January 2021: LSA Talk on L1 Acquisition of Demonstratives
I delivered a talk at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), titled “Children acquire non-egocentric demonstratives later than egocentric ones.”
Abstract for the talk:
Across languages, children produce demonstratives early in development, but do not master them until late. The late mastery of demonstratives is attributed to children’s cognitive egocentrism (Clark & Sengul 1978, a.o.), predicting that children will struggle even more with non-egocentric demonstratives (that near you) than with egocentric ones (that far from me). We test this novel prediction against L1 acquisition data from Ticuna, a language with both egocentric and non-egocentric demonstratives. It proves correct: Ticuna children produce non-egocentric demonstratives later and less often than egocentric ones, providing a new form of evidence that egocentrism shapes the L1 acquisition of functional items.
Download slides (PowerPoint format) here.
