Language-particular or language-independent factors in acquisition? Children's comprehension of object pronouns in Dutch, French and German

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Abstract
Children's comprehension of direct and indirect object pronouns in Dutch, French and German was studied in order to determine the role of language-particular factors in acquisition. The pronoun systems of the three languages differ on a number of dimensions that have been assumed to influence the acquisition process: the phonological proper ties of pronouns (clitic vs. non-clitic); the position of the pronoun in the sentence and the phrasal category in which the pronoun occurs: prepositional ([ppPREP[NP[PRO]]]) vs non-prepositional ([NP[PRO]]). A picture-matching task was used. Three age groups, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children, were tested. The results indicate that language- particular properties, at least in the part of the grammar investigated here, do not play the role assumed in some theories of language development, but that more abstract, language-independent proper ties of the pronouns, such as their function as internal verbal argu ments, are relevant for acquisition. Those language-particular factors which were observed are secondary and restricted to limited domains.