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About me, you and her: Personal pronouns are developmentally preceded by mental state language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2022

Filip SMOLÍK Open the ORCID record for Filip SMOLÍK [Opens in a new window]  and
Anna CHROMÁ
Filip SMOLÍK*
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences
Anna CHROMÁ
Affiliation:
Faculty of Arts, Charles University
*
Corresponding author. Filip Smolík, Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Hybernská 8, CZ-110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic. E-mail: smolik@praha.psu.cas.cz
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Abstract

Person-referring pronouns in the first and second person (I, your) have been viewed as signs of increasing social understanding in children due to their shifting reference properties. However, they are linguistically complex elements and might depend on general language development. We used longitudinal transcript data from Manchester corpus (12 children aged 2 to 3 years) to examine concurrent and predictive relations between pronouns, general language development (MLU), and social understanding (indexed by the use of mental state language). In the key analysis, social understanding but not general language was found to be a developmental precursor of first-, second- and third-person pronoun mastery. Results suggest that social understanding is needed for acquisition of all person reference, not only in first and second person. Results for first- and third-person pronouns were more similar than for second person, suggesting that social-cognitive demands of person reference go beyond shifting reference of first- and second-person.

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Article
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Journal of Child Language , Volume 50 , Issue 3: Special issue on Cross-cultural language development , May 2023 , pp. 537 - 554
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© Institute of Psychology CAS, Czech Republic, 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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