Children’s comprehension of pronouns and definites

We present an experiment which tests children’s comprehension of the requirementsof use of pronouns and definites. An adult-like use of definites and pronouns imposes differentbut related requirements. In the case of definites, a unique referent is required in the context,whereas in the case of a pronoun, the referent in the context has to be salient. In this experiment,we use a novel word task to test three-year-olds’ sensitivity to these requirements. Ourresults show that children are adult-like in their sensitivity to salience in their comprehensionof pronouns, compared to definites. However, they failed to show sensitivity to the uniquenessrequirement on the use of definites.Keywords: pronouns, definiteness, language acquisition, salience, uniqueness, familiarity.