pronoun gender errors

[Karen Pollock]

I have many examples of pronoun gender errors from my son at approx 33 mos.
 He seemed to have pronoun case sorted out, but often confused 3rd person
female, male, and neutral pronouns. Here are some examples:

*He*'s getting more food too.  (referring to a female grad student)
No, that's not your shirt, it's *hers*.  (referring to his dad)
I got *her* shirt wet.  (referring to Ernie's shirt)
It did it by *herself*.  (when I asked how the toy train track came apart)
I wanna go with *her*, mama.  (referring to his dad)
And *he* was one too.  (referring to me, his mother)
Michael wants to drive by *herself*.  (referring to himself)  (he later
said "I wanna do it by *youself*.")
*He* said yes.  (referring to me, his mother)
That's *his* track.  (referring to the train)
I want to see *it* too.  (referring to a female babysitter)
*He* put *her* nose in it.  (referring to a pet duck - gender unknown -
drinking water)

I can attest that he had contrastive use of the fricatives (h/s/sh) at this
age, so I don't think his errors at this time had a phonological basis.

In part he may have been simply confused as to the actual gender of
people/animals.  I probed to see if he could identify friends & family
members as "boys" or "girls."  He was pretty accurate with children (with
the exception of one tomboyish girl friend that he consistently said was a
"boy"), but pretty random with adults - maybe he didn't think of them as
"boys/girls" but as "mommies/daddies" or "men/women."  I also probed his
use of he/she with different people's names, using the frame "Where is
*(Scooter,
Miss Deborah, Candace, ...)*?   *(He/She's)* at home/school/work/etc)."  He
used "he" all of the time males but also used "he" 60% of the time with
females.  Some females (interestingly, most with short hair) were
consistently "he" while others alternated between "he" and "she."

Another possibility is that from 12- 30 mos he spent 2 days/wk with a
Mandarin-speaking nanny.  Although it never appeared that much Mandarin was
learned (he taught her more English than she taught him Chinese), it's
possible that the lack of a gender contrast in 3rd person pronouns in
Mandarin contributed to his confusion in English.

These gender errors didn't last too long - a few months maybe.  At 19
(almost 20 now) he has no problem correctly identifying gender [?]

Karen Pollock



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