Children’s use of demonstrative words: spatial deictics beyond infancy

Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro, Gudde, Harmen B., Gonzalez-Pena, Patricia and Coventry, Kenny R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2591-7723 (2022) Children’s use of demonstrative words: spatial deictics beyond infancy. Journal of Child Language. ISSN 0305-0009

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Abstract

Demonstrative words are one of the most important ways of establishing reference in conversation. This work describes Spanish-speaking children’s demonstrative production between ages 2 to 10 using data from the CHILDES corpora. Results indicate that children feature all demonstratives in their lexicon – however, the distal term is scarce throughout development. Moreover, patterns of demonstrative use are not adult-like at age 10. We compare adult and child data to conclude that children’s development of demonstrative production is largely protracted. Adult use of the distal demonstrative is higher than in young children, although both older children and adults use the medial term ese more than any other demonstratives. In contrast, younger children use proximals relatively more frequently than older children and adults. Suggestions for future research and theoretical implications for the Spanish demonstrative system are discussed.

Item Type:	Article
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	20 Mar 2023 14:53
Last Modified:	20 Mar 2023 14:53
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/91597
DOI:	10.1017/S030500092200054X

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