Abstract
Summary In an experiment on the comprehension of pronominal reference by children (6;11 to 14;5) and adults it was shown that : — Anaphoric pronouns are understood earlier than exophoric pronouns, the younger children having a tendency to seek for the referent within the sentence. The comprehension of exophoric pronouns is significantly faci-litated by the contrast of gender between PRO and NPs. — The younger children « prefer » to transgress lexical rules rather than to change roles. In other words, the strategy of role shift that consists in maintaining the same functional relation in the two clauses is generalized to sentences to which it is not relevant. — The lexical strategy that takes into account the marks of PRO and NPs is developed at a later age. Lexical transgressions are still observed in the 9;9 age group when PRO cornes before the NP. — The ambiguity of the reference of PRO is not detected spontaneously before 14;5. This detection implies the existence of metalinguistic abilities.
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