When production precedes comprehension: An optimization approach to the acquisition of pronouns

Data from child language comprehension shows that children make errors in interpreting pronouns as late as age 6;6, yet correctly comprehend reflexives from the age of 3;0. On the other hand, data from child language production shows that children correctly produce both pronouns and reflexives from the age of 2 or 3. Current explanations of this asymmetric delay in comprehension have either rejected the comprehension data outright or have argued that the problems are pragmatic or caused by processing limitations. In contrast, our account, formulated in the framework of Optimality Theory, handles the comprehension data as well as the production data by arguing that children acquire the ability to take into account the alternatives available to their conversational partner relatively late. It is this type of bidirectional optimization, we argue, that is necessary for correctly interpreting pronouns. 3 1. Children's grasp of binding principles 1.1. Children's comprehension of reflexives and pronouns There is a well-known asymmetry in children's pattern of acquisition of the binding principles A and B. Children correctly interpret reflexives like adults from the age of 3;0 but they continue to perform poorly on the interpretation of pronouns even up to the age see also Grimshaw and Rosen (1990) and Kaufman (1992) for a review). For example, presented in a context with two male referents, say Bert and Ernie, sentences like (1) are correctly understood from a young age (95% of the time according to some studies). However, children misinterpret the him in (2) as coreferring with the subject about half the time, which seems to be the result of chance performance. (1) Bert washed himself. Effect), a good explanation has yet to be given. 4 Most experiments investigating the acquisition of the binding principles focus on comprehension. However, children's production data complicates the picture. The production research suggests that children do not have problems in producing reflexives or pronouns correctly. De Villiers, Cahillane and Altreuter (to appear) studied the production as well as the comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in 68 English speaking children between the ages of 4;6 and 7;2 (average age 6;2 years). Their study looked at two sentence types: two-sentence sequences like (3) and sentences with an embedded subordinate clause like (4). Baby Bear is washing him/himself. (4) Papa Bear says Baby Bear is washing him/himself. After being tested for comprehension with a truth-value judgment task, children were shown the pictures with the same …