Binding and Coreference in Norwegian Child Language

Four experimental studies were designed to test, in Norwegian, the hypothesis that children’s nonadultlike interpretations of pronouns may be partly attributable to a lexical factor interacting with the A-Chain Condition (Philip and Coopmans (1996), Sigurjónsdóttir and Coopmans (1996)). Analyzing the antisubject orientation of pronouns in adult Norwegian as an A-Chain Condition effect at Logical Form, we predicted that, due to imperfect representation of the lexical features of pronouns, Norwegian children would significantly more often show nonadultlike understanding of antisubject-oriented pronouns than of pronouns whose adult interpretation is also constrained by Principle B. These predictions were confirmed, providing evidence for the independent effects of the A-Chain Condition and the Binding Principles on the distribution of pronouns and identifying lexical interactive effects with the A-Chain Condition as a potential locus of development and variation across child languages.