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Pronouns in Estonian Child Language

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Vija M., Pajusalu R.

Ad verba liberorum

2009

vol. 1

issue 1

23-31

Pronouns are words that fall on the boundaries of vocabulary and grammar. They possess several distinctive characteristics that are important for language acquisition. First, since the referent of a pronoun only becomes apparent in context, the interpretation of pronouns requires a specific kind of information. In order to understand to whom I, you or this refer, we need to know the whole communicative situation. This fact should still not complicate language acquisition too much, because the child's language development starts with ‘here and now’. Yet, the acquisition of a pragmatico-grammatical complex of pronouns is bound to take time due to the variety of pronoun functions involved. On the one hand, the referents of pronouns (especially those of speech act pronouns mina ‘I’ and sina ‘you:2SG’) change constantly, making an exact repetition of what an adult said, in most cases, impossible for the child. On the other hand, the areas of use of certain pronouns (e.g., those expressing definiteness) require the mastery of narrative principles. There are also studies that show that the acquisition of pronouns after the critical age is especially difficult or even impossible (see the discussion of Genie's case in Lust 2006: 95).This article gives an analysis of the acquisition of Estonian personal and demonstrative pronouns. In Estonian, similarly to many other languages, a group of frequently used pronouns functions as a device for minimal reference and for determining noun phrases for referential needs of ongoing discourse. The group consists of different types of pronouns: personal (mina, sina, tema, meie, teie, nemad), demonstrative (see), possessive (oma), and quantificational (üks, mingi). In addition, there are also some adverbs used for deictic reference, for example those of spatial reference (siin ‘here’, seal ‘there’, etc.). Some of these pro-words are typically used in deictic contexts and refer to entities present in the physical context (1 and 2sg personal pronouns and demonstratives); others refer primarily anaphorically (3rd person pronoun and demonstratives), and typically have an antecedent in the ongoing discourse. The same pronouns (except personal) can function as determiners very much like articles in Indo-European languages. Thus, we can see a group of core prowords that are frequent and have different functions. An overview of these devices of pronominal reference is given in Pajusalu (in press).

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Pronouns in Estonian Child Language