Journal Articles
- Vasil, J; Moore, C; Tomasello, M, Thought and language: association of groupmindedness with young English-speaking children’s production of pronouns,
First Language, vol. 43 no. 5
(October, 2023),
pp. 516-538 [doi].
(last updated on 2024/08/25)
Abstract: Shared intentionality theory posits that at age 3, children expand their conception of plural agency to include 3- or more-person groups. We sought to determine whether this conceptual shift is detectable in children’s pronoun use. We report the results of a series of Bayesian hierarchical generative models fitted to 479 English-speaking children’s first-person plural, first-person singular, second-person, third-person plural, and third-person singular pronouns. As a proportion of pronouns, children used more first-person plural pronouns, only, after 3;0 compared to before. Additionally, children used more 1pp. pronouns when their mothers used more 1pp. pronouns. As a proportion of total utterances, all pronoun classes were used more often as children aged. These findings suggest that a shift in children’s social conceptualizations at age 3 is reflected in their use of 1pp. pronouns.
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