Developmental Comprehension of Third Person Personal Pronouns in English

Abstract

A review of relevant literature indicates a gap in the available data on the normal acquisition of the animate third person personal pronouns of English. In this study a comprehension task (picture verification) employing this class of words was run on 100 children from three to seven years of age. The results show that comprehension of these forms beyond chance level first appears at age five with continuing improvement through ages six and seven. Separate analyses of the comprehension of the semantic components of the forms — i.e., Gender, Number, and Case - suggest differential acquisitional curves for these aspects, with mastery of the Gender distinction appearing to lead the other two.