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Young children use shared experience to interpret definite reference*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2014

DANIEL SCHMERSE ,
ELENA LIEVEN  and
MICHAEL TOMASELLO
DANIEL SCHMERSE
Affiliation:
PädQUIS gGmbH, Collaborative Institute of Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
ELENA LIEVEN
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany Max Planck Child Study Centre, School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
MICHAEL TOMASELLO
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
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Abstract

We investigated whether children at the ages of two and three years understand that a speaker's use of the definite article specifies a referent that is in common ground between speaker and listener. An experimenter and a child engaged in joint actions in which the experimenter chose one of three similar objects of the same category to perform an action. In subsequent interactions children were asked to get ‘the X’ or ‘a X’. When children were instructed with the definite article they chose the shared object significantly more often than when they were instructed with the indefinite article in which case children's choice was at chance. The findings show that in their third year children use shared experiences to interpret the speaker's communicative intention underlying her referential choice. The results are discussed with respect to children's representation of linguistic categories and the role of joint action for establishing common ground.

Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 42 , Issue 5 , September 2015 , pp. 1146 - 1157
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

[*]

Address for correspondence: Daniel Schmerse, PädQUIS gGmbH – Kooperationsinstitut der Freien Universität Berlin. tel: + 49 30 72006114; e-mail: [email protected]

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