In a number of languages, children have problems with the interpretation of pronouns if a potential local antecedent is present. There is an intensive debate on whether this effect is due to a delayed acquisition of Principle B, or it is the result of pragmatic or processing difficulties that children face in interpretation tasks. We conducted two experiments involving a picture-sentence verification task to investigate whether the Pronoun Interpretation Problem exists in Hungarian child language. We found that the Problem is present if the test sentences are given in isolation, but it disappears if a minimally coherent discourse is created. We argue that our results support the view that the binding principles are innate and do not need to be acquired, but children have problems with computing coreference options in certain contexts (Reinhart 2004; 2006; 2011). Coherent discourse allows children to accommodate pronouns with close to adult-like success because in this case they do not calculate local coreference possibilities for pronouns.
Bánréti, Zoltán . 2006. Neurolingvisztika [Neurolinguistics]. In F. Kiefer and P. Siptár (eds.) Magyar nyelv [Hungarian]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 653–725.
Bencze, M. Ildikó . 2014. Kísérleti pragmatika [Experimental pragmatics]. In Cs. Pléh and Á. Lukács (eds.) Pszicholingvisztika. Magyar pszicholingvisztikai kézikönyv [Psycholinguinguistics. Handbook of Hungarian psycholinguistics]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 813–858.
Bloom, Paul, Andrew Barss, Janet Nicol and Laura Conway. 1994. Children’s knowledge of binding and coreference: Evidence from spontaneous speech. Language 70. 53–71.
Cardinaletti, Anna and Michal Starke. 1995. The tripartition of pronouns and its acquisition: Principle B puzzles are ambiguity problems. In J. N. Beckman (ed.) NELS 25. Volume 2: Papers from the workshops on language acquisition and language change. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, GLSA. 1–12.
Chien, Yu-Chin and Kenneth N. Wexler. 1990. Children’s knowledge of locality conditions in binding as evidence for the modularity of syntax and pragmatics. Language Acquisition 1. 225–295.
Chomsky, Noam . 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
Conroy, Anastasia, Eri Takahashi, Jeffrey Lidz and Colin Philips. 2009. Equal treatment for all antecedents: How children succeed with Principle B. Linguistic Inquiry 40. 446–486.
Crain, Stephen and Cecile McKee. 1985. Acquisition of structural restrictions on anaphora. In S. Berman, J.-W. Choe and J. McDonough (eds.) Proceedings of North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 16. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, GLSA. 94–110.
Crain, Stephen and Rosalind Thornton. 1998. Investigations in Universal Grammar: A guide to experiments on the acquisition of syntax and semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Czingráber, Márta . 1999. A mondat elemei között fennálló anaforikus viszonyok feldolgozása óvodáskorban, kisiskoláskorban és afáziában [The processing of anaphoric relations between elements of the sentence by kindergarten children, early school children and aphasiacs]. Master’s thesis. University of Szeged.
É. Kiss Katalin . 2002. The syntax of Hungarian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Elbourne, Paul . 2005. On the acquisition of Principle B. Linguistic Inquiry 36. 333–365.
Fritzley, V. Heather and Kang Lee. 2003. Do young children always say yes to yes-no questions? A metadevelopmental study of the affirmation bias. Child Development 74. 1297–1313.
Grimshaw, Jane and Sara Rosen. 1990. Knowledge and obedience: The developmental status of the binding theory. Linguistic Inquiry 21. 187–222.
Grodzinsky, Yosef and Tanya Reinhart. 1993. The innateness of binding and coreference. Linguistic Inquiry 24. 69–101.
Gualmini, Andrea, Sarah Hulsey, Valentine Hacquard and Danny Fox. 2008. The Question–Answer Requirement for scope assignment. Natural Language Semantics 16. 205–237.
Hamann, Cornelia . 2011. Binding and coreference: Views from child language. In J. de Villers and T. Roeper (eds.) Handbook of generative approaches to language acquisition. Dordrecht: Springer. 247–290.
Hartman, Jeremy, Sudo Yasutada and Ken Wexler. 2012. Principle B and phonologically reduced pronouns in Child English. Paper presented at the Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, North America (GALANA) 5. University of Kansas, Octobe. 11–13. 2012. http://web.mit.edu/ysudo/www/pdf/GALANA-final.pptx (2015/07/20)
Heim, Irene . 1998. Anaphora and semantic interpretation: A reinterpretation of Reinhart’s approach. In U. Sauerland and O. Percus (eds.) The interpretive tract (MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 25). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 205–246.
Hendriks, Petra and Jennifer Spenader. 2005/2006. When production precedes comprehension: An optimization approach to the acquisition of pronouns. Language Acquisition 13. 319–348.
Jakubowicz, Celia . 1984. On markedness and binding principles. In C. Jones and P. Sells (eds.) Proceedings of North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 14. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, GLSA. 154–182.
Ladányi, Eniko, Ágnes Lukács and Bence Kas. in preparation. The role of cognitive control in anaphor interpretation in SLI. Manuscript.
Lely, Heather K. J. van der and Linda Stollwerck. 1997. Binding theory and grammatical specific language impairment in children. Cognition 62. 245–290.
Pléh, Csaba . 1998. A mondatmegértés a magyar nyelvben [Sentence interpretation in Hungarian]. Budapest: Osiris Kiadó.
Rákosi, György . 2011. Összetett visszaható névmások a magyarban [Complex reflexives in Hungarian]. Általános Nyelvészeti Tanulmányok 23. 351–376.
Reinhart, Tanya . 1983. Anaphora and semantic interpretation. London: Croom Helm.
Reinhart, Tanya . 2004. The processing cost of reference-set computation: Acquisition of stress shift and focus. Language Acquisition 12. 109–155.
Reinhart, Tanya . 2006. Interface strategies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Reinhart, Tanya . 2011. Processing or pragmatics? Explaining the coreference delay. In E. Gibson and N. Perlmutter (eds.) The processing and acquisition of reference. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 157–196.
Reinhart, Tanya and Eric Reuland. 1993. Reflexivity. Linguistic Inquiry 24. 657–720.
Rooryck, Johann and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd. 2011. Dissolving binding theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rooryck, Johann and Guido Vanden Wyngaerd. 2015. Morphological transparency and the Delay of Principle B Effect. Lingua 155. 121–139.
Safir, Ken . 2004. The syntax of anaphora. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spenader, Jennifer, Erik-Jan Smits and Petra Hendriks. 2009. Coherent discourse solves the Pronoun Interpretation Problem. Journal of Child Language 36. 23–52.
Thornton, Rosalind and Kenneth Wexler. 1999. Principle B, VP-ellipsis, and interpretation in child grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
de Villiers, Jill G. , Jacqueline Cahillane and Emily Altreuter. 2006. What can production reveal about Principle B? In K. U. Deen, J. Nomura, B. Schulz and B. D. Schwartz (eds.) The proceedings of the Inaugural Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, North America (University of Connecticut Occasional Papers in Linguistics 4). Storrs: University of Connecticut, Department of Linguistics. 89–100.
Wexler, Kenneth and Yu-Chin Chien. 1985. The development of lexical anaphors and pronouns. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 24. 138–149.