Whichitis it? The acquisition of referential and expletiveit

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the natural order of acquisition of the proform it, comparing deictic pronoun it, anaphoric pronoun it and expletive it. Files from four children (Adam, Eve, Nina and Peter) aged 1 ; 6–3 ; 0 in the CHILDES database were coded for occurrences of NP it (here it is) and expletive it (it's raining). Occurrences of NP it were coded for whether they followed an overt discourse anaphor (anaphoric it) or not (deictic it). All children examined produce deictic and anaphoric pronoun it from the very first files, but do not produce expletive it until 2–7 months later. Following Inoue's (1991) lexical-semantic reanalysis account of the acquisition of expletive there after locative there, we propose that children acquire expletive it by reanalyzing referential pronoun it to include an expletive subtype. This reanalysis takes place when children realize that expletive it never co-occurs with any deictic/anaphoric referent.

Two-year-olds but not younger children comprehend it in ambiguous contexts: Evidence from preferential looking

“…Children use pronouns in their speech from the earliest word combinations (Brown, 1973;Chiat, 1986;Kirby et al, 2007). Yet, it is not clear from these early utterances whether they understand that pronouns are used as substitutes for nouns and entities in the discourse.…”

“…Specifically, we tested whether children at 1;6 and 2;0 understand that the referent of it encodes a previously linguistically mentioned (GIVEN) entity rather than a newly introduced visual competitor. We focused on the pronoun it because children use referential it in their speech as early as 1;6 (Brown, 1973;Chiat, 1986;Kirby et al, 2007).…”

“…It is possible that children's production of pronouns is largely dependent on parental scaffolding and is limited to a few restricted contexts in which the forms are frequently used (e.g., Chiat, 1986;Karmiloff-Smith, 1981;Salazar Orvig & Morgenstern, COMPREHENSION OF IT IN YOUNG CHILDREN 6 2015). For example, the pronoun it is nearly exclusively used in the object position, as in want it, see it, drop it, or cut it (e.g., Angiolillo & Goldin-Meadow, 1982;Chiat, 1986;Kirby & Becker, 2007). Children may thus consider it to be a suffix or they might ignore it all together, given that the pronominal form constitutes less phonetic material than non-pronouns (Bloom, 1990;Gerken, 1991).…”

“…For example, the pronoun it is nearly exclusively used in the object position, as in want it, see it, drop it , or cut it (e.g. Angiolillo & Goldin-Meadow, 1982; Chiat, 1986; Kirby & Becker, 2007). Children may thus consider it to be a suffix or they might ignore it all together, given that the pronominal form constitutes less phonetic material than non-pronouns (Bloom, 1990; Gerken, 1991).…”

On the acquisition of daar and er

“…In fact, they suggested that expletive there could be a potential trigger of all discourse anaphora. Kirby and Becker (2007) tested this proposal for deictic, anaphoric and expletive it, by investigating the order of emergence of the different uses of it for the same children S&R used in their corpus study. The outcomes of this study, however, did not support the idea of a triggering relation between expletive and anaphoric it: Deictic and anaphoric it both appeared before expletive it.…”