Longitudinal case study of child-directed speech in Slovak from the perspective of acquisition of personal pronouns

• Authors: Milada Walková , Alexandra Brestovičová

Title variants

SK

Longitudinálna prípadová štúdia o reči orientovanej na dieťa v slovenčine z perspektívy osvojovania osobných zámen

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Objectives. Previous research has shown that the acquisition of personal pronouns benefits from input with higher amounts of stable reference. This paper aims to provide more evidence of how input is structured. The language under study is Slovak, a pro-drop language, allowing to extend the study of input to verb marking. Participants and setting. The longitudinal study follows speech directed to three children in two families from the age 1;9 to 3;0. Hypotheses. It was hypothesised that the incidence of first and second person singular pronouns and verb marking as expressions with shifting reference grows with the child’s age while the incidence of proper names and category names as expressions with stable reference decreases with the child’s age. Statistical analysis. Occurrences of first and second person singular pronouns and verb marking as expressions with shifting reference as well as proper names and category names referring to the speaker and addressee as expressions with stable reference were found and analysed. Simple regression analysis testing was conducted on the data. Results. The results confirm the hypothesis, showing an increase in first and second person singular pronouns and verb marking over time, at the expense of proper names and category names referring to the speaker and the addressee. Study limitations. The study is limited by the size of the sample.

Keywords

EN

acquisition of personal pronouns; personal deixis; child-directed speech; shifting reference; stable reference

Discipline

• PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Československá psychologie (Czechoslovak Psychology)
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 65
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 255-268
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Milada Walková

• Československá psychologie, redakce, Psychologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Politických vězňů 7, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic

author

Alexandra Brestovičová

• Československá psychologie, redakce, Psychologický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Politických vězňů 7, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic