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The Pragmatics of Personal Pronouns
Edited by Laure Gardelle and Sandrine Sorlin
[Studies in Language Companion Series 171] 2015
► pp. 173–194

Chapter 9. First and second person pronouns in two mother-child dyads

| Université de Lille, Sorbonne Nouvelle University
| Université de Lille, Sorbonne Nouvelle University

First and second person pronouns are complex categories for children to acquire. During a transitional period, when they start referring to themselves as subjects, French-speaking children produce a variety of non-conventional forms. The analysis of these uses provide valuable insights on how they creatively process language and progressively acquire the tools that enable them to refer to themselves and to the interlocutor, as speakers/addressees and subjects. In this paper, we present data from two French-speaking children, recorded monthly between 1;06 and 3;03 during everyday interactions with their mothers. We focus on the transitional use of non-standard forms in the children’s speech as a window unto the development of their cognitive, linguistic and social skills, and analyse the global and local impact of the input.

Published online: 10 November 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.171.09cae
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