This study investigates the use of subject and object pronouns in European Portuguese (EP) by Portuguese-German bilingual children living in Switzerland and their monolingual peers in Portugal. Written narratives from 61 children aged 10-12 were analysed with a focus on null versus overt subject and object realization. Results reveal a striking subject-object asymmetry in the production of the bilinguals: they overspecify subjects, producing overt pronouns more frequently in contexts of topic continuity where more null subjects are expected. Conversely, they underspecify objects, producing null object constructions and avoiding the use of clitics. We attribute the lateness of these phenomena to the complexity of overt subjects and clitic pronouns in the target system. Concerning the observed asymmetry between subjects and objects, we assume that children follow a universal referential hierarchy guiding the distribution of subject and object pronouns while at the same time disregarding discourse-pragmatic constraints. O presente estudo investiga o uso de pronomes sujeito e objeto no portugu & ecirc;s europeu (PE) por crian & ccedil;as bilingues portugu & ecirc;s-alem & atilde;o residentes na Su & iacute;& ccedil;a, em compara & ccedil;& atilde;o com crian & ccedil;as monolingues em Portugal. Foram analisadas narrativas escritas de 61 crian & ccedil;as, com idades compreendidas entre os 10 e os 12 anos, incidindo na realiza & ccedil;& atilde;o versus omiss & atilde;o de sujeitos e objetos. Os resultados evidenciam uma acentuada assimetria sujeito-objeto na produ & ccedil;& atilde;o das crian & ccedil;as bilingues: por um lado, observa-se uma sobrerrepresenta & ccedil;& atilde;o de sujeitos, com recurso frequente a pronomes expressos em contextos de continuidade t & oacute;pica, nos quais seriam esperados sujeitos nulos; por outro lado, verifica-se uma subespecifica & ccedil;& atilde;o dos objetos, atrav & eacute;s do uso de constru & ccedil;& otilde;es com objeto nulo. Para explicar esta assimetria, propomos que as crian & ccedil;as seguem uma hierarquia referencial universal que orienta a distribui & ccedil;& atilde;o de pronomes sujeito e objeto, n & atilde;o dominando ainda plenamente as restri & ccedil;& otilde;es discursivo-pragm & aacute;ticas da l & iacute;ngua-alvo.
This study analyses subject personal pronoun (SPP) use in Spanish among 82 typically developing children, assessing how executive functions (EFs) and linguistic abilities interact with third-person singular pronoun expression. Researchers manually coded 9750 SPP instances from sociolinguistic interviews and administered standardized tests of morphosyntax, lexicon, inhibition, working memory (WM), and attention. The investigation had two aims: (1) to replicate prior findings on SPP constraints and (2) to evaluate the contributions of linguistic and EF abilities to third-person pronoun expression. Mixed-effects binary logistic regressions confirmed three common constraints on SPP use: the first-person singular, the imperfect tense, and switch-reference contexts, replicating previous studies' results. Although initial correlations linked EF measures to SPP expression, multiple regression analyses revealed that morphosyntactic abilities accounted for the unique variance in pronoun expression. Thus, in this sample, children's language-internal morphosyntactic abilities are better related to third-person singular pronoun expression than our tests of inhibition, attention, and WM.
This study examines variation sets (VS) - structured repetitions of words in different morphosyntactic contexts - in child-directed speech (CDS) compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) across two communities (Argentinian Spanish and North American English) and socioeconomic groups. Drawing on naturalistic recordings from 101 families, results show that VS are more frequent in CDS than in ADS. In Argentinian Spanish, they are more prevalent in middle socioeconomic status (SES) households, whereas no SES-related differences emerged in the North American sample. Across languages, they were often anchored in verbs. However, SES-related differences in lexical anchoring varied by community: in Argentinian middle-SES households, CDS includes more VS anchored in adjectives, whereas in middle-SES North American English households, noun-based VS were less frequent relative to verb-based VS. Findings indicate that linguistic typology - particularly the pro-drop versus non-pro-drop distinction - and socioeconomic context are associated with the lexical distribution and organization of repetition with variation in children's everyday linguistic environments.
To communicate effectively, speakers must monitor and refine their utterances based on what their interlocutors know. Young children's use of the contrastive marker but offers a window into this ability. Using longitudinal transcripts, we examined how seven children (ages 2-5) used but to clarify messages in everyday conversations. We coded 1,446 utterances to identify clarifications addressing gaps in listener knowledge. Children rarely used but for clarification at age 2, with marked increases between ages 2 and 3. By age 3, children often used but to provide privileged information in response to adults' knowledge-gap cues. These findings raise questions about the role of conversational experience in the development of children's mentalising abilities.
Absolute gradable adjectives (e.g., dry) and relative gradable adjectives (e.g., tall) interact differently with negation, with only negated absolute gradable adjectives semantically entailing their antonyms (e.g., not dry ⊨ wet). This study examined how 4- and 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children and adults interpreted these two types of negative expressions. Results showed that all groups interpreted negated absolute gradable adjectives as entailing their antonyms. In contrast, their interpretation of negated relative gradable adjectives diverged: 5-year-olds equated such expressions with their antonyms (e.g., not tall ≈ short), while 4-year-olds and adults treated them as semantically distinct. These findings indicate that children are sensitive to the semantic differences between absolute and relative gradable adjectives and their interactions with negation. While context-independent absolute gradable adjectives consistently prompted literal interpretations of their negation, the context dependency and semantic indeterminacy of relative gradable adjectives triggered children and adults to engage in different pragmatic reasoning about the intended meanings.
