Early linguistic reference to first and second person depends on social understanding as well as language skills: Evidence from Czech 30-month-olds

0538820 - PSÚ 2021 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Smolík, Filip - Bláhová, Veronika
Early linguistic reference to first and second person depends on social understanding as well as language skills: Evidence from Czech 30-month-olds.
First Language. Roč. 41, č. 1 (2021), s. 109-125, č. článku 0142723720938898. ISSN 0142-7237. E-ISSN 1740-2344
R&D Projects: GA ČR GA16-15123S
Institutional support: RVO:68081740
Keywords : mental state language * person * personal pronouns * social understanding * verb conjugation
OECD category: Psychology (including human - machine relations)
Impact factor: 1.828, year: 2021
Method of publishing: Open access
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0142723720938898

The early use of first and second person pronouns has been viewed as a sign of emerging social understanding. However, it may also depend on general language development: pronouns do not appear among the first words children acquire. In addition, some languages conjugate verbs for person, and the inflections may thus show similar relations to social understanding and language as pronouns. Very few studies have examined the relations between early person reference on the one hand and both social understanding and language development on the other. The present study used data on spontaneous language transcripts and language tasks from 58 Czech-speaking children aged 30 months to examine the relations between person reference, social understanding, and general language development. Social understanding was estimated from children's use of the mental state language (MSL). The results confirm that both MSL and general language development show unique relations to person reference with pronouns as well as verbs.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0316557