First and second person pronouns in two mother-child dyads

Stéphanie Caët (1) , Aliyah Morgenstern (2, 3)

1 STL - Savoirs, Textes, Langage (STL) - UMR 8163
2 PRISMES - PRISMES - Langues, Textes, Arts et Cultures du Monde Anglophone - EA 4398
3 Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3

First and second person pronouns are complex categories for children to acquire. During a transitional period, when they start referring to themselves as subjects, French-speaking children produce a variety of non-conventional forms. The analysis of these uses provide valuable insights on how they creatively process language and progressively acquire the tools that enable them to refer to themselves and to the interlocutor, as speakers/addressees and subjects. In this paper, we present data from two French-speaking children, recorded monthly between 1;06 and 3;03 during everyday interactions with their mothers. We focus on the transitional use of non-standard forms in the children’s speech as a window unto the development of their cognitive, linguistic and social skills, and analyse the global and local impact of the input.

Mots clés: language acquisition; first person pronouns; second person pronouns.

Domaines: Linguistique

Stéphanie Caët, Aliyah Morgenstern. First and second person pronouns in two mother-child dyads. Laure Gardelle et Sandrine Sorlin. The Pragmatics of Personal Pronouns, Benjamins, pp.173-193, 2015. ⟨halshs-01288353⟩