Digest for info-childes at googlegroups.com - 3 Messages in 2 Topics
Silva-corvalan, Carmen: USC
csilva at usc.edu
Mon Jun 18 17:58:02 UTC 2012
Dear all:
The following is an excerpt from a chapter on subject realization in
English and Spanish by two normally developing bilinguals (upcoming book is
*Bilingual Language Acquisition: Spanish and English in the first six
years. CUP).* These children did not make any gender errors, but they
started using 3 person pronouns well into their 3rd year. Sensitivity to
gender may have been helped by contact with Spanish, which marks gender on
"everything". They both made the typical errors with 'me' as subject,
though not frequently. I have only one example with "her" as subject, from
Nico, who is an early acquirer and quite proficient in both languages.
Notice mom's model and child correction:
Mom: Where’s she going? [a cousin]
N: [her's leaving] *2;1.25*
Mom: Where’s she going?
N: [Thrifty, she wants to buy stuff, shave for tío Fernando]
"In English, Nico starts using pronouns at 1;8.2 in the utterance *I get it*(playing with a ball with an adult). The 94 overt pronouns in his English
include: *I* (64 cases); *it* in the item *it’s* (21 cases); *you* (1 in
the routine *How are you?*, and 6 in the frame *What (are) you V-ing?*);
and 2 cases of *he*. These alternate with 8 unexpressed pronouns: *I* (4), *
it* (3), and *you* (1). Only three different frames for the use of *I*are
recorded in Nico’s data throughout the 20th month: *I get it*, *I don’t
like it*, and *I want X*. Bren starts using the first singular pronoun *I*at 1;10. This is the only pronoun he uses during the early age period: 11
examples in the frame *I want (it) X*, 3 cases of *I did it*, and 1 in the
routine *I coming!* (with a null auxiliary). Of the 10 cases of null
subject in Bren’s English only one is in the context of a second person
singular; all other null subjects correspond to *I *with a missing
auxiliary (e.g., *No like it*, *All done*). Shared knowledge with the
surrounding adults, and the physical and discourse context make up for the
children's initial stage of subject omission."
I have not yet listed further dates for English pronouns. For what may be
worth, here's information about the Spanish pronouns:
AGE Pros (first appearance)
1;11 yo
2;3 tú
2;4 él (1 token)
2;6-2;11: several tú and él
NO other pronouns.
FOR NICO:
2;3: yo
2;4: tú, él
2;5-2;11: several tú and él
2;9: nosotros (1 token)
"Ella" 'she' does not appear. The boys don't have a sister and they refer
to mom and other females by name.
Carmen Silva-Corvalán
On Sunday, June 17, 2012 9:41:51 AM UTC-7, Lise Menn wrote:
>
> The pronoun gender confusion issue in English can probably be settled
> fairly quickly by looking at the CHILDES data base, but i want to offer a
> caveat: the nominative he/she pair can also be subject to phonological
> errors if the child hasn't yet learned to control the 'esh' sound.
> For what it's worth, English-speaking agrammatic aphasics, who usually
> have articulation problems, have he/she errors, but I don't know if there
> are documented gender errors on possessive (his/her) or accusative
> (him/her) forms; I suspect that the closeness in sound of the he/she pair
> makes them more vulnerable to error.
> Lise Menn
>
>
> On Jun 17, 2012, at 6:55 AM, <info-childes at googlegroups.com> <
> info-childes at googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Today's Topic Summary
>
> Group: http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics
>
> - pronoun errors in gender [1 Update]
> - pronoun errors of gender [2 Updates]
>
> pronoun errors in gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/e5b87a868833f3b7>
>
> Denis Donovan <dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com> Jun 16 07:45PM -0400
>
> Hi Laura,
>
> Just a few thoughts on the subject you have raised.
>
> One of the problems with posing categorical problems is that they may,
> or may not, present quite the same challenges to practical understanding in
> different language worlds. In English, we can certainly refer to a city
> such as Paris, as Alistair Horne did in his marvelous history, SEVEN AGES
> OF PARIS, as a woman. And it is standard to refer to ships as feminine. No
> one would ever say of the Titanic "He sunk."
>
> Whereas London, through the ages, has always betrayed clearly male
> orientations, and New York has a certain ambivalence, has any sensible
> person ever doubted that Paris is fundamentally a woman? It was thus that I
> first conceived this book--not as any arrogant attempt to write an
> all-embracing history of Paris, but rather as a series of linked
> biographical essays, depicting seven ages (capriciously selected at the
> whim of the author) in the long, exciting life of a sexy and beautiful, but
> also turbulent, troublesome and sometimes excessively violent woman (Horne
> :xiii).
>
> Horne, Alistaire (2004). Seven Ages of Paris. New York: Vintage.
>
> But languages that mark the gender of things other than people --
> objects, places, concepts, etc. -- and those that typically do not present
> very different psychological or psycholinguistic challenges. You make this
> observation:
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g., “her have it”). I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a child make a
> pronoun gender error who did NOT have autism, but I’m having trouble
> finding anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
> I've attached a clinical example from a book that I'm finishing up
> that does not fit your pattern. The example is a good 15 years old,
> although it won't be published until the book is completed shortly. Notice
> that the issue is both linguistically and clinically complex. Yet it's a
> not uncommon case.
>
> Best,
>
> Denis
>
> Denis M. Donovan, M.D., M.Ed., F.A.P.S.
> Director, EOCT Institute
>
> Medical Director, 1983 - 2006
> The Children's Center for Developmental Psychiatry
> St. Petersburg, Florida
>
> P.O Box 47576
> St. Petersburg, FL 33743-7576
> Phone: 727-641-8905
> DenisDonovan at EOCT-Institute.org
> dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com
>
>
> pronoun errors of gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/25b5e418bffec8f7>
>
> "Laura Snow" <lsnow at u.washington.edu> Jun 16 02:31PM -0700
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> I'm trying to determine whether typically developing children ever make
> errors in pronoun gender (e.g., reverse "he" and "she"), and if so,
>
>
>
> 1. at what point in their language development (and for how long) do
> these errors occur?
>
> 2. are these errors consistent or intermittent during the time that
> they
> occur?
>
> 3. Do the errors occur mainly in cases of long-distance reference or
> also with relatively simple utterances (e.g., pointing to a girl and
> saying,
> "He has it")
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make
> errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as
> younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g.,
> "her have it"). I can't say that I've ever seen a child make a pronoun
> gender error who did NOT have autism, but I'm having trouble finding
> anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
>
>
> I'm mainly interested in finding formal studies of children learning
> English, but evidence that is anecdotal and/or from other languages
> would
> also be useful!
>
>
>
>
>
> Laura Snow, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
>
> University of Washington
>
> Center on Human Development and Disability
>
> Seattle, WA
>
>
>
> Aliyah MORGENSTERN <aliyah.morgenstern at gmail.com> Jun 17 12:31AM +0200
>
>
> Dear Laura,
>
> I can only report anecdotal errors in French data.
> We haven't made any specific study on this topic in our data of French
> typical children (the Paris corpus) but I do have anecdotical evidence of
> pronoun and determiner "errors" in gender. You might not consider it as
> being the same issue (in the case of determiner, mostly grammatical gender,
> in the case of pronouns referential or personal gender). I must say that
> grammatical gender errors in French exist and are quite impressive when we
> find them and also fun to analyze since the developmental pattern could be
> similar to past tense with irregular verbs in English ("la fleur" feminine
> flower instead of masculine, "un poule" - masculine chicken instead of
> feminine).
>
> As far as personal pronouns are concerned, we have noticed that
> children mostly produce non standard "proto-uses" of "proto-forms" when
> they are in the filler syllable stage with fillers closer to "il" instead
> of "elle" or the reverse... When the full pronoun stage is reached with no
> more fillers, there are still some odd gender reversals...
> Older children (3 or 4) get mixed up when they are trying to refer to
> two different characters or persons in the same speech turn: "elle la
> mange" (she eats her) speaking of the wolf eating the little girl, instead
> of "IL la mange" (he eats her) with the added complexity of subject and
> object and semantic roles of eater and "eatee"...
>
> As far as I know these errors are not consistent at all during the
> time that they occur. I think it is interesting to study whether and when
> they are repaired by adults.
>
> I'm sorry if this is really too vague...and of course since we only
> have spontaneous data, the occurrences will be really scarce, we could only
> make qualitative analyses. But I'm sure we have them. And actually, I
> myself continue to make that type of "error". I can remember a whole data
> session when I kept referring to the child as she when it was a he... Maybe
> under the influence of scientific papers on language acquisition. I'm sure
> I've heard adults get mixed up as well. I think there are a lot of
> different factors (cognitive overload, semantic complexity, number of
> referents, prototypical gender for certain roles or functions which
> influence certain automatisms...).
>
> As far as the psychotic and autistic children I have worked with are
> concerned, I have not filmed them, so can only speak from direct experience
> with no data, but the errors were much more systematic when they existed.
>
> I think you could compare this phenomenon to pronominal reversal (3rd
> or 2nd person instead of first person) in typical and autistic children.
> There is more literature on that, especially in English and it might
> inspire you, but you have probably already thought of it.
>
> Best,
> Aliyah
>
>
>
>
> Aliyah Morgenstern
> Professor of Linguistics
> Sorbonne Nouvelle University
>
>
> Le 16 juin 2012 à 23:31, Laura Snow a écrit :
>
>
>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Group
> info-childes.
> You can post via email <info-childes at googlegroups.com>.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send<info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com>an empty message.
> For more options, visit<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics>this group.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Info-CHILDES" group.
> To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.
>
>
> Lise Menn Home Office: 303-444-4274
> 1625 Mariposa Ave Fax: 303-413-0017
> Boulder CO 80302
>
> Professor Emerita of Linguistics
> Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
> University of Colorado
>
> Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]
>
> Campus Mail Address:
> UCB 594, Institute of Cognitive Science
>
> Campus Physical Address:
> CINC 234
> 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder
>
>
>
>
On Sunday, June 17, 2012 9:41:51 AM UTC-7, Lise Menn wrote:
>
> The pronoun gender confusion issue in English can probably be settled
> fairly quickly by looking at the CHILDES data base, but i want to offer a
> caveat: the nominative he/she pair can also be subject to phonological
> errors if the child hasn't yet learned to control the 'esh' sound.
> For what it's worth, English-speaking agrammatic aphasics, who usually
> have articulation problems, have he/she errors, but I don't know if there
> are documented gender errors on possessive (his/her) or accusative
> (him/her) forms; I suspect that the closeness in sound of the he/she pair
> makes them more vulnerable to error.
> Lise Menn
>
>
> On Jun 17, 2012, at 6:55 AM, <info-childes at googlegroups.com> <
> info-childes at googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Today's Topic Summary
>
> Group: http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics
>
> - pronoun errors in gender [1 Update]
> - pronoun errors of gender [2 Updates]
>
> pronoun errors in gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/e5b87a868833f3b7>
>
> Denis Donovan <dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com> Jun 16 07:45PM -0400
>
> Hi Laura,
>
> Just a few thoughts on the subject you have raised.
>
> One of the problems with posing categorical problems is that they may,
> or may not, present quite the same challenges to practical understanding in
> different language worlds. In English, we can certainly refer to a city
> such as Paris, as Alistair Horne did in his marvelous history, SEVEN AGES
> OF PARIS, as a woman. And it is standard to refer to ships as feminine. No
> one would ever say of the Titanic "He sunk."
>
> Whereas London, through the ages, has always betrayed clearly male
> orientations, and New York has a certain ambivalence, has any sensible
> person ever doubted that Paris is fundamentally a woman? It was thus that I
> first conceived this book--not as any arrogant attempt to write an
> all-embracing history of Paris, but rather as a series of linked
> biographical essays, depicting seven ages (capriciously selected at the
> whim of the author) in the long, exciting life of a sexy and beautiful, but
> also turbulent, troublesome and sometimes excessively violent woman (Horne
> :xiii).
>
> Horne, Alistaire (2004). Seven Ages of Paris. New York: Vintage.
>
> But languages that mark the gender of things other than people --
> objects, places, concepts, etc. -- and those that typically do not present
> very different psychological or psycholinguistic challenges. You make this
> observation:
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g., “her have it”). I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a child make a
> pronoun gender error who did NOT have autism, but I’m having trouble
> finding anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
> I've attached a clinical example from a book that I'm finishing up
> that does not fit your pattern. The example is a good 15 years old,
> although it won't be published until the book is completed shortly. Notice
> that the issue is both linguistically and clinically complex. Yet it's a
> not uncommon case.
>
> Best,
>
> Denis
>
> Denis M. Donovan, M.D., M.Ed., F.A.P.S.
> Director, EOCT Institute
>
> Medical Director, 1983 - 2006
> The Children's Center for Developmental Psychiatry
> St. Petersburg, Florida
>
> P.O Box 47576
> St. Petersburg, FL 33743-7576
> Phone: 727-641-8905
> DenisDonovan at EOCT-Institute.org
> dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com
>
>
> pronoun errors of gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/25b5e418bffec8f7>
>
> "Laura Snow" <lsnow at u.washington.edu> Jun 16 02:31PM -0700
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> I'm trying to determine whether typically developing children ever make
> errors in pronoun gender (e.g., reverse "he" and "she"), and if so,
>
>
>
> 1. at what point in their language development (and for how long) do
> these errors occur?
>
> 2. are these errors consistent or intermittent during the time that
> they
> occur?
>
> 3. Do the errors occur mainly in cases of long-distance reference or
> also with relatively simple utterances (e.g., pointing to a girl and
> saying,
> "He has it")
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make
> errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as
> younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g.,
> "her have it"). I can't say that I've ever seen a child make a pronoun
> gender error who did NOT have autism, but I'm having trouble finding
> anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
>
>
> I'm mainly interested in finding formal studies of children learning
> English, but evidence that is anecdotal and/or from other languages
> would
> also be useful!
>
>
>
>
>
> Laura Snow, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
>
> University of Washington
>
> Center on Human Development and Disability
>
> Seattle, WA
>
>
>
> Aliyah MORGENSTERN <aliyah.morgenstern at gmail.com> Jun 17 12:31AM +0200
>
>
> Dear Laura,
>
> I can only report anecdotal errors in French data.
> We haven't made any specific study on this topic in our data of French
> typical children (the Paris corpus) but I do have anecdotical evidence of
> pronoun and determiner "errors" in gender. You might not consider it as
> being the same issue (in the case of determiner, mostly grammatical gender,
> in the case of pronouns referential or personal gender). I must say that
> grammatical gender errors in French exist and are quite impressive when we
> find them and also fun to analyze since the developmental pattern could be
> similar to past tense with irregular verbs in English ("la fleur" feminine
> flower instead of masculine, "un poule" - masculine chicken instead of
> feminine).
>
> As far as personal pronouns are concerned, we have noticed that
> children mostly produce non standard "proto-uses" of "proto-forms" when
> they are in the filler syllable stage with fillers closer to "il" instead
> of "elle" or the reverse... When the full pronoun stage is reached with no
> more fillers, there are still some odd gender reversals...
> Older children (3 or 4) get mixed up when they are trying to refer to
> two different characters or persons in the same speech turn: "elle la
> mange" (she eats her) speaking of the wolf eating the little girl, instead
> of "IL la mange" (he eats her) with the added complexity of subject and
> object and semantic roles of eater and "eatee"...
>
> As far as I know these errors are not consistent at all during the
> time that they occur. I think it is interesting to study whether and when
> they are repaired by adults.
>
> I'm sorry if this is really too vague...and of course since we only
> have spontaneous data, the occurrences will be really scarce, we could only
> make qualitative analyses. But I'm sure we have them. And actually, I
> myself continue to make that type of "error". I can remember a whole data
> session when I kept referring to the child as she when it was a he... Maybe
> under the influence of scientific papers on language acquisition. I'm sure
> I've heard adults get mixed up as well. I think there are a lot of
> different factors (cognitive overload, semantic complexity, number of
> referents, prototypical gender for certain roles or functions which
> influence certain automatisms...).
>
> As far as the psychotic and autistic children I have worked with are
> concerned, I have not filmed them, so can only speak from direct experience
> with no data, but the errors were much more systematic when they existed.
>
> I think you could compare this phenomenon to pronominal reversal (3rd
> or 2nd person instead of first person) in typical and autistic children.
> There is more literature on that, especially in English and it might
> inspire you, but you have probably already thought of it.
>
> Best,
> Aliyah
>
>
>
>
> Aliyah Morgenstern
> Professor of Linguistics
> Sorbonne Nouvelle University
>
>
> Le 16 juin 2012 à 23:31, Laura Snow a écrit :
>
>
>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Group
> info-childes.
> You can post via email <info-childes at googlegroups.com>.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send<info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com>an empty message.
> For more options, visit<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics>this group.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Info-CHILDES" group.
> To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.
>
>
> Lise Menn Home Office: 303-444-4274
> 1625 Mariposa Ave Fax: 303-413-0017
> Boulder CO 80302
>
> Professor Emerita of Linguistics
> Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
> University of Colorado
>
> Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]
>
> Campus Mail Address:
> UCB 594, Institute of Cognitive Science
>
> Campus Physical Address:
> CINC 234
> 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder
>
>
>
>
On Sunday, June 17, 2012 9:41:51 AM UTC-7, Lise Menn wrote:
>
> The pronoun gender confusion issue in English can probably be settled
> fairly quickly by looking at the CHILDES data base, but i want to offer a
> caveat: the nominative he/she pair can also be subject to phonological
> errors if the child hasn't yet learned to control the 'esh' sound.
> For what it's worth, English-speaking agrammatic aphasics, who usually
> have articulation problems, have he/she errors, but I don't know if there
> are documented gender errors on possessive (his/her) or accusative
> (him/her) forms; I suspect that the closeness in sound of the he/she pair
> makes them more vulnerable to error.
> Lise Menn
>
>
> On Jun 17, 2012, at 6:55 AM, <info-childes at googlegroups.com> <
> info-childes at googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Today's Topic Summary
>
> Group: http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics
>
> - pronoun errors in gender [1 Update]
> - pronoun errors of gender [2 Updates]
>
> pronoun errors in gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/e5b87a868833f3b7>
>
> Denis Donovan <dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com> Jun 16 07:45PM -0400
>
> Hi Laura,
>
> Just a few thoughts on the subject you have raised.
>
> One of the problems with posing categorical problems is that they may,
> or may not, present quite the same challenges to practical understanding in
> different language worlds. In English, we can certainly refer to a city
> such as Paris, as Alistair Horne did in his marvelous history, SEVEN AGES
> OF PARIS, as a woman. And it is standard to refer to ships as feminine. No
> one would ever say of the Titanic "He sunk."
>
> Whereas London, through the ages, has always betrayed clearly male
> orientations, and New York has a certain ambivalence, has any sensible
> person ever doubted that Paris is fundamentally a woman? It was thus that I
> first conceived this book--not as any arrogant attempt to write an
> all-embracing history of Paris, but rather as a series of linked
> biographical essays, depicting seven ages (capriciously selected at the
> whim of the author) in the long, exciting life of a sexy and beautiful, but
> also turbulent, troublesome and sometimes excessively violent woman (Horne
> :xiii).
>
> Horne, Alistaire (2004). Seven Ages of Paris. New York: Vintage.
>
> But languages that mark the gender of things other than people --
> objects, places, concepts, etc. -- and those that typically do not present
> very different psychological or psycholinguistic challenges. You make this
> observation:
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g., “her have it”). I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a child make a
> pronoun gender error who did NOT have autism, but I’m having trouble
> finding anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
> I've attached a clinical example from a book that I'm finishing up
> that does not fit your pattern. The example is a good 15 years old,
> although it won't be published until the book is completed shortly. Notice
> that the issue is both linguistically and clinically complex. Yet it's a
> not uncommon case.
>
> Best,
>
> Denis
>
> Denis M. Donovan, M.D., M.Ed., F.A.P.S.
> Director, EOCT Institute
>
> Medical Director, 1983 - 2006
> The Children's Center for Developmental Psychiatry
> St. Petersburg, Florida
>
> P.O Box 47576
> St. Petersburg, FL 33743-7576
> Phone: 727-641-8905
> DenisDonovan at EOCT-Institute.org
> dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com
>
>
> pronoun errors of gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/25b5e418bffec8f7>
>
> "Laura Snow" <lsnow at u.washington.edu> Jun 16 02:31PM -0700
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> I'm trying to determine whether typically developing children ever make
> errors in pronoun gender (e.g., reverse "he" and "she"), and if so,
>
>
>
> 1. at what point in their language development (and for how long) do
> these errors occur?
>
> 2. are these errors consistent or intermittent during the time that
> they
> occur?
>
> 3. Do the errors occur mainly in cases of long-distance reference or
> also with relatively simple utterances (e.g., pointing to a girl and
> saying,
> "He has it")
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make
> errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as
> younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g.,
> "her have it"). I can't say that I've ever seen a child make a pronoun
> gender error who did NOT have autism, but I'm having trouble finding
> anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
>
>
> I'm mainly interested in finding formal studies of children learning
> English, but evidence that is anecdotal and/or from other languages
> would
> also be useful!
>
>
>
>
>
> Laura Snow, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
>
> University of Washington
>
> Center on Human Development and Disability
>
> Seattle, WA
>
>
>
> Aliyah MORGENSTERN <aliyah.morgenstern at gmail.com> Jun 17 12:31AM +0200
>
>
> Dear Laura,
>
> I can only report anecdotal errors in French data.
> We haven't made any specific study on this topic in our data of French
> typical children (the Paris corpus) but I do have anecdotical evidence of
> pronoun and determiner "errors" in gender. You might not consider it as
> being the same issue (in the case of determiner, mostly grammatical gender,
> in the case of pronouns referential or personal gender). I must say that
> grammatical gender errors in French exist and are quite impressive when we
> find them and also fun to analyze since the developmental pattern could be
> similar to past tense with irregular verbs in English ("la fleur" feminine
> flower instead of masculine, "un poule" - masculine chicken instead of
> feminine).
>
> As far as personal pronouns are concerned, we have noticed that
> children mostly produce non standard "proto-uses" of "proto-forms" when
> they are in the filler syllable stage with fillers closer to "il" instead
> of "elle" or the reverse... When the full pronoun stage is reached with no
> more fillers, there are still some odd gender reversals...
> Older children (3 or 4) get mixed up when they are trying to refer to
> two different characters or persons in the same speech turn: "elle la
> mange" (she eats her) speaking of the wolf eating the little girl, instead
> of "IL la mange" (he eats her) with the added complexity of subject and
> object and semantic roles of eater and "eatee"...
>
> As far as I know these errors are not consistent at all during the
> time that they occur. I think it is interesting to study whether and when
> they are repaired by adults.
>
> I'm sorry if this is really too vague...and of course since we only
> have spontaneous data, the occurrences will be really scarce, we could only
> make qualitative analyses. But I'm sure we have them. And actually, I
> myself continue to make that type of "error". I can remember a whole data
> session when I kept referring to the child as she when it was a he... Maybe
> under the influence of scientific papers on language acquisition. I'm sure
> I've heard adults get mixed up as well. I think there are a lot of
> different factors (cognitive overload, semantic complexity, number of
> referents, prototypical gender for certain roles or functions which
> influence certain automatisms...).
>
> As far as the psychotic and autistic children I have worked with are
> concerned, I have not filmed them, so can only speak from direct experience
> with no data, but the errors were much more systematic when they existed.
>
> I think you could compare this phenomenon to pronominal reversal (3rd
> or 2nd person instead of first person) in typical and autistic children.
> There is more literature on that, especially in English and it might
> inspire you, but you have probably already thought of it.
>
> Best,
> Aliyah
>
>
>
>
> Aliyah Morgenstern
> Professor of Linguistics
> Sorbonne Nouvelle University
>
>
> Le 16 juin 2012 à 23:31, Laura Snow a écrit :
>
>
>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Group
> info-childes.
> You can post via email <info-childes at googlegroups.com>.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send<info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com>an empty message.
> For more options, visit<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics>this group.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Info-CHILDES" group.
> To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.
>
>
> Lise Menn Home Office: 303-444-4274
> 1625 Mariposa Ave Fax: 303-413-0017
> Boulder CO 80302
>
> Professor Emerita of Linguistics
> Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
> University of Colorado
>
> Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]
>
> Campus Mail Address:
> UCB 594, Institute of Cognitive Science
>
> Campus Physical Address:
> CINC 234
> 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder
>
>
>
>
On Sunday, June 17, 2012 9:41:51 AM UTC-7, Lise Menn wrote:
>
> The pronoun gender confusion issue in English can probably be settled
> fairly quickly by looking at the CHILDES data base, but i want to offer a
> caveat: the nominative he/she pair can also be subject to phonological
> errors if the child hasn't yet learned to control the 'esh' sound.
> For what it's worth, English-speaking agrammatic aphasics, who usually
> have articulation problems, have he/she errors, but I don't know if there
> are documented gender errors on possessive (his/her) or accusative
> (him/her) forms; I suspect that the closeness in sound of the he/she pair
> makes them more vulnerable to error.
> Lise Menn
>
>
> On Jun 17, 2012, at 6:55 AM, <info-childes at googlegroups.com> <
> info-childes at googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Today's Topic Summary
>
> Group: http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics
>
> - pronoun errors in gender [1 Update]
> - pronoun errors of gender [2 Updates]
>
> pronoun errors in gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/e5b87a868833f3b7>
>
> Denis Donovan <dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com> Jun 16 07:45PM -0400
>
> Hi Laura,
>
> Just a few thoughts on the subject you have raised.
>
> One of the problems with posing categorical problems is that they may,
> or may not, present quite the same challenges to practical understanding in
> different language worlds. In English, we can certainly refer to a city
> such as Paris, as Alistair Horne did in his marvelous history, SEVEN AGES
> OF PARIS, as a woman. And it is standard to refer to ships as feminine. No
> one would ever say of the Titanic "He sunk."
>
> Whereas London, through the ages, has always betrayed clearly male
> orientations, and New York has a certain ambivalence, has any sensible
> person ever doubted that Paris is fundamentally a woman? It was thus that I
> first conceived this book--not as any arrogant attempt to write an
> all-embracing history of Paris, but rather as a series of linked
> biographical essays, depicting seven ages (capriciously selected at the
> whim of the author) in the long, exciting life of a sexy and beautiful, but
> also turbulent, troublesome and sometimes excessively violent woman (Horne
> :xiii).
>
> Horne, Alistaire (2004). Seven Ages of Paris. New York: Vintage.
>
> But languages that mark the gender of things other than people --
> objects, places, concepts, etc. -- and those that typically do not present
> very different psychological or psycholinguistic challenges. You make this
> observation:
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g., “her have it”). I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a child make a
> pronoun gender error who did NOT have autism, but I’m having trouble
> finding anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
> I've attached a clinical example from a book that I'm finishing up
> that does not fit your pattern. The example is a good 15 years old,
> although it won't be published until the book is completed shortly. Notice
> that the issue is both linguistically and clinically complex. Yet it's a
> not uncommon case.
>
> Best,
>
> Denis
>
> Denis M. Donovan, M.D., M.Ed., F.A.P.S.
> Director, EOCT Institute
>
> Medical Director, 1983 - 2006
> The Children's Center for Developmental Psychiatry
> St. Petersburg, Florida
>
> P.O Box 47576
> St. Petersburg, FL 33743-7576
> Phone: 727-641-8905
> DenisDonovan at EOCT-Institute.org
> dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com
>
>
> pronoun errors of gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/25b5e418bffec8f7>
>
> "Laura Snow" <lsnow at u.washington.edu> Jun 16 02:31PM -0700
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> I'm trying to determine whether typically developing children ever make
> errors in pronoun gender (e.g., reverse "he" and "she"), and if so,
>
>
>
> 1. at what point in their language development (and for how long) do
> these errors occur?
>
> 2. are these errors consistent or intermittent during the time that
> they
> occur?
>
> 3. Do the errors occur mainly in cases of long-distance reference or
> also with relatively simple utterances (e.g., pointing to a girl and
> saying,
> "He has it")
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make
> errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as
> younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g.,
> "her have it"). I can't say that I've ever seen a child make a pronoun
> gender error who did NOT have autism, but I'm having trouble finding
> anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
>
>
> I'm mainly interested in finding formal studies of children learning
> English, but evidence that is anecdotal and/or from other languages
> would
> also be useful!
>
>
>
>
>
> Laura Snow, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
>
> University of Washington
>
> Center on Human Development and Disability
>
> Seattle, WA
>
>
>
> Aliyah MORGENSTERN <aliyah.morgenstern at gmail.com> Jun 17 12:31AM +0200
>
>
> Dear Laura,
>
> I can only report anecdotal errors in French data.
> We haven't made any specific study on this topic in our data of French
> typical children (the Paris corpus) but I do have anecdotical evidence of
> pronoun and determiner "errors" in gender. You might not consider it as
> being the same issue (in the case of determiner, mostly grammatical gender,
> in the case of pronouns referential or personal gender). I must say that
> grammatical gender errors in French exist and are quite impressive when we
> find them and also fun to analyze since the developmental pattern could be
> similar to past tense with irregular verbs in English ("la fleur" feminine
> flower instead of masculine, "un poule" - masculine chicken instead of
> feminine).
>
> As far as personal pronouns are concerned, we have noticed that
> children mostly produce non standard "proto-uses" of "proto-forms" when
> they are in the filler syllable stage with fillers closer to "il" instead
> of "elle" or the reverse... When the full pronoun stage is reached with no
> more fillers, there are still some odd gender reversals...
> Older children (3 or 4) get mixed up when they are trying to refer to
> two different characters or persons in the same speech turn: "elle la
> mange" (she eats her) speaking of the wolf eating the little girl, instead
> of "IL la mange" (he eats her) with the added complexity of subject and
> object and semantic roles of eater and "eatee"...
>
> As far as I know these errors are not consistent at all during the
> time that they occur. I think it is interesting to study whether and when
> they are repaired by adults.
>
> I'm sorry if this is really too vague...and of course since we only
> have spontaneous data, the occurrences will be really scarce, we could only
> make qualitative analyses. But I'm sure we have them. And actually, I
> myself continue to make that type of "error". I can remember a whole data
> session when I kept referring to the child as she when it was a he... Maybe
> under the influence of scientific papers on language acquisition. I'm sure
> I've heard adults get mixed up as well. I think there are a lot of
> different factors (cognitive overload, semantic complexity, number of
> referents, prototypical gender for certain roles or functions which
> influence certain automatisms...).
>
> As far as the psychotic and autistic children I have worked with are
> concerned, I have not filmed them, so can only speak from direct experience
> with no data, but the errors were much more systematic when they existed.
>
> I think you could compare this phenomenon to pronominal reversal (3rd
> or 2nd person instead of first person) in typical and autistic children.
> There is more literature on that, especially in English and it might
> inspire you, but you have probably already thought of it.
>
> Best,
> Aliyah
>
>
>
>
> Aliyah Morgenstern
> Professor of Linguistics
> Sorbonne Nouvelle University
>
>
> Le 16 juin 2012 à 23:31, Laura Snow a écrit :
>
>
>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Group
> info-childes.
> You can post via email <info-childes at googlegroups.com>.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send<info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com>an empty message.
> For more options, visit<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics>this group.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Info-CHILDES" group.
> To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.
>
>
> Lise Menn Home Office: 303-444-4274
> 1625 Mariposa Ave Fax: 303-413-0017
> Boulder CO 80302
>
> Professor Emerita of Linguistics
> Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
> University of Colorado
>
> Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]
>
> Campus Mail Address:
> UCB 594, Institute of Cognitive Science
>
> Campus Physical Address:
> CINC 234
> 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder
>
>
>
>
On Sunday, June 17, 2012 9:41:51 AM UTC-7, Lise Menn wrote:
>
> The pronoun gender confusion issue in English can probably be settled
> fairly quickly by looking at the CHILDES data base, but i want to offer a
> caveat: the nominative he/she pair can also be subject to phonological
> errors if the child hasn't yet learned to control the 'esh' sound.
> For what it's worth, English-speaking agrammatic aphasics, who usually
> have articulation problems, have he/she errors, but I don't know if there
> are documented gender errors on possessive (his/her) or accusative
> (him/her) forms; I suspect that the closeness in sound of the he/she pair
> makes them more vulnerable to error.
> Lise Menn
>
>
> On Jun 17, 2012, at 6:55 AM, <info-childes at googlegroups.com> <
> info-childes at googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Today's Topic Summary
>
> Group: http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics
>
> - pronoun errors in gender [1 Update]
> - pronoun errors of gender [2 Updates]
>
> pronoun errors in gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/e5b87a868833f3b7>
>
> Denis Donovan <dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com> Jun 16 07:45PM -0400
>
> Hi Laura,
>
> Just a few thoughts on the subject you have raised.
>
> One of the problems with posing categorical problems is that they may,
> or may not, present quite the same challenges to practical understanding in
> different language worlds. In English, we can certainly refer to a city
> such as Paris, as Alistair Horne did in his marvelous history, SEVEN AGES
> OF PARIS, as a woman. And it is standard to refer to ships as feminine. No
> one would ever say of the Titanic "He sunk."
>
> Whereas London, through the ages, has always betrayed clearly male
> orientations, and New York has a certain ambivalence, has any sensible
> person ever doubted that Paris is fundamentally a woman? It was thus that I
> first conceived this book--not as any arrogant attempt to write an
> all-embracing history of Paris, but rather as a series of linked
> biographical essays, depicting seven ages (capriciously selected at the
> whim of the author) in the long, exciting life of a sexy and beautiful, but
> also turbulent, troublesome and sometimes excessively violent woman (Horne
> :xiii).
>
> Horne, Alistaire (2004). Seven Ages of Paris. New York: Vintage.
>
> But languages that mark the gender of things other than people --
> objects, places, concepts, etc. -- and those that typically do not present
> very different psychological or psycholinguistic challenges. You make this
> observation:
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g., “her have it”). I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a child make a
> pronoun gender error who did NOT have autism, but I’m having trouble
> finding anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
> I've attached a clinical example from a book that I'm finishing up
> that does not fit your pattern. The example is a good 15 years old,
> although it won't be published until the book is completed shortly. Notice
> that the issue is both linguistically and clinically complex. Yet it's a
> not uncommon case.
>
> Best,
>
> Denis
>
> Denis M. Donovan, M.D., M.Ed., F.A.P.S.
> Director, EOCT Institute
>
> Medical Director, 1983 - 2006
> The Children's Center for Developmental Psychiatry
> St. Petersburg, Florida
>
> P.O Box 47576
> St. Petersburg, FL 33743-7576
> Phone: 727-641-8905
> DenisDonovan at EOCT-Institute.org
> dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com
>
>
> pronoun errors of gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/25b5e418bffec8f7>
>
> "Laura Snow" <lsnow at u.washington.edu> Jun 16 02:31PM -0700
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> I'm trying to determine whether typically developing children ever make
> errors in pronoun gender (e.g., reverse "he" and "she"), and if so,
>
>
>
> 1. at what point in their language development (and for how long) do
> these errors occur?
>
> 2. are these errors consistent or intermittent during the time that
> they
> occur?
>
> 3. Do the errors occur mainly in cases of long-distance reference or
> also with relatively simple utterances (e.g., pointing to a girl and
> saying,
> "He has it")
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make
> errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as
> younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g.,
> "her have it"). I can't say that I've ever seen a child make a pronoun
> gender error who did NOT have autism, but I'm having trouble finding
> anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
>
>
> I'm mainly interested in finding formal studies of children learning
> English, but evidence that is anecdotal and/or from other languages
> would
> also be useful!
>
>
>
>
>
> Laura Snow, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
>
> University of Washington
>
> Center on Human Development and Disability
>
> Seattle, WA
>
>
>
> Aliyah MORGENSTERN <aliyah.morgenstern at gmail.com> Jun 17 12:31AM +0200
>
>
> Dear Laura,
>
> I can only report anecdotal errors in French data.
> We haven't made any specific study on this topic in our data of French
> typical children (the Paris corpus) but I do have anecdotical evidence of
> pronoun and determiner "errors" in gender. You might not consider it as
> being the same issue (in the case of determiner, mostly grammatical gender,
> in the case of pronouns referential or personal gender). I must say that
> grammatical gender errors in French exist and are quite impressive when we
> find them and also fun to analyze since the developmental pattern could be
> similar to past tense with irregular verbs in English ("la fleur" feminine
> flower instead of masculine, "un poule" - masculine chicken instead of
> feminine).
>
> As far as personal pronouns are concerned, we have noticed that
> children mostly produce non standard "proto-uses" of "proto-forms" when
> they are in the filler syllable stage with fillers closer to "il" instead
> of "elle" or the reverse... When the full pronoun stage is reached with no
> more fillers, there are still some odd gender reversals...
> Older children (3 or 4) get mixed up when they are trying to refer to
> two different characters or persons in the same speech turn: "elle la
> mange" (she eats her) speaking of the wolf eating the little girl, instead
> of "IL la mange" (he eats her) with the added complexity of subject and
> object and semantic roles of eater and "eatee"...
>
> As far as I know these errors are not consistent at all during the
> time that they occur. I think it is interesting to study whether and when
> they are repaired by adults.
>
> I'm sorry if this is really too vague...and of course since we only
> have spontaneous data, the occurrences will be really scarce, we could only
> make qualitative analyses. But I'm sure we have them. And actually, I
> myself continue to make that type of "error". I can remember a whole data
> session when I kept referring to the child as she when it was a he... Maybe
> under the influence of scientific papers on language acquisition. I'm sure
> I've heard adults get mixed up as well. I think there are a lot of
> different factors (cognitive overload, semantic complexity, number of
> referents, prototypical gender for certain roles or functions which
> influence certain automatisms...).
>
> As far as the psychotic and autistic children I have worked with are
> concerned, I have not filmed them, so can only speak from direct experience
> with no data, but the errors were much more systematic when they existed.
>
> I think you could compare this phenomenon to pronominal reversal (3rd
> or 2nd person instead of first person) in typical and autistic children.
> There is more literature on that, especially in English and it might
> inspire you, but you have probably already thought of it.
>
> Best,
> Aliyah
>
>
>
>
> Aliyah Morgenstern
> Professor of Linguistics
> Sorbonne Nouvelle University
>
>
> Le 16 juin 2012 à 23:31, Laura Snow a écrit :
>
>
>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Group
> info-childes.
> You can post via email <info-childes at googlegroups.com>.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send<info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com>an empty message.
> For more options, visit<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics>this group.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Info-CHILDES" group.
> To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.
>
>
> Lise Menn Home Office: 303-444-4274
> 1625 Mariposa Ave Fax: 303-413-0017
> Boulder CO 80302
>
> Professor Emerita of Linguistics
> Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
> University of Colorado
>
> Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]
>
> Campus Mail Address:
> UCB 594, Institute of Cognitive Science
>
> Campus Physical Address:
> CINC 234
> 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder
>
>
>
>
On Sunday, June 17, 2012 9:41:51 AM UTC-7, Lise Menn wrote:
>
> The pronoun gender confusion issue in English can probably be settled
> fairly quickly by looking at the CHILDES data base, but i want to offer a
> caveat: the nominative he/she pair can also be subject to phonological
> errors if the child hasn't yet learned to control the 'esh' sound.
> For what it's worth, English-speaking agrammatic aphasics, who usually
> have articulation problems, have he/she errors, but I don't know if there
> are documented gender errors on possessive (his/her) or accusative
> (him/her) forms; I suspect that the closeness in sound of the he/she pair
> makes them more vulnerable to error.
> Lise Menn
>
>
> On Jun 17, 2012, at 6:55 AM, <info-childes at googlegroups.com> <
> info-childes at googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Today's Topic Summary
>
> Group: http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics
>
> - pronoun errors in gender [1 Update]
> - pronoun errors of gender [2 Updates]
>
> pronoun errors in gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/e5b87a868833f3b7>
>
> Denis Donovan <dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com> Jun 16 07:45PM -0400
>
> Hi Laura,
>
> Just a few thoughts on the subject you have raised.
>
> One of the problems with posing categorical problems is that they may,
> or may not, present quite the same challenges to practical understanding in
> different language worlds. In English, we can certainly refer to a city
> such as Paris, as Alistair Horne did in his marvelous history, SEVEN AGES
> OF PARIS, as a woman. And it is standard to refer to ships as feminine. No
> one would ever say of the Titanic "He sunk."
>
> Whereas London, through the ages, has always betrayed clearly male
> orientations, and New York has a certain ambivalence, has any sensible
> person ever doubted that Paris is fundamentally a woman? It was thus that I
> first conceived this book--not as any arrogant attempt to write an
> all-embracing history of Paris, but rather as a series of linked
> biographical essays, depicting seven ages (capriciously selected at the
> whim of the author) in the long, exciting life of a sexy and beautiful, but
> also turbulent, troublesome and sometimes excessively violent woman (Horne
> :xiii).
>
> Horne, Alistaire (2004). Seven Ages of Paris. New York: Vintage.
>
> But languages that mark the gender of things other than people --
> objects, places, concepts, etc. -- and those that typically do not present
> very different psychological or psycholinguistic challenges. You make this
> observation:
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g., “her have it”). I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a child make a
> pronoun gender error who did NOT have autism, but I’m having trouble
> finding anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
> I've attached a clinical example from a book that I'm finishing up
> that does not fit your pattern. The example is a good 15 years old,
> although it won't be published until the book is completed shortly. Notice
> that the issue is both linguistically and clinically complex. Yet it's a
> not uncommon case.
>
> Best,
>
> Denis
>
> Denis M. Donovan, M.D., M.Ed., F.A.P.S.
> Director, EOCT Institute
>
> Medical Director, 1983 - 2006
> The Children's Center for Developmental Psychiatry
> St. Petersburg, Florida
>
> P.O Box 47576
> St. Petersburg, FL 33743-7576
> Phone: 727-641-8905
> DenisDonovan at EOCT-Institute.org
> dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com
>
>
> pronoun errors of gender<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/t/25b5e418bffec8f7>
>
> "Laura Snow" <lsnow at u.washington.edu> Jun 16 02:31PM -0700
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> I'm trying to determine whether typically developing children ever make
> errors in pronoun gender (e.g., reverse "he" and "she"), and if so,
>
>
>
> 1. at what point in their language development (and for how long) do
> these errors occur?
>
> 2. are these errors consistent or intermittent during the time that
> they
> occur?
>
> 3. Do the errors occur mainly in cases of long-distance reference or
> also with relatively simple utterances (e.g., pointing to a girl and
> saying,
> "He has it")
>
> In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who
> make
> errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as
> well as
> younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case
> (e.g.,
> "her have it"). I can't say that I've ever seen a child make a pronoun
> gender error who did NOT have autism, but I'm having trouble finding
> anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.
>
>
>
> I'm mainly interested in finding formal studies of children learning
> English, but evidence that is anecdotal and/or from other languages
> would
> also be useful!
>
>
>
>
>
> Laura Snow, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
>
> University of Washington
>
> Center on Human Development and Disability
>
> Seattle, WA
>
>
>
> Aliyah MORGENSTERN <aliyah.morgenstern at gmail.com> Jun 17 12:31AM +0200
>
>
> Dear Laura,
>
> I can only report anecdotal errors in French data.
> We haven't made any specific study on this topic in our data of French
> typical children (the Paris corpus) but I do have anecdotical evidence of
> pronoun and determiner "errors" in gender. You might not consider it as
> being the same issue (in the case of determiner, mostly grammatical gender,
> in the case of pronouns referential or personal gender). I must say that
> grammatical gender errors in French exist and are quite impressive when we
> find them and also fun to analyze since the developmental pattern could be
> similar to past tense with irregular verbs in English ("la fleur" feminine
> flower instead of masculine, "un poule" - masculine chicken instead of
> feminine).
>
> As far as personal pronouns are concerned, we have noticed that
> children mostly produce non standard "proto-uses" of "proto-forms" when
> they are in the filler syllable stage with fillers closer to "il" instead
> of "elle" or the reverse... When the full pronoun stage is reached with no
> more fillers, there are still some odd gender reversals...
> Older children (3 or 4) get mixed up when they are trying to refer to
> two different characters or persons in the same speech turn: "elle la
> mange" (she eats her) speaking of the wolf eating the little girl, instead
> of "IL la mange" (he eats her) with the added complexity of subject and
> object and semantic roles of eater and "eatee"...
>
> As far as I know these errors are not consistent at all during the
> time that they occur. I think it is interesting to study whether and when
> they are repaired by adults.
>
> I'm sorry if this is really too vague...and of course since we only
> have spontaneous data, the occurrences will be really scarce, we could only
> make qualitative analyses. But I'm sure we have them. And actually, I
> myself continue to make that type of "error". I can remember a whole data
> session when I kept referring to the child as she when it was a he... Maybe
> under the influence of scientific papers on language acquisition. I'm sure
> I've heard adults get mixed up as well. I think there are a lot of
> different factors (cognitive overload, semantic complexity, number of
> referents, prototypical gender for certain roles or functions which
> influence certain automatisms...).
>
> As far as the psychotic and autistic children I have worked with are
> concerned, I have not filmed them, so can only speak from direct experience
> with no data, but the errors were much more systematic when they existed.
>
> I think you could compare this phenomenon to pronominal reversal (3rd
> or 2nd person instead of first person) in typical and autistic children.
> There is more literature on that, especially in English and it might
> inspire you, but you have probably already thought of it.
>
> Best,
> Aliyah
>
>
>
>
> Aliyah Morgenstern
> Professor of Linguistics
> Sorbonne Nouvelle University
>
>
> Le 16 juin 2012 à 23:31, Laura Snow a écrit :
>
>
>
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Group
> info-childes.
> You can post via email <info-childes at googlegroups.com>.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send<info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com>an empty message.
> For more options, visit<http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes/topics>this group.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Info-CHILDES" group.
> To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.
>
>
> Lise Menn Home Office: 303-444-4274
> 1625 Mariposa Ave Fax: 303-413-0017
> Boulder CO 80302
>
> Professor Emerita of Linguistics
> Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
> University of Colorado
>
> Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]
>
> Campus Mail Address:
> UCB 594, Institute of Cognitive Science
>
> Campus Physical Address:
> CINC 234
> 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder
>
>
>
>
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/info-childes/-/KML7yEEl3_AJ.
To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20120618/e43a9a3e/attachment.htm>
More information about the Info-childes
mailing list