Ambiguity resolution in the pronominal domain in child Romanian

Abstract

This paper explores the acquisition of antecedent preferences by typically-developing Romanian-speaking (pre)school children. It investigates the antecedent preferences for subject pronouns (pro, el ‘he’, this ‘acesta’) in the subjunctive complements of volitional verbs. The results indicate that children overwhelmingly associated pro with close antecedents. There was a slight preference for a close antecedent with the overt pronoun, while no preference was observed for the demonstrative pronoun. The children treated pro and the overt pronoun differently and were aware that each pronominal marked a distinct degree of accessibility, but the evidence pointed towards a delay in the acquisition of the exact degree of accessibility marked by the overt pronoun. The delay was even more marked for the acquisition of the demonstrative pronoun.

Keywords

• pronominal reference
• antecedent preferences
• accessibility