. The first consisted of a conversational setting where all the referents were present in the here-and-now (perceptible), and the second of conversations centred around the child's home and family, such that none of the referents were perceptible (non-perceptible). The experimental design used was based on two procedures which formed part of the elicitation protocol employed within an MRC-funded project at Reading University, namely, a stick-on game for the perceptible setting, and free conversation for the non-perceptible setting. Pronoun types and uses were analyzed for each conversational setting in 30 children, ten each at the ages 3, 5, 7 years and nine children with high-level language impairment. Only clauses with the structure SVO, SVC or SVA were included in the analysis. Overall, the relation between pronouns and structural NPs was remarkably similar across all groups and for both settings. Context did have an impact on pronoun frequency, the clause position in which pronouns occurred as well as pronoun types. The language-impaired children used pronouns similarly to the normal children on most measures. Differences occurred in the frequency of third person pronouns in both settings. In order to find an explanation for this difference, the children's conversational skills, in particular the ability to maintain a topic, are further investigated.

Key Words:

• Pronouns
• structural NPs
• context effects
• topic maintenance