The acquisition of personal pronouns in cochlear-implanted children

The acquisition of personal pronouns

in cochlear-implanted children.

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Copyright © 2010: Annemie Verbist. All rights reserved.

The acquisition of personal pronouns in cochlear-implanted children.

PROEFSCHRIFT

ter verkrijging van

de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden,

op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. P.F. van der Heijden,

volgens besluit van het Collega voor Promoties

te verdedigen op 25 mei 2010

klokke 16.15 uur.

door

Annemie Josee Jozef Verbist

geboren te Mol, België

in 1983

Promotiecommissie

Promotores:

Prof. dr. Martine Coene (Universiteit Leiden, Universiteit Antwerpen,

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Prof. dr. Johan Rooryck

Prof. dr. Steven Gillis (Universiteit Antwerpen)

Commissieleden:

Prof. dr. Paul Govaerts (Universiteit Antwerpen)

Dr. Claartje Levelt

Prof. dr. Dorit Ravid (Tel Aviv University)

Prof. dr. Vincent van Heuven

Acknowledgements

The research leading to this dissertation was carried out in the context of the Netherlands

Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) funded VIDI project The morphosyntactic

development of children with a cochlear implant. A comparison with children using hearing aids,

normally hearing children and children with SLI awarded to prof. dr. Martine Coene, who was

also the principal supervisor of this dissertation. The longitudinal speech data of cochlear-implanted children presented in

chapter two is the result of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO) funded

research project Language acquisition by children with cochlear implants: A longitudinal

investigation 2001 - 2006 carried out at the University of Antwerp (grant number

G.0042.01, principle investigator prof. dr. Steven Gillis). All other data have been

collected within a collaborative project carried out at LUCL (Leiden University) and

CNTS (University of Antwerp), and supported by joint grants from NWO (grant

number 276-75-004, principal investigator prof. dr. Martine Coene), and FWO

(principal investigator prof. dr. Martine Coene).

First of all, I would like to thank all child subjects of this study. I would also

like to thank all parents and staff from The Eargroup in Deurne (head: prof. dr. Paul

Govaerts; coordination CI children: Carina De Beukelaer; coordination CI adults:

Kristin Daemers), Jongelinkxhof in Antwerp, KIDS in Hasselt and De Poolster in Brugge

for providing the auditory and medical data. Moreover, I would like to thank the staff

of Vrije Basisschool Centrum in Balen, Lagere School De Dames in Antwerp and Lagere School

Heilig Hartinstituut in Heverlee.

I would also like to thank all those who helped collect, transcribe and code the

spontaneous production data investigated in chapter two: Annemiek Hammer, Anne

van de Kant, Agnita Souman, Arlette Sjerp, Evelien Weckx, Inge Molemans, Ineke

Tyriard, Karen Schauwers, Lieve van Severen, Oydis Hide, Renate van den Berg, Saskia

Yperzeele. I also thank Vincent van Asch for writing Imager, the program designed for

the elicitation tasks reported on in chapter three.

I would also like to thank all those who gave advice and suggestions, asked

questions and listened to my talks, read chapters, or gave any other kind of feedback

during the last four years: colleagues from the CI project: Anne, Annemiek, Agnita,

Arlette, Inge, Ineke, Karen, Oydis, Lieve and Renate; colleagues from Leiden

University: Karlijn, Elena, Camelia, Lobke, Jenneke, Frank, Marjo, Jeroen, Mark,

Martin, Hilke, Luis, Tanja, Niels, Rint, Marijn, Mélanie, Sita, Willemijn, Pepijn, Erik,

Birgit, Leontine, Azeb, Roland, Katerina, Rebecca, Anita, Hans, Ingrid, Margarita,

Jurriaan, Rinus, Lisa, Crit, Jenny, Maarten, Froukje, Elizabeth, Liesbeth, Jörg; colleagues

from University of Antwerp: Eric, Frederik, Guy, Griet, Hanne, Helena, Iris, Jo, Kathy,

Kim, Olga, Reinhild, Roser, Vincent and Walter; and jobstudents Evelyn and Saskia.

Thank you for your feedback and all the talks during the past years.

Finally, but definitely not in the least, I would like to thank my mother, father,

little white Westie, tante Linda, Sophie, Inge, Eva and Karlijn for always being there for

me, supporting me and listening to the endless talks about doing research, pronouns,

cochlear implants, statistics, and writing.

And for those whose names I am formally not supposed to mention in these

acknowledgements, it stands without a doubt that I could not have finished this

research successfully without your enormous help. It was sometimes hard en frustrating

for me when you once more reasoned why I should re-analyze, re-think, re-read, re-

count, re-structure and especially re-write during the past four years. However, I know

now that this is all a necessary part of the difficult but simultaneously very rewarding

process of doing research and writing a dissertation. Therefore, these

acknowledgements would not have been complete without a big thank you for your

advice and guidance throughout these past four years.

Table of contents Chapter 1: Introduction

1. Cochlear implantation ..................................................................................................... 1

2. Language acquisition in cochlear-implanted children ................................................ 5

3. The benefit of early implantation .................................................................................. 8

4. The acquisition of pronouns ........................................................................................ 15

5. Innateness and usage-based approaches to the acquisition of pronouns .............. 19

6. Method ............................................................................................................................. 23

7. Research question ........................................................................................................... 24

8. Overview .......................................................................................................................... 25

Chapter 2: The acquisition of pronouns in spontaneous speech 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 27

2. The Dutch pronominal paradigm ................................................................................ 29

3. The acquisition of pronouns ........................................................................................ 30

3.1. Three steps in the acquisition of pronouns ............................................. 30

3.2. A closer look at the acquisition of person ................................................ 31

4. Method ............................................................................................................................. 34

5. Analysis & results ........................................................................................................... 36

5.1. The first emergence of a pronoun ........................................................... 36

5.2. Building a full pronominal paradigm ...................................................... 38

5.3. Reaching a target-like frequency of use of the complete set ............... 43

5.4. A closer look at the acquisition of person ............................................. 51

6. Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 54

7. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 65

Appendices ........................................................................................................................... 67

Chapter 3: The acquisition of binding relations 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 71

2. Binding relations ............................................................................................................. 72

3. The acquisition of binding relations ............................................................................ 72

3.1. Two types of pronouns: strong and weak .............................................. 74

3.2. Contradictory predictions for acquisition ............................................. 82

4. Method ............................................................................................................................ 82

5. Analyses and results ....................................................................................................... 86

5.1. Picture selection task .................................................................................. 86

5.2. Truth judgment task ................................................................................... 91

6. Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 97

7. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 100

Appendices ......................................................................................................................... 102

Chapter 4: The acquisition of co-reference 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 107

2. Co-reference at the syntax-pragmatics interface ..................................................... 109

3. The acquisition of co-reference at the syntax-pragmatics interface .................... 115

4. Co-reference as a measure for the effectiveness for CI and HA ......................... 119

5. Method ........................................................................................................................... 121

6. Analyses & results ........................................................................................................ 125

6.1. Preferential ways of co-reference ........................................................... 125

6.2. The Overall Co-reference Score (OCrS) .............................................. 129

7. Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 134

8. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 139

Appendices ......................................................................................................................... 140

Chapter 5: Conclusion 1. Aims of the study ......................................................................................................... 145

2. Different developmental steps in pronoun acquisition: the main results ........... 146

2.1. The pronominal paradigm ...................................................................... 146

2.2. Binding relations ....................................................................................... 147

2.3. Co-reference .............................................................................................. 149

3. The benefit of implantation ........................................................................................ 149

4. A triple benefit of early implantation ........................................................................ 153

5. Sensitive periods and developmental theory ........................................................... 157

6. Deictic pointing and demonstratives: a suggestion for further research ............ 159

References ......................................................................................................................................... 163 Samenvatting in het Nederlands

1. Introductie ...................................................................................................................... 197

2. Resultaten ........................................................................................................................ 198

3. De meerwaarde van vroege implantatie .................................................................... 200 Curriculum Vitae.............................................................................................................................. 202

1 Personal pronouns in cochlear-implanted children

Chapter 1: Introduction 1. Cochlear implantation

The cochlea. The human auditory system consists of the outer ear, the middle ear, the

inner ear (i.e. the cochlea), and the auditory nerve which is part of the neural pathway

(see Figure 1). The outer ear functions as a conductor of acoustic sound waves. It

causes the tympanum or eardrum to vibrate in the middle ear. This sets the three

ossicles (hammer, anvil, stirrup) into motion. The cochlea receives the vibrations

caused by the balance on the oval window and transforms these vibrations into neural

signals for the auditory nerve.

Figure 1: The human ear. © 1995-2009 The Nemours Foundation/ KidsHealth.

Reprinted with permission.

Chapter 1: Introduction 2

Sensori-neural hearing loss. The cochlea functions as a connection between

the middle ear and the auditory nerve. In case of sensori-neural hearing loss, the hair

cells inside the cochlea are damaged or absent (see Figure 2). As such, the connection

between the middle ear and the auditory nerve is hindered.

Figure 2: The human cochlea. © Bellarmine University. Reprinted with permission.

(http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/HumanBioogy/sensory_systems.htm).

Since the cochlea is responsible for amplification and frequency-resolution, subjects

with sensori-neural hearing loss will not be able to perceive sound unless is it is

presented loud enough and they will not be able to discriminate sounds based on small

frequency differences.

About 2‰ of newborn babies have a severe congenital (and prelingual)

bilateral sensori-neural hearing loss (Govaerts, 2002). A congenital hearing loss is

present at birth or closely after birth and, as such, is also a prelingual hearing loss,

which typically precedes the acquisition of language. In Belgium and many other

Western-European countries, thanks to universal neonatal hearing screening, hearing

loss can be detected at the maternity ward, as soon as three to five days after birth

(Govaerts et al., 2001). The evaluation of this screening method in Flanders reveals that

it covered 99,3% of all newborn babies born in 1999.


During this neonatal hearing screening, the presence of otoacoustic emissions

(OAE) is tested. OAEs are sound waves present in the cochlea and most probably

caused by the outer hair cells. These cells contract with incoming sound waves in order

to amplify and ensure frequency resolution. As a result of this contraction, a second

wave is created in the cochlea in the opposite direction, i.e. from the middle ear

towards the outer ear. This wave is known as OAE (Daemers et al., 1996). The absence

of OAEs is a very sensitive indicator of sensori-neural hearing loss exceeding 30-40 dB

(Govaerts, 2002).

Hearing aid and cochlear implant. Children with sensori-neural hearing

loss can be given access to sound and speech with either a conventional hearing aid

(HA) or a cochlear implant (CI). While conventional hearing aids are generally used in

case of a moderate (i.e. 41 to 60 dBHL) to severe (i.e. 61 to 80 dBHL) hearing loss,

cochlear implants are generally used for a severe to profound (i.e. 81 dBHL or more)

hearing loss when most of the outer hair cells of the cochlea are damaged or absent

(Govaerts, 2004). Conventional HAs only amplify sound but do not enhance the tuning

curve. Thus, a child with a conventional hearing aid can detect more sound but cannot

detect more frequency differences. When conventional hearing aids do not render

sufficient sound detection, cochlear implants provide an alternative solution (see Figure

3).


Figure 3: A cochlear implant. © 1995-2009 The Nemours Foundation/KidsHealth.

Reprinted with permission.

A cochlear implant is an electronic device that replaces the cochlear function

of the ear. While conventional hearing aids amplify sound, cochlear implants do

something entirely different: They pick up sound from the environment through a

microphone in order to send it via a speech processor to a transmitter and receiver that

convert the speech signal into electric impulses that are send to an electrode area inside

the cochlea that stimulates the auditory nerve. A cochlear implant does not restore

normal hearing but gives a partial simulation of natural sound. Cochlear implants thus

bypass those parts of the ear that are damaged and directly stimulate the auditory nerve

(see Figure 4).

Most cochlear-implanted (CI) children investigated in this study have a

prelingual sensori-neural hearing loss and received a Nucleus24 device (Cochlear Ltd,

Australia). This implant consists of twenty-two intracochlear and two extracochlear

electrodes.


Figure 4: The function of a cochlear implant. © 2008 Advanced Bionics, LLC.

Reprinted with permission. 2. Language acquisition in cochlear-implanted children

Cochlear implantation is surrounded by a debate on its outcomes. Depending on whom

you ask, it can either be opposed or favoured. Opponents of the use of CI in

congenitally deaf children argue that a reduced and impoverished auditory signal will

not yield the same benefits for language acquisition as normal hearing and are therefore

advocates of teaching these children sign language (Lane, 1990). It is not in the aim of


this study, to pursue this issue any further. In this study, we intend to investigate which

are the benefits of cochlear implantation that have been attested in previous studies on

oral language acauisition in deaf born children.

Delayed acquisition. Children with prelingual onset of deafness often lag

behind in many aspects of spoken language (Power & Quigley, 1973; Brasel & Quigley,

1977; Osberger & McGarr, 1982; Boothroyd & Eran, 1994; Geers & Moog, 1994;

Kretschmer & Kretschmer, 1994; Carney & Moeller, 1998; Mayne, Yoshinaga-Itano &

Sedey, 2000; Lederberg & Spencer, 2001; a.o.). Moreover, congenital sensori-neural

hearing loss is known to cause severe and often irreversible problems in language

development (Brannon & Murray, 1966; Davis, 1974; Davis, et al., 1986; Geers &

Moog, 1989; Robbins).

Few studies focus on the development of morpho-syntax in CI children. Mean

length of utterances (MLU) in morphemes is often treated as a general predictor of

morphological development in language acquisition. Some studies have investigated

MLU in CI children on the basis of spontaneous speech (Coerts & Mills, 1994; Coerts,

Baker, van den Broek & Brokx, 1996; Szagun, 1997/2000; Spencer, Tye-Murray &

Tomblin, 1998; Ertmer, Strong & Sadagopan, 2003; a.o.). In general, CI children have a

delay in MLU when compared to normal hearing (NH) children. However, an increase

in MLU is found after implantation, thus indicating the effectiveness of cochlear

implantation.

Some studies have focused on specific morpho-syntactic aspects like verbal

morphology and determiners (Coerts, Baker, van den Broek & Brokx, 1996; Spencer,

Tye-Murray & Tomblin, 1998; Svirsky, Robbins, Kirk, Pisoni & Miyamoto, 2000;

Szagun, 2004; a.o.). Others have investigated the order of acquisition of different

morpho-syntactic elements (Szagun, 1997/2000; Svirsky, Robbins, Kirk, Pisoni &

Miyamoto, 2000).

Partially reversing the delay. A question often addressed in research on

hearing-impaired children is whether the delays in language acquisition caused by initial

hearing deprivation are reversible. Initially, the amount of maturational (including

language) delay corresponds with the amount of sensory deprivation prior to


implantation (Ponton, Don, Eggermont, Waring & Masuda, 1996). On average, the

delay no longer increases after cochlear implantation, suggesting that earlier

implantation results in smaller delays in language development as compared to later

implantation (Svirsky, Robbins, Kirk, Pisoni & Miyamoto, 2000; see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Increased language growth after implantation. Average language age as a

function of chronological age for the 23 cochlear implant (CI) subjects before

implantation and at three intervals after implantation (black circles). The white circles

represent the expressive language growth predicted for these same children, had they

not received cochlear implants. The solid diagonal line illustrates language growth

expected of an average normal-hearing child. (Svirsky et al., 2000: 156, reprinted with

permission of Blackwell publishing).

A cochlear implant generally keeps the initial language delay from increasing

further by speeding up the language rate to a near to normal rate. After cochlear

implantation, the delay caused by speech deprivation can be partially caught-up in both

speech perception (Staller, Beiter, Brimacombe, Mecklenburg, Arndt, 1991; Dawson et

al., 1992; Fryauf-Bertschy, Tyler, Kelsay & Gantz, 1992; Waltzman et al., 1995; Kirk,

1996; Clark, 1997; Tyler et al., 1997; Waltzman & Cohen, 1998), speech production


(Tye-Murray, Spencer & Woodworth, 1995) and language development (Hammes,

Novak, Rotz, Willis, Thomas, & Wirth, 2003; Waltzman & Cohen, 1998; Geers,

Nicholas & Sedey, 2003; Svirsky, Teoh, & Neuburger, 2004; Holt, Svirsky, Neuburger

& Miyamoto, 2004; Svirsky, 2005). CI children are able to partially catch up the initial

language delay by speeding up the acquisition process to near normal language learning

rates, or in some individual cases even faster-than-normal language learning rates.

3. The benefit of early implantation With respect to language acquisition in general and morpho-syntax in particular, it can

be predicted that there will be various factors influencing the development. Most are

related to the quantity and quality of the auditory input, i.e. age at implantation or first

use of the HA and the quality of hearing before and after the intervention. Most studies

on language development in CI children reveal a benefit of early cochlear implantation

(Miyamoto, Svirsky & Robbins, 1997; Tomblin, Barker & Hubbs, 2007; Nicholas &

Geers, 2007; Schauwers, 2007; Govaerts et al., 2008; a.o.). This positive effect of early

implantation on auditory and language development has been observed in children

implanted as young as one to three years of age (McConkey Robbins, Bur ton Koch,

Osberger, Zimmerman, Philips & KishonRabin, 2004; Tomblin, Barker, Spencer,

Zhang & Gantz, 2005). According to these studies, children implanted early in life are

more likely to acquire language on a par with their normal hearing peers.

Most studies have looked at children who were implanted relatively late in life.

A large set of these studies have found that children implanted before the age of four to

five years of life have a language growth rate that is on a par with NH children (Kirk et

al., 2002; Robbins, Koch, Osberger, Zimmerman, Philips & Kishon-Rabin, 2004;

Svirsky, Robbins, Kirk, Pisoni & Miyamoto, 2000; Svirsky, Teoh & Neuberger, 2004).

By contrast, children implanted before 24 months are able to partially catch up with

their hearing peers due to a faster-than-normal language growth, while children

implanted later on in life do not (Hammes, et al., 2003; Waltzman & Cohen, 1998;

Geers, Nicholas & Sedey, 2003; Svirsky, Teoh et al., 2004; Holt, Svirsky, Neuburger &

Miyamoto, 2004; Svirsky, 2005).


Sensitive period(s) in language acquisition. The positive effect of age at

implantation is closely related to the presence of a critical or sensitive period in

language acquisition (Lenneberg; 1967; Birdsong, 1999; Kyle, 1978; Doupe & Kuhl,

1999; Harley & Wang, 1997; Long, 1990; Newport, Bavelier & Neville, 2001; Singleton,

1995; Ruben & Rapin, 1980; Neville, 1995; a.o.). Lenneberg (1967) first proposed a

"critical period" for language acquisition: children need adequate access to language

during a crucial time span (i.e. the critical period) in order to achieve full native

command of this language (especially grammar). This critical period is considered to

have a sharp onset and offset (see Figure 6), resulting in an irreversible language

deficiency in case of sensory deprivation during the crucial time span.

Figure 6: A critical period with a sharp onset and offset (Tomblin, Barker, & Hubbs,

2007: 513, reprinted with permission).

As a result of the difficulty to pinpoint the exact time span for the critical

period, some researchers have proposed the notion of a "sensitive period" (see Figure

7), which is accepted in recent research. Instead of a clear-cut time span, a sensitive

period has a gradual onset and an incomplete offset. As such, children are most

efficient in acquiring their first language during the first years of life. Moreover, sensory

deprivation during the sensitive period does not inevitably result into an irreversible

language deficit.


Figure 7: A sensitive period with a gradual onset and offset (Tomblin, Barker, &

Hubbs, 2007: 513, reprinted with permission).

The sensitivity for language acquisition during the first years of life is related to

initial plasticity (i.e. adaptability and ability to reorganization) of the human brain of

children, which diminishes over time. Sensory activity modulates the development of

the cochleotopical organization in the brain and cortex (King & Moore 1991).

Consequently, a child needs access to oral communication during the sensitive period

of language development in order to reach a native-like proficiency in language

development. As such, age of first access to spoken language is a predicting factor for

the ultimate outcome of language acquisition. For hearing-impaired children, age at

intervention is therefore crucial. For CI children, sufficient and adequate auditory

access to spoken language coincides with the moment of implantation and activation of

the implant; as such age at implantation is a predicting factor for language development

(Brackett & Zara, 1998; Ito, Suzuki, Toma, Shiroma, & Kaga, 2002; Ruben & Schwartz,

1999; Ruben, 1997/1999; Manrique et al., 1999; Robinson, 1998; Harrison, Gordon,

Mount, 2005).


According to Locke's developmental theory of language (1997), children go

through a set of successive sensitive periods of language acquisition. Each sensitive

period is associated with the development of a specific aspect of language (see Figure

8).

Figure 8: A set of successive sensitive periods in language acquisition as proposed by

Locke's developmental theory (Locke, 1997: 268, reprinted with permission by

Academic Press).

Analogous to the developmental theory, the process of first language development is

generally divided into different phases (Gillis & Schaerlaekens, 2000). Although these

periods cannot be strictly divided in time and overlap, they correspond with the

acquisition of different language skills (see Figure 9).


Figure 9: Different phases in language acquisition in function of different language

skills (Gillis & Schaerlaekens, 2000: 15, reprinted with permission from Martinus

Nijhoff).

Initially, children go through a prelingual phase of vocal learning in which they

vocalize and babble but are not yet able to use conventional words to communicate.

Until 6 months, children vocalize by experimenting with their vocal tract. This is

noticeable by the differences in pitch, intensity and duration of the vocalizations.

Around six months of age, children start producing babbling utterances, i.e. repetitive

articulatory movements.

After the prelingual phase, children acquire their first words and are able to

combine words into short telegraphic-like sentences in the "utterance acquisition stage".

During this stage, children collect lexical material. This lexical material is analysed into

syllables and segments during the following stage, i.e. "analytic and computational

stage" (from ca. 20 months until ca. 37 months). During the same stage, grammatical

rules are discovered and actively used in production. Importantly, Locke states that


children will not be able to enter the second stage if they have not stored sufficient

lexical material during the first stage. The start of each sensitive period depends on a

successive completion of the previous sensitive period.

Thus, the analytical and computational stage is only activated by successful

lexical storage (see Figure 10). Children who are delayed in the lexical stage can

therefore miss out on the appropriate time for the analytical stage to become active (see

Figure 11). Locke’s theory predicts that a loss of exposure (either sensory or effective

exposure) during a particular stage of language development results in temporary or

permanent processing deficits and accompanying language deficiencies.

Figure 10: A typical development of the analythical stage after a successive storage of

lexical material in the previous stage. (Locke, 1997: 355, reprinted with

permission from Academic Press).


Figure 11: A delayed development of the lexical acquisition stage, resulting in a

deficient development in the analythical stage (Locke, 1997: 355, reprinted with

permission from Academic Press).

From three years onwards, children will integrate and elaborate the lexical material and

grammatical rules they acquired during the previous stages. This stage is often called the

differentiation phase, in which the increase in knowledge about language is highly

noticeable. From around 2;6 until 5;0, children acquire a wide range of linguistic skills:

phonology, semantics, morpho-syntax, pragmatics and metalinguistic and

communicative aspects. Finally from five years onwards, children complete their

acquisition of language and are able to communicate target-like around the age of nine

years.


4. The acquisition of pronouns

The pronominal paradigm. Pronominal reference has been claimed to be a universal

element of human languages. It can be implemented by independent pronouns like in

Germanic languages or through verbal inflection as in most Amerindian languages

(Wierzbicka, 1996). Pronouns typically refer to previously introduced entities in the

discourse or non-linguistic context. They can encode different kinds of information

about their antecedent (e.g. their person, number, gender and case). These classes of

features consist of a limited set which is universally constrained.

The Dutch pronominal system, as illustrated in Table 1, encodes person (1st,,

2nd and 3rd person), number (singular and plural), gender (masculine, feminine and

neuter), animacy (animate and inanimate) and case (nominative and accusative).

Additionally, Dutch has two pronominal classes that are characterized by a different

perceptual, morpho-syntactic and pragmatic distribution, i.e. a strong and weak

pronominal system.

Cross-linguistically, pronouns can be classified into three groups,

distinguishing strong pronouns from two types of deficient pronouns, i.e. weak and

clitic pronouns (Cardinaletti & Starke, 1999). For Dutch, most researchers agree that

there are only two types of pronouns: strong and weak ones (Haegeman, 1993; van

Craenenbroeck & van Koppen, 2000; but for a different view see Zwart, 1996). Weak

pronouns differ from their strong counterparts in not allowing focus, modification or

conjunction, never appearing in isolation and occurring in free order in double object

constructions.

Pronouns as a measure for the effectiveness of CI. To date, very little is

known about the development of personal pronouns and pronoun-antecedent relations

in hearing-impaired children. With respect to production, an analysis of spontaneous

speech of French-speaking CI children has shown that they produce significantly fewer

pronouns than their hearing peers (Le Normand, Ouellet & Cohen, 2003). A small-

scale study on two English-speaking children with classical hearing aids (HA) reports

that first and second person pronouns emerge later than in hearing controls matched

for chronological age (Cole, Oshima-Takane & Yaremko, 1994).


Table 1: The Dutch pronominal system and its attributes and values1

Person Number Gender Nominative Accusative

Strong Weak Strong Weak

1 singular ik, ikke k mij me 2 singular jij je jou je gij ge - - u - u - 3 singular masculine hij - hem (e)m feminine zij ze haar (d)r, ze neuter - (he)t - (he)t 1 plural wij we ons - 2 plural jullie - jullie - u - u - 3 plural zij ze Hun, ze

Perceptual prominence. Previous research on NH children has indicated

that the commonly found order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes can be

influenced by multiple factors, among which perceptual prominence, input frequency,

semantic complexity and grammatical complexity (Goldschneider & DeKeyser, 2001).

Perceptual prominence is argued to be of great influence in language acquisition by NH

children (Villiers & Villiers, 73; Brown, 1973; MacWhinney, 1985; Feuer, 1980; Slobin,

1973; Pye, 1980/1983; Peters, 1997; Peters & Stromqvist, 1996; Gleitman & Wanner,

1982; Goldschneider & DeKeyser, 2001). The perceptual prominence of a morpheme

is defined as the degree to which a morpheme stands out in running speech in contrast

with its neighbouring items. There is no consensus with respect to the factors

determining this perceptual prominence. It is taken to be an important attentional

mechanism in learning processes. It enables the hearer to focus on a particular part of

incoming speech.

Due to a reduced auditory access to speech and the perceptual deficits this can

1 For an extensive discussion on the Dutch pronominal system with respect to deficiency, see van Koppen & van Craenenbroeck (2000).


lead to, perceptual prominence may influence language development in hearing-

impaired children even more than in NH children (Svirsky et al., 2002). Research has

revealed that hearing-impaired children often experience difficulties in acquiring

morphemes with low perceptual prominence like determiners and plural morphemes

(Coene, Daemers, Govaerts, Gillis & Rooryck, 2008; Coene, Gillis, Govaerts &

Daemers, 2007; Svirsky, Robbins, Kirk, Pisoni & Miyamoto, 2000; Szagun, 1997/2000).

Moreover, CI children deviate from the commonly found order of acquisition of

grammatical morphemes and instead acquire morphemes starting with the most salient

morpheme and ending with the least salient one. The order of acquisition was

investigated for: (i) noun plurals (/s/ and /z/); (ii) uncontractable copula (is or are); and

(iii) regular past tense (/t/ and /d/) (Svirsky et al., 2002). NH children acquire noun

plurals before the uncontractable copula and end by acquiring the regular past. CI

children, on the other hand, first acquire the uncontractable copula, then noun plurals

and, finally, regular past morphemes. The uncontractable copula is most salient due to

the acoustic characteristics of the vowel (a.o. formant frequencies, the presence of

retroflexivity and duration). Then, noun plurals are most salient since the plural

morpheme /s/ or /z/ in wordfinal position has a much longer duration then the stops

of the regular past tense morphemes. The latter are therefore the least salient of both

morphemes. As for NH children, it is speculated that all morphemes investigated are

perceptually sufficiently salient and, therefore, the order of acquisition is determined by

other factors (Svirsky, et al., 2002:112).

Along the same lines, we suggest that personal pronouns are also low salient

morphemes and therefore difficult to acquire, especially by hearing-impaired children.

Pronouns are short lexical items with low intensity and are often unmarked by a pitch

accent. As such they have been argued to be low in prominence (Goldschneider &

DeKeyser, 2001). As such, pronouns can be difficult to perceive in incoming speech,

especially for hearing-impaired children.

Strong-weak opposition. As previously mentioned, Dutch has two classes of

personal pronouns (see Table 1). One of the features by which these two classes are

distinguished is their different degree of (perceptual) prominence: strong pronouns are

unbound morphemes with a full vowel and allow focus marking by means of a pitch


accent, whereas weak pronouns have a reduced vowel, need a lexical host and do not

allow focus marking. Thus, although all personal pronouns have low prominence, weak

pronouns can be expected to emerge late in children's grammar, especially in the case

of hearing-impaired children. In what follows, we will give a detailed overview of the

properties of both classes of pronouns with respect to perceptual prominence as

currently accepted in the literature (Cardinaletti & Starke, 1999; van Craenenbroeck &

van Koppen, 2000):

(i) Weak pronouns are morpho-phonologically reduced counterparts of strong

pronouns:

(1) a. mijstrong /m / 'me' - joustrong /ju/ 'you' - hemstrong /hm/ ‘him’

b. meweak /m/ 'me' - jeweak /j/ 'you' - (h)emweak /m/ ‘him’

(ii) Weak pronouns are allowed only when the main stress of the sentence

shifts to a nearby element. When a proper name (e.g. John in (2a)) is replaced by a weak

pronoun, stress shift is obligatory. Therefore, the stress (in capitals) shifts to the

preceding verb as in (2b).

(2) a. Frank ziet JOHN. Frank sees JOHN. b. Frank ZIET (h)em. Frank SEES him. c. * Frank ziet (H)EM. Frank sees HIM.

(iii) Weak pronouns cannot appear in positions containing contrastive stress

(in capitals) as illustrated in (3).

(3) a. Hij gelooft HEM strong, niet mij. He believes HIM, not me. b. *Hij gelooft (H)EMweak, niet mij.

He believes HIM, not me.


Complexity. In addition to their low perceptual prominence, personal

pronouns are also morphemes with a high degree of complexity, rendering their

acquisition difficult. This is based on the following observations (in line with

Goldschneider & DeKeyser, 2001):

(i) Some pronouns are semantically complex because they can express

different meanings. This is illustrated for Dutch ze 'she', which may co-refer with either

a single female (4a) or a plural referent (4b);

(4) a. Marie houdt van chocolade. Ze eet het iedere dag. Mary likes off chocolate. She eats it every day. 'Mary likes chocolate. She eats it every day. b. Marie en Sarah houden van chocolade. Ze eten het iedere dag. Mary and Sarah like off chocolate. They eat it every day. 'Mary and Sarah like chocolate. They eat it every day.

(ii) The pronominal paradigm has a low morphoponological regularity since it

includes phonological alternations (e.g. mij versus me 'me') and homophonous

alternations as illustrated in (5). The Dutch morpheme het can function both as the

definite pronoun 'it' and a definite determiner 'the'. - A paradigm with low

morphophonological regularity is argued to be less transparent and more complex;

(5) Marie kent het verhaal. Ze vertelt het aan Sarah. Mary knows the story. She tells it to Sarah.

'Mary knows the story. She tells it to Sarah.'

5. Innatess and usage-based approaches to the acquisition of pronouns As for how children acquire language, different explanations have been proposed

throughout the years. Within this debate, two approaches have been given a lot of

attention: the usage-based and the innatess approach.

These two approaches have also been put forward with respect to the


acquisition of the pronominal paradigm. Both of them build on the idea that the

acquisition of pronouns is a structure building process in which different morphological

attributes are acquired. Yet they differ with respect to the way in which this process of

structure building is done. In chapter two, the predictions of these two accounts with

respect to the acquisition of pronouns will be compared with special attention to the

late acquisition of the third person attribute value in child speech.

Usage-based approach. Within the first approach, it is proposed that language

structure can be learned from the input itself by means of general cognitive abilities, i.e.

generalization abilities (Elman, Bates, Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith, Parisi, & Plunkett,

1996; Tomasello 2003a/b; Behrens, 2009). The term usage-based was introduced by

Langacker, proposing that a child's linguistic system is build based on the concrete

usage of language (Langacker, 1987).

The usage-based approach denies the presence of a module for language

acquisition that is unique and autonomous in the human mind. Instead, it proposes that

children employ experience and general cognitive abilities when learning language,

analogous to other non-linguistic cognitive developments. A child is able to make

generalizations based on the recurrences in the input by using general cognitive

procedures such as analogy, abstraction, connection between categories, and detection

of novelty.

Statistical learning has been proposed as one of the central cognitive procedures

guiding language acquisition (Newport, & Aslin, 2004; Aslin, Saffran, & Newport, 1999;

Pullum & Scholz, 2002; Elman, Bates, Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith, Parisi, & Plunkett,

1996; Elman, 2002; MacWhinney, 2004). This central cognitive phenomenon is often

referred to as entrenchment. Repeated exposure to a certain unit leaves memory traces.

The more often this unit recurs in the input, the more stable it becomes in memory

and, as such, can be acquired. Entrenchment is proposed to not only guide the

acquisition of small units such as words but also larger units or constructions such as

nominal expressions and sentences (Lanacker, 2000).

Usage-based approach to pronouns. The usage-based approach claims that

children need to bring their pronominal paradigm to its full structure through word-


specific instances from the input. Because of the repeated exposure to these instances

and the phonological and morpho-syntactic consistency of pronouns, children will

build a pronominal paradigm of their ambient language (Rispoli, 1991).

Based on statistical learning and entrenchement, third person pronouns are

hypothesized to be acquired late because of their low frequency in the input, i.e. adult

speech (Rispoli, 1991). This proposition will be investigated in chapter two by

investigating the proportion of the person values in child directed speech (CDS)

present in the recordings of the NH corpus investigated in this study.

Innatess approach. According to the innatess approach, proposed in the

1950s, children are equipped with a special faculty or device for language learning,

which is genetically predetermined (Chomsky, 1965; Fodor, 1966; Lenneberg, 1967).

This device allows them to filter the input and, by doing so, children are able to learn

language and thus generate a target-like output (see Figure 2). This language-specific

faculty has been called "the language acquisition device" (LAD), "universal grammar"

and "language faculty". It is a language-specific component of the human brain that

consists of (i) innateness and genetically determined principles, which are universal

across all languages, and (ii) a set of parameters, whose setting can be modified to any

particular language by a set of parameters.

LANGUAGE

INPUT ACQUISITION OUTPUT

DEVICE

Figure 12: Schematic representation of the Innateness Hypothesis as proposed by

Chomsky (1965/1977).

Innatess approach to pronouns. The pronominal attribute geometry

(Hanson, 2000; Hanson, Harley & Ritter, 2000) proposes that universal grammar equips

the child with an initial pronominal structure with a minimal set of morphological

attributes, which is then expanded through exposure to and detection of the input..


Across languages, there is both uniformaty and variability in the acquisition of

pronouns. This can be partially predicted by the morphological geometry of pronouns.

Investigating and comparing the acquisition of the pronominal paradigm in in

a broad range of typologically distinct languages (English, French, Mohawk, Kaluli,

Hebrew and American Sign Language) has led to a pronominal attribute geometry

(Harley & Ritter, 2002). This attribute geometry makes strong predictions for the

development of pronouns cross-linguistically, by positing three uniform acquisition

orders in the emergence of attribute values: (a) first person or neuter third person

singular always emerge first; (b) first person emerges before second; (c) singular

emerges before plural. As the order of emergence of pronouns is only partially

predictable, the relative order of emergence of third person and plural is subject to

variation. This has been illustrated for Dutch in Bol & Kuiken (1986).

From an innateness point of view, the explanation for the late acquisition of

third person pronouns builds on the attribute geometry illustrated in Figure 13. The

morphological attributes person, number, animacy and gender of the pronominal

paradigm are dependent on three class nodes, i.e. Participant, Individuation and Class.

These three class nodes are each dependent on the root node Referring Expression.

Personal pronoun

PARTICIPANT INDIVIDUATION

Speaker Addressee Minimal Group CLASS

Animate Inanimate/Neuter

Masculine Feminine

Figure 13: Attribute geometry adapted from Harley & Ritter (2002: 487). Based on

their attributes, personal pronouns are divided into three groups, which are presented

as three nodes in the geometry and indicated in small caps. Default or unmarked values

are underlined.


First and second person pronouns are dependents of the Participant node,

which represents grammatical person and encodes speaker and hearer in the discourse

context. First person is the default value of person and, as such, is acquired before

second person. Third person pronouns are unmarked for person and are not classified

under the participant node. They are marked for number under the Individuation node

and for animacy and gender under the Class node. As for the number attribute, third

person pronouns occur in the singular and plural value, which are encoded respectively

as Minimal and Group. Under the Class node, third person pronouns can be encoded

as animate or inanimate, while only animate pronouns are further divided into

masculine or feminine.

6. Method

Briefly, the acquisition of pronouns is investigated in this study on the basis of three

types of child language data: spontaneous production, elicited comprehension and

narrative production, each with their methodological advantages:

Spontaneous speech allows for identifying factors relevant in natural child

discourse irrespective of the understanding derived from linguistic theory and adult

studies. Speaking spontaneously is a linguistically and cognitively inexpensive task in a

natural setting. Long sequences of natural speech are created instead of short

interchanges as found in elicited speech (Allen, Skarabela & Hughes, 2008).

Elicited (or experimental) data allow for the collection of a large and

representative sample of variables, which may be rare in spontaneous speech. The

context of interaction is controlled in order to single out the effect of the variables

investigated. Moreover, variables can be manipulated systematically by controlling the

setting so as to test the influence of different variables. It also allows for a systematic

comparison of children with different levels of linguistic ability (Valian & Aubry, 2005).


Narrative production should be considered semi-spontaneous and semi-elicited.

The content of the conversation is kept constant and enables a rigid comparison among

narrators or across age groups. The task of telling a narrative is a cognitively challenging

but highly suitable task for children (Verhoeven & Strömqvist, 2001).

A more detailed description of these three types of linguistic child data will be given

within the method section of each chapter: spontaneous production in chapter 2,

elicited comprehension in chapter 3, and narrative production in chapter 4.

7. Research question In this study, the acquisition of pronouns is considered to be a measure for the

effectiveness of cochlear implantation. Firstly, personal pronouns, and in particular

weak pronouns, are morphemes with low perceptual prominence and can therefore be

hard do discriminate in incoming speech, especially by hearing-impaired children.

Secondly, the acquisition of the pronominal paradigm is a difficult process due to its

semantic complexity, lack of morphophonological regularity, and syntactically

redundant status (Goldschneider & DeKeyser, 2001).

Building on these insights, the goal of this study is to examine whether a

cochlear implant provides congenitally deaf born children with sufficient auditory input

to acquire low salient and syntactically and semantically complex functional items such

as personal pronouns and to compare the results to those obtained in hearing peers.

We will do so by investigating different developmental steps in the acquisition

of personal pronouns. Firstly, we examine the acquisition of the pronominal paradigm

and its morphological attributes between one and seven years of age: (1) the first

emergence of a personal pronoun; (2) the building of a full pronominal paradigm; and

(3) the ability to reach a target-like frequency of use of the full set of pronouns.

Between seven and eight years of age, two more developmental steps are investigated:

the syntactic binding relation between a reflexive and accusative pronoun and its

antecedent, and finally the syntactic-pragmatic co-referring relation between a nominal

expression and its antecedent. The author's graphical overview of these different


developmental steps in the acquisition of pronouns is given in Figure 14.

Figure 14: A graphical summary of the different developmental steps in the acquisition

of personal pronouns as measured in the different chapters of this study: first three

steps in chapter 2, the latter two in chapter 3 and 4. The developmental steps are

situated on a time line, corresponding with the median group age as measured for

normal-hearing children.

8. Overview

In the remaining part of this dissertation, the aforementioned developmental steps in

the acquisition of personal pronouns will be tackled as follows:

In chapter two, we examine the emergence of personal pronouns and their

morphological attributes in nine children who received a CI before twenty months of

age in comparison with fifteen normal-hearing age peers. On the basis of longitudinal

spontaneous production data, the acquisition of the pronominal paradigm and its

morphological attributes is investigated. By comparing the acquisition of pronouns

with that of the pre-lexical development of babbling from previous research

(Schauwers, 2006), we examine whether the developmental patterns found in pre-lexical

development persist in the later language development of pronouns.


In chapter three, we investigate the binding relation between the Dutch third

person singular reflexive and accusative pronoun and its antecedent on the basis of

elicited comprehension. Reflexives are defined as a particular type of anaphors that

requires its antecedent to be the local subject of the clause. Pronouns, on the other

hand, ban such a relation and need an antecedent outside the clause. The central

question raised here is whether hearing-impaired children with cochlear implants and

conventional hearing aids acquire both types of relations on a par with their hearing

peers. The point here is to verify whether acoustic prominence or metric structure of

pronouns is an influencing factor in this respect.

In chapter four, we examine co-referring relations in semi-spontaneous

narrative production in a cohort of ten cochlear-implanted and ten children with

conventional hearing aids. Children not only need to learn to generate different

linguistic forms (e.g. indefinite nominal description een jongen 'a boy' versus personal

pronoun hij 'he') in the appropriate positions, but also to identify an antecedent as

sufficiently accessible or not. The development of co-referring relations is situated at

the syntax-pragmatics interface.


Chapter 2: The acquisition of pronouns in spontaneous speech 1. Introduction In this chapter nine cochlear-implanted (CI) children implanted before 20 months are

compared to fifteen normal hearing (NH) age peers with respect to the acquisition of

personal pronouns based on spontaneous production. A corpus of spontaneous speech

of the aforementioned nine CI children has been collected longitudinally from a few

months before implantation until the age of seven years. In a previous study on the

clinical group under investigation, different areas in early language development were

taken to be a measure for the effectiveness of cochlear implantation. The analysis of

babbling, representing a pre-linguistic stage in language development, showed that all

nine CI children started babbling as soon as one to four months after activation of the

implant. Furthermore, a significant correlation was found between the age at

implantation of the children and the babbling outcomes, with children implanted earlier

in life, starting to babble earlier and approaching their NH age peers in the onset of

babbling (Schauwers, 2007: 370-371).

Here, we focus on measures for later language development in the same

cohort of CI children. The question addressed is whether the positive correlation

between age at implantation and babbling outcomes persist into the later stages of

language development, measured in terms of the acquisition of pronouns. If so, we

expect CI children to acquire pronouns in a similar way as compared to their NH age

peers. This implies that although CI children start with an initial delay, they are likely to

acquire the full pronominal paradigm and to reach a target-like frequency of use over

time.

Chapter 2: Pronouns in spontaneous speech 28

Overview. The remaining part of this chapter is structured as follows: Firstly,

we will present the Dutch pronominal paradigm (section 2) and discuss the different

measures of pronoun acquisition investigated in this study (section 3). Three steps in

the acquisition of pronouns are distinguished (3.1.): the first emergence of a personal

pronoun in spontaneous production; the acquisition of the full set of morphological

attributes pronouns come with (i.e. person, number, case, gender, animacy and

deficiency); the target-like frequency of use of the complete set of pronominal forms in

a target-like manner. These three measures may be considered as three developmental

steps in the acquisition of pronouns and are represented in Figure 1.

Figure 1: A graphical representation of three different developmental steps in the

acquisition of personal pronouns based on spontaneous speech of normal hearing

children.

Then, we take a closer look at the acquisition of one particular attribute of the

pronominal paradigm, i.e. person (3.2.). The method of this study is described in

section 4 and followed by the analyses and results of the acquisition of pronouns by

NH and CI children in section 5. The results are then further discussed and compared

with the pre-lexical measures on babbling (section 6).


2. The Dutch pronominal paradigm.

In the Dutch pronominal paradigm, pronouns encode six morphological attributes:

person (1st, 2nd and 3rd person), number (singular and plural), gender (masculine,

feminine and neuter), animacy (animate and inanimate), case (nominative and

accusative) and, finally, deficiency. The latter characterizes the opposition between

strong and weak pronouns (see Table 1, section 4 in chapter 1). These six attributes

investigated in this chapter are illustrated in (1). All attributes consist of two or three

values. Gender and animacy are restricted to third person pronouns while all other

attributes are non-restrictive.

(1) Six morphological attributes and their values for Dutch personal pronouns

(a) Number: singular - plural

ik Ì` - wij `we`

(b) Person: first - second person - third person

ik Ì` - jij `you` - hij ‘he’

(c) Case: nominative - accusative

ik Ì` - mij `me`

(d) Gender: masculine - feminine - neuter

hij `he` - zij `she` - het 'it'

(e) Animacy: animate - inanimate/neuter

hij `he` - het ìt`

(f) Deficiency1: strong - weak

ik Ì` - (i)k Ì`

1 Deficient pronouns refer to both weak and clitic forms as proposed by Cardinalleti & Starke (1999). Under an alternative view, one could also propose pronouns to form part of a continuum of nominals and to carry a gradation attribute (Bhat, 2004).


3. The acquisition of pronouns 3.1. Three steps in the acquisition of pronouns

Step one: first emergence of a pronoun. A first developmental step with respect to

the acquisition of pronouns involves its first emergence in spontaneous speech. For

normal hearing children, the first emergence of pronouns is situated around two to

three years of age. A vast number of studies shows that this holds for any type of first

language acquired by the child, including Dutch, the language under investigation in our

population (Huxley, 1970; Brown, 1973; Chiat, 1978 for English; Feuer, 1980; Mithun,

1989 for Mohawk; Clark, 1985 for French; Berman, 1985 for Hebrew; Schieffelin, 1985

for Kalulu; Petitto, 1987 for American Sign Language (ASL); Bol & Kuiken, 1986/

1988; Schlichting, 1993 for Dutch).

Step two: building a full pronominal paradigm. A second step in the

acquisition of pronouns involves the acquisition of the full pronominal paradigm of

morphological attributes and values, as illustrated for Dutch in (1). Initially, the

pronominal paradigm of children contains fewer attributes than the target paradigm.

Over time, different pronoun types emerge in the spontaneous speech of children. For

example, at the start a child’s pronominal paradigm generally includes the singular, but

not the plural value (Chiat, 1978/1986; Brown, 1973).

Step three: reaching a target-like frequency of use of the complete set. As a third and final step in the acquisition of pronouns, children have to reach a target-

like frequency of use of the complete set of pronominal forms in a target-like manner.

Initially, children tend to prefer the use of other linguistic ways to the use of pronouns

in spontaneous speech. They rather opt for alternative linguistic to co-refer with an

antecedent such proper names (Frank), phrases headed by a determiner (the boy) and

demonstratives (that one) (Macnamara, 1982/1986; Chiat, 1982; Charney 1978/1980).

Two different developmental styles have been proposed for the acquisition of

pronouns: i.e. nominal and pronominal style. Although all children ultimately use

pronouns, some children produce pronouns from a very early age onwards, while


others opt for a nominal style by preferring the use of proper names. These children are

proposed to have a different developmental way with respect to pronoun productivity,

i.e. a pronominal versus nominal style respectively (Bates, 1990; Bates et al, 1989;

Bloom, Lightbown, Hood, 1975; Nelson, 1981; Peters, 1983; Chiat 1981/1982/1986;

Huttenlocher & Smiley, 1990).

3.2. A closer look at the acquisition of person

The acquisition of person entails an important phenomenon in the acquisition of the

pronominal paradigm. The person attribute involves a systematic way to distinguish

among the speaker (ik 'I'), the hearer (jij 'you') and a third party (hij 'he') in the

discourse context. As such, this is a central phenomenon in pronouns that has to be

acquired by children. During the building of the pronominal paradigm, children need to

differentiate first, second and third person pronouns and associate them with their

corresponding discourse participant (i.e. first person with the speaker, second person

with the addressee and third person with all other participants). In general, third person

pronouns emerge later compared to the other person values (see also section 5, chapter

1).

In this subsection, both models will be investigated by analysing pronouns in

Dutch child and adult speech. On the one hand, we will investigate whether the

acquisition of pronouns is influenced by the input produced by the adults. On the other

hand, we will investigate whether the predictions made by the attribute geometry of the

innateness model are met in the child speech analysed in this study.

Complexity. In line with previous research on the commonly found order of

emergence of grammatical morphemes (see section 4 of chapter 1), the late emergence

of third person pronouns is influenced by their high degree of complexity. Compared

to first and second person, third person pronouns involve a more complex system at

different linguistic levels:


(i) Semantically, third person pronouns are considered to be different from

first and second person based on a variety of cross-linguistic observations: third person

pronouns are often non-overt or null morphemes (i.e. in pro-drop languages), while

first/second person pronouns mostly require an overt realization; many languages have

no third person pronoun (or at least no nominative form); many languages have distinct

first and second person pronouns only; for 3rd person they use demonstratives; first

and second person are often similar in form and inflection but dissimilar from that of

3rd person; third person is much more subject to objective subdivisions such as class,

gender, and location (Forchheimer 1953:6). First and second person pronouns are

argued to constitute a natural semantic class since they denote participants of the

discourse conversation. First person coincides with the speaker, while second person

coincides with the addressee within the discourse context. Third person pronouns, on

the other hand, are claimed to be unmarked for person since they denote neither the

speaker nor addressee and person agreement on the verb is absent. It is argued that

third person includes gender features instead of person features (Benveniste, 1956;

Forchheimer, 1953; Noyer, 1992; Zwicky, 1977; Ritter, 1993; Wechsler, 2004).

(ii) In Dutch, first and second person pronouns are less complex since they

are unmarked for gender, while third person pronouns are2. As illustrated in (2a-b) first

and second person pronouns in both Dutch and English are unmarked for gender,

while two third person forms can be distinguished for gender (2c).

(2) a. ik 'I masc/fem'

b. jij 'you masc/fem'

c. hij 'he masc' - zij 'she fem '

2 The absence of gender marking on first en second person pronouns is not a universal feature. In most Indo-European languages, including Dutch, gender is indeed marked only on third person pronouns. In most Afro-Asiatic languages, however, both second and third person are gender-specific and, in Thai, gender is expressed for all person values (e.g. phom 'I' first singular masculine; chan 'I' first singular feminine; rao 'I' first singular neuter).


(iii) Syntactically, pronouns are regarded to be internally complex (Cardinaletti,

1994; Ritter, 1995; Noguchi, 1997; Cardinaletti & Starke, 1999; den Dikken et al., 2001;

Rooryck, 2003; Déchaine & Wiltschko, 2002; Harley & Ritter, 2002; van Koppen, 2005;

Vassilieva & Larson, 2005). First and second person pronouns have a different

syntactic status than third person pronouns (Ritter, 1995; Déchaine & Wiltschko, 2002;

Zwarts, 1994). According to Ritter (1995), first and second person pronouns are

determiner phrases (DPs). They contain only the head Determiner, which is specified

for person, number and gender attributes (see 3a). Third person pronouns, on the other

hand, have a more complex structure (see 3b). They consist of two functional shells, a

DP and a NumbP (number phrase, see Ritter, 1991). While D (in DP) is specified for

person, Num (in NumP) is specified for number and gender. As such, third person

pronouns have a syntactically more complex structure compared to first and second

person pronouns.

(3) Syntactic structure of pronouns (Ritter, 1991/1992/1995)

a. first and second person b. third person

(iv) At the discourse level, first and second person pronouns always have a

referent that is present in the real world (i.e. speaker and addressee respectively). By

contrast, third person pronouns correspond with a referent in the discourse context, i.e.

the preceding utterances. Thus, first and second person pronouns refer deictically,

while third person pronouns refer anaphorically. In language acquisition, deictic

reference always precedes anaphoric reference (Lyons, 1991/1975; Tanz, 1980; Racy,

1983). As such, first and second person pronouns are acquired early, alongside

demonstrative pronouns and are often accompanied by deictic pointing gestures (Clark,

1978; Diessel, 1999/2007; Enfield, 2003; Levinson, 2004).


4. Method Subjects. As for the first two steps in the acquisition of pronouns (emergence

of the first pronoun and building of the paradigm), longitudinal speech of nine CI

children was compared with a longitudinal corpus of spontanous speech of NH

children. The longitudinal spontaneous production data of fourteen Dutch-speaking

NH children were collected from Childes (MacWhinney & Snow, 1990): Schaerlaekens

corpus, Utrecht corpus of Elbers and Wijnen, van Kampen corpus, Groningen corpus

of Bol and Wijnen. Finally, the spontaneous production data of one NH child was

taken from the Jolien corpus (Gillis, 1997). These data cover spontaneous speech

samples of Dutch-speaking children within the age range 1;5 to 3;6. Individual child

characteristics are given in Appendix 1.

Due to the limited age range of spontaneous speech data available through

Childes, the NH child data were complemented by a cross-sectional corpus consisting

of spontaneous speech of a total of 60 NH children. The cross-sectional NH corpus

contains speech samples of ten subjects in six age groups from two until seven years of

age. The data of the two-, three-, four- and five-year-olds have been collected as part of

a bachelor thesis research project at the CNTS, University of Antwerp (during the

academic year 2006-2007). The data of the six- and seven-year-olds were collected as

part of the NWO research project Morphosyntactic development of deaf children with a cochlear

implant (2004-2009). Individual child characteristics are given in Appendix 2. Both CI

and NH children were recorded at most three months before or after their birthday.

The CI and cross-sectional NH corpus also contain child directed speech

from parents or investigators. For all age groups, the children's frequency of use of

pronouns has been compared with that of the matching adults' speech.

For all CI subjects in whom diagnosis was possible, the cause of deafness was

genetically based, showing a mutation of the connexine 26 gene. The initial unaided

hearing loss ranged from 93 to 120 dB with a median of 115 dB. At a chronological age

between 2 and 9 months, all subjects received conventional hearing aids, which did not

improve their hearing sufficiently. The aided hearing loss still ranged from 47 to 120 dB


with a median of 107 dB. Between 5 and 20 months of age (median of 10 months), the

subjects were implanted with a Nucleus CI, activated at a median age of 12 months

(range 6 - 21 months). After implantation, the median hearing loss decreased to 43 dB

with a range from 30 to 45 dB. The individual child characteristics are given in

Appendix 3.

Data collection, transcription and coding. For both populations, a

longitudinal corpus with monthly recordings of spontaneous production data was used

from around 1;6 until 3;6 followed by yearly recordings up to 7 years. These data

consisted of a total of 23900 NH child utterances and 45000 CI child utterances. The

CI participants were video-recorded for sixty minutes once a month, starting from one

month before implantation until thirty months after implantation.

For each recording a sample of twenty minutes was transcribed according to

the CHAT-conventions (MacWhinney, 1995). Within each transcript, the

morphological category, the lemma and the various morphological attribute values of

each word were encoded. This is illustrated in (4).

(4) *YAR: dan gaan we ook ijsjes ete(n) (2;08.19)

%mor: ADV|dan V|gaan&PRES-PL PRO:PERS|wij&1PL&NOM&WEAK

ADV|ook N|ijs-DIM-PL V|eten-INF . then go we also ice creams(little) eating ‘then we will also eat little ice creams’

As illustrated in (5), a personal pronoun is morphologically encoded as such (e.g. we

PRO:PERS) with the following attribute values: first person (1), plural number (PL),

nominative case (NOM), and weak (WEAK). Since sampling and transcript procedures

of the NH and CI corpora are different, the number of child utterances per monthly

file varied.

In order to avoid distortion in the analysis through sample size, a fixed

number of 100 child utterances was selected from each recording for each participant.

In line with previous research, the first five child utterances were discarded for each file

(Demuth, 1996). The following 100 consecutive child utterances were analyzed in order

to obtain the referential context of the pronouns. For the analyses of this study, all early


one-word-utterances of the first person singular accusative pronoun mij `me` are

excluded because of homophony with a partially uttered instance of the possessive

pronominal determiner mijn `my`.

Statistics. Conventional five-parameter-statistics are used for the descriptive

statistics (Woods, Fletcher & Hughes, 1986). Group results are displayed in box-and-

whisker-plots. Outliers are defined as cases with values that are more than one and a

half box length away from either end of the box, and are depicted by an asterisk.

Correlation results on age at implantation are displayed in scatter plots with a linear

regression. For the NH children, horizontal dotted lines represent the 95% confidence

interval and as such the normal age range for the acquisition of the relevant pronominal

feature. Individual outcomes of CI children may thus be evaluated as delayed or not

with respect to this normal age range.

Nearly all datasets were not normally distributed according to the

Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (see Appendix 4). Therefore, results will be presented by

median scores and statistically analyzed with non-parametric tests, i.e. Kruskall-Wallis

test (KW), Mann Whitney U test (MWU) and Spearman correlations (SpC).

5. Analyses & results

5.1. The first emergence of a pronoun The first step in the acquisition of pronouns is defined as the first occurrence of a

personal pronoun in the longitudinal spontaneous speech data, regardless of the

morphological attributes on the pronoun. Throughout this study, first emergence is

computed in terms of chronological age in months at the time of the recording. In CI

children, the first emergence of a personal pronoun occurs significantly later than in

their NH age peers (median emergence: NH children 29 months, CI children 36 months,

MWU = 24, p=.009; t=3.886, p=.005; see Figure 2).


Figure 2: The median age in months (and lower quartile, upper quartile and range) of

the emergence of the first pronoun in spontaneous, with NH = normal hearing

children and CI = cochlear-implanted children. Asterisks represent statistical outliers.

A positive correlation is found between first emergence and the children's age at

implantation (SpC=.700, p=.036, see Figure 3). Early implantation, thus, correlates with

the early emergence of the first pronoun in the child's spontaneous speech. As such,

early implanted children are more likely to have a first pronoun that emerges within

normal ranges. Figure 3 shows that CI children implanted early in life cluster together

in reaching the first step in the acquisition of pronouns within normal range.


Figure 3: Moment of emergence of the first pronoun (months) plotted as a function of

age at implantation (months) for the cochlear-implanted children (n=9). A solid line

indicates the linear regression. The 95% confidence interval of the NH group is

indicated by dotted lines.

5.2. Building a full pronominal paradigm

As a second step in the acquisition of pronouns, children build the pronominal

paradigm with the morphological attributes and values as illustrated for Dutch in (1).

This process is investigated by three measures: (i) the emergence of the morphological

attributes, (ii) the time children need to acquire the full paradigm, and (iii) the order of

emergence of the attributes and values.

The emergence of the morphological attributes. In a first analysis, we

focus on the emergence of each attribute separately. The emergence of a pronominal

attribute is defined as the first emergence of a paradigmatic opposition between at least

two attribute values. This is illustrated by the first emergence of the person attribute in

one CI child in (5). At 36 months, the child uses a first person pronoun (ik ‘I’), see (5a).

It takes about 12 months before a second person pronoun is found in the spontaneous


speech production of the child, i.e. at 48 months (jij ‘you’), see (5b). Finally, two

months later, at 50 months, the child produces a third person pronoun (het 'it'), see

(5c). The full paradigm of person emergence for this child at 50 months, when all

attribute values have been attested in spontaneous speech.

(5) a. first person value (ANN at 36 months) Ik ga eitje. 'I go egg-DIM'

b. second person value (ANN at 48 months) Wil jij ook meespelen? 'Will you play too?' c. third person value (ANN at 50 months) Nee (i)k (h)eb (h)et gezien. No I have it seen. 'No I have seen it.'

For CI children, five out of six attributes emerge significantly later in

comparison with their NH age peers (see Table 1 and Figure 4), i.e. person (MWU=31,

p=.029), number (MWU=25.5, p=.012), gender (MWU=29.000, p=.020), animacy

(MWU=24.5, p=.010) and deficiency (MWU=17, p=.003). The two groups do not

differ significantly on the emergence of case, although there is a statistical trend

indicating that case emerges later in CI children (MWU=39, p=.087).

Table 1: First emergence of different morphological

attributes in age (months)

Attribute NH children CI children

Median Range Median Range

Deficiency 27 23 - 48 48 27 - 72

Person 29 23 - 48 48 29 - 94

Number 34 23 - 48 48 29 - 94

Case 32 24 - 48 48 28 - 94

Animacy 38 27 - 48 60 29 - 94

Gender 40 28 - 48 95 30 - 94


Figure 4: The first emergence of the morphological attributes (deficiency, person,

number, case, animacy and gender) in median age in months (and lower quartile, upper

quartile, range) is presented for both groups: dark grey represents the NH (= normal

hearing) children and light grey represents the CI (= cochlear-implanted) children.

Asterisks represent statistical outliers.

The time needed to acquire the full paradigm. In a second analysis, the

emergence of the full paradigm is investigated by looking at the emergence of the first

attribute, the last attribute and the time lapse between them. If the emergence of an

attribute is not attested in the longitudinal recorded speech, we assume that it emerges

after the last recording, i.e. outside the measuring window of this study. The age at

emergence of this attribute has been computed by adding the median age (in months) it

takes for all attributes to emerge (5 months for NH children and 20 months for CI

children) to the age of the child at the moment of the final recording session (43

months for NH children and 74 months for CI children). As such, the age at

emergence for an attribute that is not attested in the corpus has been pinpointed at 48

months for NH children and 94 months for CI children (the upper limit of the age at

first emergence in both child populations).

With respect to the acquisition of the full pronominal paradigm, CI children

are delayed in the emergence of the first (median emergence: NH children 26 months, CI


children 48 months, MWU=18, p=.003), as well as the last attribute (median emergence: NH

children 48 months, CI children 94 months, MWU=29, p=.019). With respect to the time

lapse between the emergence of both, a statistical trend indicates that CI children take

more time to develop the paradigm (median time lapse: NH children 11 months, CI children

29 months, MWU=38, p=.079). These results are summarized in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Three measures on the emergence of the full pronominal paradigm are

presented in median months of age (and lower quartile, upper quartile, range). Asterisks

represent statistical outliers. The absolute age in months of the first attribute (t1) and

final attribute (t2) as well as the time lapse between them (t2 - t1) is presented for both

groups: dark grey represents the normal hearing children and light grey the cochlear-

implanted children.

The order of emergence of the different attributes and values. A general

order of emergence was construed for each attribute and for each group (CI and NH)

on the basis of two measures, i.e. median age of emergence and the sum of ranking

outcomes. As for the ranking outcomes, we used the following protocol: (i) per child in

order of emergence, the attributes were given the rank of one to six; (ii) whenever an

attribute was not present in the child's data set, the rank of seven was assigned; (iii) two


attributes that emerged at the same time were given the same rank; (iv) the sum of

ranks of each attribute determines its emergence relative to that of the other attributes.

In addition, we also analyzed the values of each attribute in order to determine

their relative order, e.g. to verify whether singular emerges before plural, or whether

nominative case emerges before accusative case. Finally, the time lapse in emergence

between the first and the last attribute was calculated.

The general order of emergence of morphological attributes as presented in

(6) is identical for both groups on the basis of median age at emergence (see Figure 4)

and their median ranking outcome (see Table 2). For the NH group, only 10% of a

total of 90 attributes differ from the general order of emergence. For the CI group, a

different order is found in 4% of a total of 54 attributes.

Deficiency, i.e. the attribute measured in terms of an opposition between a

strong and a weak pronominal form, is the first one to emerge. It is followed by person,

number and case, all emerging around the same time and rank for both groups.

Animacy and gender are the last attributes to emerge:

(6) Order of emergence of morphological attributes of pronouns

Deficiency { Person Number Case } Animacy Gender

Table 2: Order of emergence of morphological attributes in ranking

and median age in months.

Attribute NH children CI children

Median age Ranking Median age Ranking

Deficiency 27 24 48 11

Person 29 55 48 21

Number 34 55 48 25

Case 32 60 48 19

Animacy 38 80 60 44

Gender 40 89 95 56

The groups do not differ significantly with respect to the order of emergence

of the different attribute values (see Table 3). Again, the emergence of attribute values


is highly consistent for both groups. For NH children, only 6% of a total of 180 values

differ from the general order of emergence. For CI children this proportion is about

13%

Table 3: Median time lapse and range between the emergence of the

different values of an attribute in months.

Attribute Values NH children CI children


t2-t1 deficiency def-str 0.00 0 - 16 0.00 0 - 12

t2-t1 person 2nd-1st 0.90 0 - 25 2.03 0 - 22

t2-t1 number pl-sg 4.87 0 - 17 1.13 0 - 36

t2-t1 case acc-nom 1.03 0 - 25 2.52 0 - 22

t2-t1 animacy an-inan 0.00 -25 - 13 1.13 -14 - 24

t2-t1 gender fem-masc 0.00 -9 - 21 6.97 -1 - 34

5.3. Reaching a target-like frequency of use of the complete set Age effect in pronoun tokens. Based on spontaneous child speech analysed in this

study, token frequency of pronouns increases with increasing chronological age in

months in both NH children (SpC=.694, p≤.000) and CI children (SpC=.424, p=.002).

No such age effect is found in frequency of use of pronouns in child-directed speech

(CDS) of parents and investigators. The correlation between the age of the child and

the number of pronouns the adult uses in the relevant speech sample shows that adults

are not likely to produce more pronouns when addressing older versus younger

children (SpC=.181, p=.213). The correlation between the age of the child and the

number of pronouns uttered is depicted in Figure 6.


Figure 6: Frequency of use of pronouns over time in a 100-utterance-sample. The

absolute number of pronoun tokens is presented in dark grey for the normal-hearing

children (NH), in light grey for cochlear-implanted children (CI) and in black for the

parents and investigators present during the recordings of the NH children (adults).

The lines represent the linear regressions of the three groups.

These findings are in contrast with those from previous research. In a number

of studies it has been shown that CDS is simplified and more redundant than adult

directed speech. Adults use more complex language when speaking to older children

than to younger children (Baldwin & Baldwin 1973; Broen, 1972; Snow, 1972/1977;

Philips, 1973; Cross, 1978; Bendict, 1975; Newport, 1976). In terms of pronouns, this

implies that parents of younger children would use a smaller number of pronouns than

those speaking to older children.

A target frequency of use by four years of age. The speech samples have

been divided into six classes based on the chronological age of the child at the moment

of recording, yielding samples of two-, three-, four-, five-, and six-year-olds. As such, it

is possible to compare the outcomes of the three groups under investigation for each

age category, for instance to verify whether a two-year-old cochlear-implanted child


uses a similar number of pronouns as the adult talking to a child of the same age.

Significant between-group differences are found at two and three years of age

(Kruskal-Wallis test with the three subject groups as grouping variable, two years 2=24.216, p≤.000; three years 2=9.820, p=.007). At two years of age, both child groups

do not yet produce pronouns in spontaneous speech, resulting in a highly significant

difference with CDS (NH children MWU=0, p≤.000; CI children MWU=0, p≤.000). At

three years of age, both child groups still produce significantly less pronouns as

compared to CDS (NH children MWU=7, p=.002; CI children MWU=15, p=.024).

However, by four years of age, this difference in frequency use of pronouns between

the child groups and CDS is no longer (NH children MWU=15, p=.051; CI children

MWU=29.5, p=.832).

Apart from six years of age, no more significant group differences are found

(four years 2=5.388, p=.068; five years 2=4.391, p=.111; six years 2=10.206, p=.006;

seven years 2=2.988, p=.224). The group results on frequency of use are summarized in

Table 4.

Table 4: Median frequency of use of pronouns and range in

spontaneous speech in function of age group (age).

Age Adults NH children CI children

Median range median range median range

Two 23 5 - 54 0 - 0 -

Three 24 16 - 74 12 0 - 24 4 0 - 82

Four 29 7 - 68 14 0 - 46 44 2 - 68

Five 53 12 - 108 24 4 - 97 15 0 - 82

Six 93 10 - 164 22 3 - 43 15.5 9 - 36

Seven 29.5 5 - 73 32.5 12 - 69 16.5 0 - 62

Remarkably, at four years of age NH children still show a statistical trend

(p=.051) of using fewer pronouns than adults, while CI children do not. These results

are summarized in Figure 7.


Figure 7: Group results on frequency of use of pronouns from two until four years of

age. The median number of pronoun tokens and range are presented for the adults

(white), normal hearing children (dark grey) and cochlear-implanted children (light

grey). Asterisks represent statistical outliers.

Both child groups produce a target number of pronoun tokens at five and

seven years of age (five years: NH children MWU=17.5; p=.087; CI children MWU=14,

p=.064; seven years: NH children MWU=40; p=.450; CI children MWU=27.5, p=.266). By

contrast, at six years of age, both child groups produce a significantly smaller amount of

pronouns compared to the adult target (NH children MWU=11; p=.005; CI children

MWU=8, p=.007). These results are summarized in Figure 8.


Figure 8: Group results on frequency of use of pronouns from five until seven years of

age. The median number of pronoun tokens and lower quartile, upper quartile and

extremes are presented for the adults (white), normal hearing children (dark grey) and

cochlear-implanted children (light grey). Asterisks represent statistical outliers.

Researchers instead of parents uttered the CDS investigated at six years of age. We

propose that the increased number of pronoun tokens (median 93, range 10-164, see

also Table 8) in CDS at that age group is related to the intensity with which researchers

encourage children to speak by asking questions of the type illustrated in (7).

(7) Investigator: En ga jij graag naar school? And go you gladly to school? 'And do you like going to school?'

Child: Ja. 'Yes'. Investigator: Wat doe je allemaal op school? What do you all at school? 'What do you do at school?'


Child: Euh in de kamer spele(n) Euh in the room play 'Euh playing in the room' (…) Investigator: En wie gaat er samen met jou naar school? And who goes there together with you to school?

'And who goes with you to school?' Child: Hmm Kato. 'Hmm Kato'. (NH NON 6;2.26)

Apart from four years of age (MWU=21, p.050), the child subjects of the

clinical and control group perform identically with respect to frequency of use of

pronouns measured in pronoun tokens. No group differences are found between the

child groups from two until three and five until seven years of age (two years MWU=45,

p=1.000; three years MWU=41, p=.742; five years MWU=37, p.513; six years MWU=38,

p=.859; seven years MWU=21.5, p=.100). While CI children have reached a target

frequency of use of pronouns at four years of age, NH children still show a statistical

trend (p=.051) of using fewer pronouns than adults.

A closer look at six and seven years of age. Frequency of use of pronouns

is investigated more thoroughly at six and seven years of age, in terms of tokens and

types. As such, the child groups are compared on the basis of a considerable amount of

pronouns and an acquired pronominal paradigm. By six years of age, all child subjects

have acquired at least five out of six attributes (see section 5.2) and have reached a

frequency of use of pronouns analogous to that of adults. Frequency of use of

pronouns is measured by taking the total number of pronoun tokens and pronoun

types used in a speech sample of 100 child utterances. Because of missing data at ages

6;0 and 7;0 for one CI child, frequency of use of pronouns is investigated for eight CI

children. A comparison is made with a cross-sectional corpus of ten six-year-old and

ten seven-year old NH children. All children were recorded at most three months

before or after their birthday. All children were recorded at most three months before

or after their birthday


With respect to pronoun tokens, an increase can be observed from six to

seven years of age for both groups (median increase: NH children 36 to 44 tokens; CI

children 18 to 26 tokens). At both ages, CI children do not differ significantly from their

NH age peers. However, a trend indicates that CI children use fewer tokens at six years

of age (MWU=19.500, p.068).

With respect to pronoun types, both groups also show a development over

time (median increase: NH children 8 to 11 types; CI children 6 to 10 types). By contrast, CI

children use significantly less pronoun types than their hearing peers at six years of age

(MWU=14.5, p=.019) but no longer at seven years of age. The results are given in

Table 5 and Figure 9 and 10.

Table 5: Median number and range of number of pronoun tokens

and types at six and seven years of age.

Age group Measure NH children CI children


Six years Tokens 35.5 6 - 69 17.5 10 - 32

Types 8 3 - 10 5.5 3 - 8

Seven years Tokens 43.5 25 - 78 26 0 - 81

Types 11 7 - 13 9.5 0 - 15


Figure 9: Group results on frequency of use of pronouns at six and seven years of age.

The median number of pronoun tokens (and lower quartile and upper quartile) are

presented for normal hearing children (dark grey) and cochlear-implanted children

(light grey). Asterisks represent statistical outliers.

Figure 10: Group results on frequency of use of pronouns at six and seven years of

age. The median number of pronoun type (and lower quartile and upper quartile) are

presented for normal hearing children (dark grey) and cochlear-implanted children

(light grey). Asterisks represent statistical outliers.


Both at six and seven years of age, no effect of age at implantation on pronoun types is

found (six years SpC=.339, p=.411; seven years SpC=-.659, p=.076). The longitudinal

increase in pronoun types from six to seven years of age is computed for the CI

children. Here a positive effect of early implantation on the acquisition of pronouns is

found (SpC=-.731, p=.040). This suggests that early implanted CI children have a

greater increase in pronoun types between six and seven years of age (see Figure 11).

Figure 11: Correlation between increase in types (Δ type) from 6;0 to 7;0 and age at

implantation. The absolute 0 from six to seven years of age is presented for the

cochlear-implanted group individually by means of dots. The solid line indicates the

linear regression function.

5.4. A closer look at the acquisition of person

The acquisition of person is investigated in longitudinal speech with one-year-intervals

from two until seven years of age. Nine CI children are compared to ten NH children

from the cross-sectional corpus. Additionally, the adult speech obtained in the NH

corpus is analyzed. The emergence of the person attribute values (i.e. first, second and

third person) is measured, firstly, in terms of number of pronoun tokens and, secondly,


as the proportion of each value of the total number of pronouns. The first token

analysis allows for investigating the frequency of the different person values in child

and adult production, i.e. whether they use the same number of person values. The

second, proportional, analysis allows investigating the distribution of the different

person values in child and adult production, i.e. whether they use a particular more or

less often than the other values.

A detailed analysis of the acquisition of person indicates a high similarity

between NH and CI children. At two years of age, neither group produces pronouns.

With respect to all three person values, CI children produce a similar incidence and

similar proportion as NH children, at all ages tested from two until seven years of age.

The results on the number of different person values are presented in Figure 12 (a-c)

and those on the proportion of different person values in Figure 12 (d-f). The absolute

number and proportion of the three person values in spontaneous speech of CI

children are plotted by individual dots on the distribution based on NH children. The

upper and lower boundaries of the 95% confidence interval of the NH group are

indicated by dotted lines. The middle dotted line indicates the median number

produced by NH children.

Figu

re 12

a: A

bsol

ute

num

ber o

f firs

t per

son.

Fi

gure

12b

: Abs

olut

e nu

mbe

r of

sec

ond

pers

on.

Figu

re 1

2c:

Abs

olut

e nu

mbe

r of

thi

rd p

erso

n.

Figu

re 12

d: P

ropo

rtion

of f

irst p

erso

n.

Figu

re

12e:

Prop

ortio

n of

se

cond

pe

rson

. Fi

gure

12

f: Pr

opor

tion

of

third

pe

rson

.


When compared to CDS, both child groups produce a similar amount of first

person pronouns at three years of age, i.e. the age at which they produce pronouns for

the first time. However, from four years of age, both child groups produce significantly

higher proportions of first person pronouns than adults (NH children at 4;0 MWU=15,

p=.05; at 5;0 MWU=4.5, p=.003; at 6;0 MWU=8.5, p=.003; at 7;0 MWU=21, p=.028;

CI children at 4;0 MWU=0, p=.001; at 5;0 MWU=7, p=.010, at 6;0 MWU=15, p=.043).

As for second person pronouns, both NH and CI children produce a

significantly less amount and a significantly lower proportion than adults at all ages

(pronoun tokens: NH children at 3;0 MWU=0, p≤.000; at 4;0 MWU=1.5, p=.001; at 5;0

MWU=2, p=.001; at 6;0 MWU=0, p≤.000; at 7;0 MWU=11, p=.003; CI children at 3;0

MWU=9, p=.004; at 4;0 MWU=7, p=.009; at 5;0 MWU=6.5, p=.005; at 6;0 MWU=1,

p=.001; at 7;0 MWU=15.5, p=.023; proportions: NH children at 3;0 MWU=0, p≤.000; at

4;0 MWU=7, p=.006; at 5;0 MWU=0, p≤.000; at 6;0 MWU=0, p≤.000; at 7;0

MWU=3, p≤.000; CI children at 3;0 MWU=6, p=.001; at 4;0 MWU=3, p=.002; at 5;0

MWU=3.5, p=.002; at 6;0 MWU=8, p=.006; at 7;0 MWU=5, p=.002).

Initially, both NH and CI children produce a significantly smaller number of

third person pronouns than adults (NH children at 3;0 MWU=15, p=.013; at 4;0

MWU=12.5, p=.024; at 5;0 MWU=14, p=.039; at 6;0 MWU=18, p=.027; CI children at

3;0 MWU=5.5, p=.001; at 5;0 MWU=2.5, p=.002; at 6;0 MWU=17, p=.066). At seven

years of age, both NH and CI children attain a similar amount of third person

pronouns as compared to adults. However, the results indicate that the low proportion

of third person pronouns in the speech of NH children is analogous with that of adults

from three years of age onwards. This indicates that although children produce a low

number of third person pronouns, this is commensurate with the low proportion of

third person pronouns found in adult speech.

6. Discussion The outcomes indicate that cochlear-implanted children implanted before 20 months

acquire pronouns in a delayed but non-deviant way in spontaneous production and are

able to partially reverse their initial delay by seven years of age. Figure 13 graphically


summarizes these results.

Figure 13: Graphical representation on the results of this chapter, concerning three

developmental steps in the acquisition of pronouns over time in NH children (top) and

CI children (bottom), represented in median age.

Initial delay. Our results are in line with previous research on two English-

speaking hearing-impaired children, reporting a delayed acquisition of first and second

person pronouns as compared to hearing controls matched for chronological age (Cole,

Oshima-Takane & Yaremko, 1994). The two children in this study were wearing

conventional hearing aids. Our data coming from a population of cochlear-implanted

children confirm the observed delay. Based on Dutch-speaking CI children implanted before twenty months, it is

possible to investigate the role of timely acces to spoken language on the acquisition of

personal pronouns. Due to their congenital deafness, the children under investigation

commence their acquisition of pronouns with an initial delay in the emergence of the

first pronoun in spontaneous production. While NH children reach this first step in the


acquisition of pronouns at 29 months, CI children do not produce their first pronoun

until seven months later, at 36 months of age. This first step in the acquisition of

pronouns is positively influenced by the children's age at implantation. The earlier the

implantation took place, the earlier the first pronoun is produced. These results are in

line with studies that have shown that early cochlear implantation has a positive effect

on the overall oral language development of deaf children (Miyamoto, Svirsky &

Robbins, 1997; Tomblin, Barker & Hubbs, 2007; Nicholas & Geers, 2007; Schauwers,

2007; Govaerts, et al., 2008). In general, 24 months has been cited in the literature as

the upper limit for cochlear implantation in view of a 'normal' language outcome.

(Hammes, et al., 2003; Waltzman & Cohen, 1998; Geers, Nicholas & Sedey, 2003;

Svirsky, Teoh et al., 2004; Holt, Svirsky, Neuburger & Miyamoto, 2004; Svirsky, 2005).

Current ongoing research is concerned with the question whether implantation below

12 months, yields still better oral language outcomes (Waltzman & Roland, 2005;

Colletti, et al., 2005; Tait, et al., 2007; Dettman, et al., 2007; Govaerts, et al., 2008Geers

et al., 2009).

The delayed acquisition pattern in CI children perseveres in the second step of

the acquisition of pronouns, i.e. building the pronominal paradigm with its

morphological attributes (deficiency, person, number, case, animacy and gender). CI

children acquire these morphological attributes significantly later as compared to their

NH age peers. While NH children build their pronominal paradigm between the ages

of 27 and 48 months, CI children have a delayed acquisition that starts at 48 months

and is completed at 94 months. However, for both groups, the emergence of the last

attribute occurs later than the range of the longitudinal data ( investigated in this study.

This suggests that longitudinal data collected after four years of age for NH children

and after seven years of age for CI children is required in order to investigating the

emergence of the full pronominal paradigm. For this second step in the acquisiiton of

pronouns, no significant correlation was found with the children's age at implantation.

Positive effect of early implantation: a developmental trend. As

mentioned before (section 1), previous research on the clinical group under

investigation examined babbling as a pre-linguistic stage in language development.

Babbling utterances are defined as consonant-vowel sequences or multiple articulatory


movements present in one breath unit with a continuous or interrupted phonation

(Koopmans-van Beinum & van der Stelt, 1986), and are considered to be the first

mature building blocks of spoken speech, i.e. phonetic syllables (Oller & Eilers, 1988).

All nine CI children started babbling as soon as one to four months after activation of

the implant with children implanted earlier in life, starting to babble earlier (Schauwers,

2007: 370-371). The present study shows that the positive effect of age at implantation

found in early babbling outcomes persist into a later stage of language development, i.e.

the initial step in the acquisition of pronouns. Thus, early implantation benefits both

pre-lexical and later language acquisition. In the aforementioned study, the development of babbling was measured in

three ways, i.e. onset of babbling, babbling spurt and a canonical babbling ratio of 0.2.

These three measures are milestones in the development of babbling: (i) Onset of

babbling is defined as the emergence of at least two babbles in one recording for three

consecutive months (Schauwers, 2007: 222). In hearing children, the onset of babbling

is situated between 6 and 10 months (Koopmans-van Beinum & van der Stelt, 1986;

Oller & Eilers, 1988, a.o.); (ii) Canonical Babbling Ratio (CBR) is defined as the

proportion of babbles on the total number of utterances. In the literature, the onset of

babbling has been defined as the moment at which CBR exceeds 0.2, i.e. when at least

10 of a set of 50 random utterances contain a babbling utterance (Oller & Eilers, 1988);

(iii) The babbling spurt is defined as the moment at which the increase of babbling

utterances between two monthly recordings is most salient. All children start off by

babbling sporadically but, after a while, babbling becomes significantly more frequent

(Koopmans-van Beinum & van der Stelt, 1986).

Here, we will investigate wether the babbling outcomes may be a predictive

factor in the acquisition of pronouns. As for the emergenge of the first pronoun in the

children's grammar, a significant positive correlation has been found with all three

babbling measures: children who have an early babbling onset and babbling spurt, also

produce their first pronoun earlier (see Figure 14) (onset of babbling SpC=.733, p=.025;

babbling spurt SpC= .850, p=.004; CBR20 SpC=.850 , p=.004).


Figure 14: The correlation between the age at emergence of first pronoun and three

babbling measures are presented by dots for each CI child individually: babbling onset

(black), babbling spurt (dark grey), and CBR (light grey). The lines represent the linear

regressions of the three.

Both development of babbling and pronouns are strongly influenced by the age at

which deaf children are implanted. The earlier the implantation takes place, the sooner

deaf-born children start to babble and produce pronouns. The results strongly suggest

that early implantation facilitates both babbling development and the emergence of

pronouns in spoken production.

A correlation between babbling and pronoun acquisition can also be found in

the emergence of the morphological attributes of the pronominal paradigm. With

respect to CBR, we found a positive correlation with person (SpC=.750, p=.020) and

deficiency (SpC=.750, p=.020). When CI children reach a ratio of 0.2 on babbling early,

person and deficiency will also emerge early (see Figure 15). The onset of the babbling

spurt seems to be most analogous with the emergence of pronominal attributes (see

Figure 16), i.e. four out of six attributes: person (SpC=.750, p=.020), number

(SpC=.750, p=.020), case (SpC=.850, p=.004) and deficiency (SpC=.750, p=.020). No

significant correlation is found for the last attributes to emerge, i.e. animacy and gender.


Figure 15: The correlation between the age at emergence of two morphological

attributes (i.e. person and deficiency) and CBR20 are presented by dots for each CI

child individually: person (black) and deficiency (grey). The lines represent the linear

regressions of the three correlations.

Figure 16: The correlations between age at emergence of four attributes (i.e. person,

number, case and deficiency) and babbling spurt are presented by dots for each CI child

individually: person (black), number (dark grey), case (medial grey), and deficiency (light

grey). The lines represent the linear regressions of the three correlations.


Although age at implantation strongly influences the onset of babbling and

the emergence of the first pronoun, it is no longer a predictable factor in the emergence

of pronominal attributes. This suggest that, for children implanted before 20 months,

age at implantation is still a highly predictable factor in early language acquisition (e.g.

first pronoun around 36 months) but less so for later language acquisition (e.g.

attributes around 48 to 94 months).

A delayed but non-deviant acquisition. The order of acquisition of the

different morphological attributes is identical for NH and CI children: deficiency < {

person - number - case } < animacy < gender. As such, there is no evidence for a

deviant pattern in the acquisition of pronouns by CI children implanted before 20

months when compared to their NH age peers. The identical order of emergence of the

attribute values in CI and NH children also corroborated this finding. Furthermore, a

detailed investigation of the acquisition of person from two until seven years of age

indicates that CI and NH children go through a highly similar pattern in the acquisition

of pronouns.

From the moment they start producing pronouns (i.e. three years), NH and CI

children produce similar amounts of first, second and third person pronouns (see

Figure 17). First person pronouns are most frequent in both NH and CI children

speech. While third person pronouns are initially absent and increase in frequency by

six years of age, second person pronouns are highly infrequent in child speech

throughout the data.


Figure 17: Development of person values over time in number of tokens. The graph is

based on median number of tokens of first (light grey), second (dark grey) and third

(black) person pronouns obtained in six age groups, ranging from two until seven years

of age. A full line represents the median number of tokens produced by normal hearing

children and a dotted line that of cochlear-implanted children.

In line with the results on pronoun tokens, NH and CI children produce

similar proportions of first, second and third person pronouns (see Figure 18). In adult

speech, second person is proportionally most produced, while children produce mostly

first person pronouns. This difference is most likely influenced by the child-oriented

discourse context at the time of the recording. Since the reason for talking (and

recording) is to investigate child speech, parents and investigators prompt the child to

speak as much as possible. Therefore, they often ask questions in the second person of

the type What did you do? to prompt the child to talk about some personal experiences,

habits, ideas, ... Consequently, the children respond by using the first person, like in I

went to school.


Figure 18: Development of person values over time in proportions. The graphs are

based on median number of tokens and proportions of first (light grey), second (dark

grey) and third (black) person pronouns obtained in six age groups, ranging from two

until seven years of age. A full line represents the median number of tokens produced

by normal hearing children and a dotted line that of cochlear-implanted children.

Usage-based versus innateness model. As previously mentioned (see

chapter 2, section 5), two models have been proposed for the acquisition of pronouns.

The usage-based model claims that children acquire the pronominal system based on

the frequency of pronouns produced in adult speech directed towards them. The high

frequency of first person pronouns in child directed speech (CDS) is in line with the

early frequency of use of the first person in child production. Similarly, the low

frequency of third person pronouns in CDS is in line with the low frequency of use of

third person pronouns. However, the low frequency of use of second person in child

speech is not predictable from the high proportion of second person pronouns in CDS.

The attribute geometry, proposed by the innateness model, makes similar

predictions with respect to the order of emergence of pronouns. It predicts that first

person is always the first value to emerge, independently of the language acquired by


the child. This prediction is met for both child groups investigated in this study.

Additionally, third person pronouns are rightly predicted to be acquired much later due

to their higher complexity than first and second person pronouns at the level of

discourse, morphology, syntax and semantics (see section 3.2.). Contrary to the usage-

based model, no predictions are made as for the emergence of second person

pronouns.

Catching-up or not? A question often addressed in research on hearing-

impaired children is whether these children are able to catch-up with their hearing peers

at a particular moment in language development. Since the CI participants of this study

have been followed longitudinally over seven years, it is possible not only to investigate

the early stages of pronoun acquisition (i.e. the first emergence of a pronoun and the

building of the paradigm) but also to look at the frequency of use of pronouns at a later

age, i.e. six and seven years of age. For very early implanted children, other studies have

shown that some of these children are able to partially catch-up with their hearing peers

thanks to a faster-than-normal language learning rate (Hammes et al., 2003; Waltzman

& Cohen, 1998; Geers et al., 2003; Svirsky, Teoh & Neuberger, 2004; Holt et al. 2004;

Svirsky, 2005).

Here, the analysis of the frequency of use of pronouns from two until seven

years of age indicates that both NH and CI children use more pronouns as they grow

older. Importantly, from two until seven years of age, CI children use a similar amount

of personal pronouns as NH children. These results contradict previous research on

spontaneous speech of French-speaking CI children, indicating that they produce

significantly less pronoun tokens than their hearing peers (Le Normand, Ouellet &

Cohen, 2003). However, the results of the present study also show that CI children lag

behind on their NH age peers: Initially, CI children use significantly less pronoun types

than their NH age peers. By six years of age, NH children use around eight different

pronoun types in a sample of 100 utterances, while CI children use only five types. The

use of a less varied set of pronouns suggest that, by six years of age, CI children have

not yet been able to catch-up with their initial delay in the acquisition of pronouns.

Importantly, by seven years of age, CI children perform within normal range on the

frequency of use of pronouns, i.e. have reached a target-like frequency of use of the full


set of pronouns. As for this part of the study, the data of the NH children are the result

of a cross-sectional setting rather than a longitudinal one, we were not able to calcultate

their exact learning rate between six and seven years. The CI data suggest, however,

that between six and seven years some of the early implanted children have a faster-

than-normal language acquisition rate.

Again age at implantation is found to positively influence the increase of

pronoun types between six and seven years of age and the total number of pronoun

types at seven years of age. CI children implanted early in life have a greater increase in

pronoun types between six and seven years of age and, consequently, produce more

types at seven years of age. Age at implantation thus seems to be a highly predictable

factor from early language acquisition (e.g. first pronoun around 36 months) until later

language acquisition (e.g. increasing the number of pronoun types between six and

seven years of age).

Analogous to the first step in the acquisition of pronouns, the positive effect

of age at implantation found in early babbling outcomes persist into the last step in the

acquisition of pronouns, i.e. reaching a target-like frequency of use of pronouns. At

seven years of age, the number of pronoun types is positively correlated with the onset

of the babbling spurt (SpC=.729, p=.026). CI children who reach the babbling spurt

earlier produce more pronoun types than children in whom the babbling spurt occurs

later (see Figure 19).


Figure 19: The correlation between the number of pronoun types produced at 7;0 and

babbling spurt is presented by dots for each CI child individually. The line represents

the linear regression.

7. Conclusion

This chapter set out to investigate the acquisition of the Dutch pronominal paradigm in

spontaneous longitudinal speech of nine cochlear-implanted children implanted before

20 months. For the clinical group under investigation, the acquisition of pronouns is

delayed in the first emergence of a pronoun, as well as the emergence of the different

morphological attributes. Importantly, cochlear-implanted and normal-hearing children

acquire the different morphological attributes and values of the pronominal paradigm

in an identical order. As such, the development of the pronominal paradigm by

cochlear-implanted children can be described as being delayed but non-deviant

compared to normal-hearing children. Cochlear-implanted children are able to reach a

target-like frequency of use of pronouns analogous to their normal-hearing peers by the

age of seven.

Age at implantation is found to positively influence both the emergence of the

first pronoun at 36 months of age and the ability to reach a target-like frequency of use


of pronouns analogous to NH children at seven years of age. The earlier the

implantation takes place, the earlier pronouns are acquired. For the clinical group under

investigation in this study, this developmental trend has also been found with respect to

pre-lexical babbling in earlier research. Thus, the benefit of early implantation does not

only influences early language development but also the later acquisition of pronouns.

Cochlear implantation after twenty months of age may be considered to compromise

the acquisition of the pronoun system as it does not provide the pre-lingual oral deaf

child with the necessary sensory input within the appropriate time-window.


Appendices Appendix 1 Individual child characteristics of the NH subjects from Childes and the Jolien corpus

ID first

recording last recording

number of

recordings corpus

ABE 1;10.30 2;10.28 12 Groningen

ARN 1;10.18 3;10.7 13 Schaerlaekens

DAA 1;8.21 3;3;30 20 Groningen

DIE 1;10.18 3;1.7 13 Schaerlaekens

GIJ 1;8.29 2;10.23 12 Schaerlaekens

HEI 2;4.11 3;1.24 11 Groningen

IRI 2;1.1 3;6.15 13 Groningen

JOO 1;8.29 2;10.23 12 Schaerlaekens

KAT 1;8.29 2;10.23 12 Schaerlaekens

LAU 1;9.4 3;0.18 21 van Kampen

MAR 1;10.18 3;1.7 13 Schaerlaekens

MAT 1;10.13 3;3.5 18 Groningen

PET 1;5.9 2;8.22 16 Groningen

SAR 1;6.16 3;5.30 24 van Kampen

JOL 1;5.9 2;5.0 13 Gillis, 1997


Appendix 2 Individual child characteristics of the NH subjects of the cross-sectional corpus.

6-year-olds 7-year-olds

ID Age ID Age

CHA 6;1.13 ELL 6;9.24

ELI 5;10.6 FIE 7.1.16

ELL 6;3.26 GIT 7;0.16

LUC 5;10.28 IAN 6;9.15

MAG 5;11.27 JAN 6;9.29

NIN 6;3.26 JAS 6;10.5

NON 6;2.26 LUC 7;1.14

SEP 6;0.7 MAT 6;10.27

TIN 6;2.4 MAH 7;1.17

WAN 5;10.24 NOT 6;9.26


Appendix 3 Individual child characteristics of the CI subjects

ID

PTA

unaided

(dBHL)

age HA

PTA

with

HA

PTA

with

CI

type of CI

age at

implan-

tation

age at

active-

tion

AMB 120 0 ;9.3 120 45 Nucleus 24 1;1.15 1;2.27

ANN 120 0 ;1.4 120 30 Nucleus 24 0;6.21 0;7.20

EMM 115 0;1.18 113 30 Nucleus 24 0;10.0 0;11.20

JOR 113 0;10.0 117 45 Nucleus 24 1;6.5 1;7.9

KLA 93 0;4.24 47 35 Nucleus 24 1;4.27 1;5.27

MIG 120 0;1.21 107 45 Nucleus 24 0;8.23 0;9.20

ROX 117 0;4.0 107 --- Nucleus 24 0;5.5 0;6.4

TES 112 0;2.0 58 43 Nucleus 24 1;7.14 1;9.4

YAR 103 0;5.8 63 --- Nucleus 24 0;8.21 0;9.21


Appendix 4 Test results of Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality.

NH children CI children

Data Age Subset Z p Z p

First emergence First pronoun .791 .560 .204 .093

Person .199 .112 .336 .004

Number .183 .187 .274 .050

Case .273 .004 .313 .011

Gender .299 .001 .346 .003

Deficiency .209 .078 .204 .200

Animacy .265 .006 .161 .200

First attribute .220 .049 .237 .155

Last attribute .339 .000 .346 .003

Time lapse .191 .148 .256 .090

Frequency of use 6;0 Tokens .130 .200 .203 .200

Types .320 .004 .166 .200

TTR .174 .200 .130 .200

7;0 Tokens .208 .200 .241 .192

Types .255 .064 .213 .200

TTR .233 .133 .152 .200

Note: First person, second person and third person are indicated, respectively, as "1P,

"2P", 3P". One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test cannot be performed when there is

no variance in the distribution (indicated by an asterisk).


Chapter 3: The acquisition of binding relations

1. Introduction

In this chapter, we investigate the comprehension of binding relations of accusative

pronouns and reflexives in two clinical populations of hearing-impaired children, i.e.

children with cochlear implants (CI) and children with conventional hearing aids (HA).

Binding relations are defined as the syntactic relation between a pronoun or reflexive

and the entity they refer to, i.e. their antecedent (Chomsky, 1981). Correctly identifying

the antecedent of a pronoun or reflexive is an important prerequisite for the ability to

take part in a conversation (Charney, 1978). To date, little or none is known about the

comprehension of such binding relations in hearing-impaired children. The central

question raised here is whether hearing-impaired children acquire both types of binding

relations on a par with their hearing peers. Our interest is to verify whether acoustic

prominence or metric structure of pronouns is an influencing factor in this respect.

Overview. In the remainder of this chapter, binding relations are firstly

defined (section 2), followed by a state-of-the-art on the acquisition of binding relations

by normal-hearing (NH) children (section 3). A distinction is made between two types

of pronouns (3.1.), which involve contradictory predictions with respect to the

acquisition of binding (3.2). The method and analysis are presented in respectively

sections 4 and 5, followed by the discussion in section 6.

Chapter 2: Binding relations 72

2. Binding relations

The aim of this study is to investigate the comprehension of the Dutch third person

singular masculine and feminine reflexive and accusative pronouns. Reflexives are

defined as a particular type of anaphors that require their antecedent to be the local

subject of the clause. Pronouns, on the other hand, ban such a relation and need an

antecedent outside the clause. Both types of relations are represented in respectively

Binding Principles A and B (Chomsky, 1981) and are illustrated in (1):

(1) a. Franki thinks [that Johnj likes himselfj]. Principle A

b. Franki thinks [that Johnj likes himi/*j/k]. Principle B

3. The acquisition of binding relations Pronouns and reflexives generally emerge for the first time in child speech around the

age of 2 to 3 years. In hearing children, their comprehension has been investigated

extensively cross-linguistically (for French and Danish Jakubowicz, 1984; for Dutch

Deutsch, Koster & Koster, 1986; Koster, 1993; Philip & Coopmans, 1996; Baauw,

1999; Baauw, 2000; for English Solan, 1987; McDaniel, Cairns & Hsu, 1990; Chien &

Wexler, 1990; for Spanish Padilla, 1990; for Icelandic Sigurjónsdóttir, 1990; for Russian

Avrutin & Wexler, 1992; for Italian McKee, 1992; for French Hamann, Kowalski &

Philip, 1997). A general acquisition pattern can be deduced: around the age of three

years, children tend to perform at chance-level on both pronouns and reflexives.

Target-like performance on reflexives may be expected around the age of four years,

while it is delayed for pronouns until the age of eight to nine years. The different

developmental stages of the comprehension of binding relations are depicted in Figure

1.


Figure 1: Three developmental steps in the acquisition of binding relations based on

previous research on normal hearing children.

Broadly speaking, the comprehension of Principle A thus precedes that of

Principle B. This has been referred to as the Delayed Principle B Effect (DPBE).

Children correctly comprehend reflexives from the moment they start producing them

sentence-internally (i.e. around the age of four years), but they show a non-target-like

comprehension of pronouns until the age of eight years. This is illustrated with third

person singular masculine pronouns in (2). Young children may take pronouns to refer

to the subject of the local clause (2a), a relation that is generally restricted to reflexives

in standard adult speech (2b).

(2) Difference in the interpretation of pronouns

a. Child grammar Franki thinks that Johnj likes himi/j.

b. Adult grammar Franki thinks that Johni likes himi/*j.

Different explanations have been proposed for DPBE. Firstly, it may be due

to experimental artifacts (Grimshaw & Rosen, 1990; Elbourne, 2003). The truth

judgment task that is often used to test the comprehension of pronouns requires the

subject to make a judgment through meta-linguistic reasoning. Such a demanding

cognitive operation may affect the test results. Secondly, small children may have

inferior parser abilities (Grodzinsky & Reinhart, 1993), thus being unable to parse a

sentence containing a pronoun because of limited memory and processing capacities.

Another possible explanation that has been advanced is that children may accept


utterances in which a pronoun has a local antecedent thanks to a particular pragmatic

principle that is no longer operative in adult speakers (Chien & Wexler, 1990; Thornton

& Wexler, 1999). Finally, DPBE may also result from an incomplete feature acquisition

(Baauw, 2000) or a lack of categorical knowledge (Verbuk, 2006). As long as children

do not distinguish pronouns from reflexives, they will have difficulties with Principle B.

3.1. Two types of pronouns: strong and weak

The Dutch pronominal system contains two types of accusative pronouns. These two

types of pronouns can be distinguished from each other on two levels, i.e. with respect

to acoustic prominence and metric structure. In this chapter, we show that these two

levels give rise to two contradictory predictions with respect to the acquisition of

binding relations. To be more precise, by their acoustic prominence and metric

structure two opposite orders of acquisition are predicted for the two types of

pronouns.

Cross-linguistically, pronouns can be classified into three groups,

distinguishing the strong pronouns from two types of deficient ones, i.e. weak and clitic

pronouns (Cardinaletti & Starke, 1999). For Dutch, most researchers agree that there

are only two types of accusative pronouns: strong and weak ones (Haegeman, 1993; van

Koppen & van Craenenbroeck, 2000; but for a different view see Zwart, 1996). Weak

pronouns differ from their strong counterparts in not allowing focus, modification or

conjunction, never appearing in isolation and occurring in free order in double object

constructions.

Here, we investigate the Dutch reflexive zijn eigen ‘himself’ and the strong and

weak forms of the accusative third person pronoun (resp. hem and (h)em ‘him’). The

choice of the spoken (dialectal) variant of the Dutch reflexive instead of the written and

standard counterpart zichzelf is motivated by its frequency use in the geographical

regions of the subjects of this study. A preliminary inquiry of the children’s parents

indeed revealed that the standard form is mainly taught at school, while the dialectal

variant is being used most frequently at home. Furthermore, the Syntactic Atlas of the

Dutch Dialect (Barbiers et al., 2004) also confirms these findings. For a complete map of

the regional variation and geographic distribution of Dutch reflexives as complements


of a transitive verb, see Appendix 1.

Acoustic prominence. The difference between strong and weak pronouns

can be interpreted in terms of acoustic prominence. Such prominence has been shown

to guide the listener with respect to the perception of emphasis and stress. Three

characteristics of speech sounds are generally assumed to be representative: pitch,

duration and intensity (Rietveld & van Heuven, 2001). An acoustic analysis was

performed on 40 masculine test items used in this study (20 strong and 20 weak forms).

These items have been recorded from the same female speaker during a single

recording session and were analysed with the help of Praat 5.0.26 (Boersma & Weerink,

2001). Strong pronouns are significantly longer (p<.001) and have a higher pitch rise

(p=.012) than their weak counterparts, see Table 1 and Figure 3a-c. They do not differ,

however, with respect to intensity cues (i.e. vocal effort) as might be expected from

weak versus strong words (Sluijter & van Heuven, 1996; Marasek, 1997; Mooshammer,

2004). Duration and intensity were obtained over the entire pronoun. Pitch changes

were measured as ∆F0 in semitones.

Table 1: Acoustic analysis of hem and (h)em 'him'

Measures Strong pronoun hem Weak pronoun (h)em

Range Median Range Median

Duration (s) 0.38 - 0.54 0.48 0.21 - 0.29 0.25

∆F0(semitone) 178.13 - 207.73 182.08 174.05 - 184.84 179.98

Intensity (dB) 63.13 - 68.25 65.17 63.26 - 66.21 64.89


Figure 3a: The median duration (and lower quartile, upper quartile and range)

measured in milliseconds of strong pronoun hem 'him' and weak pronoun (h)em 'him'.

Figure 3b: The median pitch (and lower quartile, upper quartile and range) measured in

Herz of strong pronoun hem 'him' and weak pronoun (h)em 'him'.


Figure 3c: The median intensity (and lower quartile, upper quartile and range)

measured in decibel of strong pronoun hem 'him' and weak pronoun (h)em 'him'.

On the phrase level, only weak pronouns are able to form a single Prosodic

Word with an adjacent element, in casu the preceding verb (3). Strong pronouns, on the

other hand, are often acoustically marked by a pause1, an interval during which their

initial glottal fricative /h/ is slowly being formed. This pause or interval separates the

pronoun of the preceding verb, as illustrated in Figure 4a-b. It is assumed that the

presence of such a pause may help young children to syntactically segment the sentence

into different constituents (Gerken, 1996b; Mueller, Bahlmann, & Friderici, 2008;

Männel & Friederici, 2009).

(3) a. Micky (wast )PW (hem)PW.

b. *Mickey (wast hem) PW.

1 As was observed by an anonymous reviewer of a research article based on these results, such a pause might not be necessarily present. Additional corpus analyses will have to reveal whether this pause is indeed a distinctive feature between weak and strong pronouns.


c. Mickey (wast (h)em) PW.

‘Mickey washes him’.

Figure 4a: Segmentation of strong pronoun hem 'him' in the speech signal. Sentence

with a transitive verb followed by a strong pronoun (Mickey wast hem ‘Mickey washes

himSTRONG’). The strong pronoun is separated from the verb by a prosodic break,

indicated as P (Pause).

Figure 4b: Segmentation of weak pronoun (h)em 'him' in the speech signal. Sentence

with a transitive verb followed by a weak pronoun (Mickey wast hem ‘Mickey washes

himWEAK’). No pause separates the verb from the weak pronoun.


In addition to the differences on the supra-segmental level, strong and weak

pronouns may also be distinguished from each other by means of formal and

distributional characteristics. Formally, weak pronouns are morpho-phonologically

reduced counterparts of strong pronouns:

(4) a. hemstrong ‘him’

b. (h)emweak ‘him’

Distributionally, weak pronouns share two characteristics that may contribute to their

weak acoustic prominence. Firstly, weak pronouns are allowed only when the main

stress of the sentence shifts to a nearby element. When a proper name (e.g. John in (5a))

is replaced by a weak pronoun, stress shift is obligatory. Therefore, the stress (in

capitals) shifts to the preceding verb as in (5b).

(5) a. Frank ziet JOHN. Frank sees JOHN. b. Frank ZIET (h)em. Frank SEES him. c. * Frank ziet (H)EM. Frank sees HIM.

Secondly, weak pronouns cannot appear in positions containing contrastive stress (in

capitals) as illustrated in (6).

(6) a. Hij gelooft HEM strong, niet mij. He believes HIM, not me. b. *Hij gelooft (H)EMweak, niet mij. He believes HIM, not me.

Metric structure. Here, we will discuss the relevant aspects of metric structure by

which strong pronouns may be distinguished from their weak counterparts. In this


analysis, we will discuss metric structure as proposed by Selkirk (1980, 1984), as the

implication of a Clitic Group as proposed by Nespor & Vogel (1986, 2007) is not borne

out for Dutch (Gerlach & Grijzenhout, 2000). Under a Selkirkian prosodic structure

hierarchy, Dutch weak pronouns are part of an adjacent prosodic word, due to the fact

that they do not contain a full vowel (Booij, 1996). As commonly accepted, Dutch is a

trochaic language, since the majority of Dutch words have their strong syllables

predominantly at the left edge of a metric foot (F) (Daelemans & Gillis, 1994; Kager,

1989; van der Hulst, 1984; Trommelen & Zonneveld, 1990). As such, weak accusative

pronouns form a trochee (s w) together with the preceding transitive verb. Combined,

they form a single Prosodic Word (PW). By contrast, strong pronouns constitute a PW

on their own, consisting of a monosyllabic trochaic foot (s). The preceding verb does

not belong to the trochaic foot and attaches itself at the phrasal level. This is illustrated

by the metric trees in Figure 4:

Figure 5: Metric trees of a strong and weak accusative pronoun. Panel A: a sentence

with a transitive verb followed by a strong pronoun (Mickey wast hem ‘Mickey washes

himSTRONG’). The strong pronoun forms a monosyllabic strong foot. Panel B: a

sentence with a transitive verb followed by a weak pronoun (Mickey wast (h)em ‘Mickey

washes himWEAK’). The weak pronoun forms a disyllabic trochaic Prosodic Word with


the verb.

The trochaic foot has been proposed as a metric bias for the initial stages of

language acquisition. This was first suggested on the basis of the large number of first

words with trochaic feet (Allen & Hawkins, 1980). For trochaic language such as

English, children as young as nine months show a preference for trochaic feet over

iambic feet in a head-turn setting (Jusczyk, Cutler & Redanz 1993). This trochaic

preference is attested for spontaneous word production (Fikkert, 1994) and for

imitation (Nouveau, 1993) in early Dutch. Children map the input as well as their own

intended utterances on a trochaic template. In production, they first align strong

syllables with the template and afterwards, they omit all weak syllables that do not fit

the template. As a consequence children are more likely to omit weak syllables that do

not fit the trochaic template than those that do fit. Under such a view, in child speech, a

word such as konijn ‘rabbit’ is more likely to be truncated than zebra. This is illustrated

for Dutch in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Metric trees of a disyllabic iambic and trochaic word. Panel A: a disyllabic

Dutch trochaic word (zebra 'zebra'). Panal B: a disyllabic Dutch iambic word (konijn

'rabbit'). Metric analyses based on Fikkert (1994).


Interestingly, with respect to morpho-syntactic development, the trochaic

template has been said to account for subject and article omission (Gerken, 1994a;

Gerken, 1994b; Crisma & Tomasutti, 2000; Carter & Gerken, 2003, 2004). In child

speech, omitted subjects and articles are precisely those that do not belong to the

trochaic template. Here, we will investigate whether the same metric template also

influences the acquisition of Dutch accusative pronouns.

3.2. Contradictory predictions for acquisition.

The acoustic prominence and metric structure of strong and weak pronouns predicts

two opposite orders of acquisition. On the one hand, since weak pronouns are

acoustically less prominent than their strong counterparts, they will be more easily

missed in incoming speech. As such, they are expected to be acquired after their strong

counterparts. Yet on the other hand, weak pronouns that follow a transitive verb nicely

fit into the trochaic template. By this characteristic, they were expected to be acquired

before their strong counterparts.

In what follows we will try to provide an answer to the intriguing question as

to which of both conflicting predictions is most influencing pronoun comprehension in

young hearing children. In addition, we will try to determine whether the clinical

populations under investigation will use the same strategy.

4. Method

Subjects. This study involves a total of 68 subjects, 52 children and 16 adults. The 52

children are divided into a control group of 30 NH subjects, and two clinical groups: 12

CI subjects and 10 HA subjects. All adults and children are native speakers of Dutch.

The children are between seven and eight years of age at the moment of testing.

The upper age limit for testing is determined by the chronological age of six

out of ten CI children who were implanted between November 2000 and June 2002.

They were involved in a larger research project with respect to oral language

development. This research is currently being carried out at the universities of Leiden


and Antwerp and the Eargroup (Antwerp, Belgium), an audiological centre specialized

in the follow-up of early cochlear implanted deaf children. Hearing adult participants

were included in this study to define target-like comprehension of both accusative

pronouns and reflexives. No such data were readily available for colloquial Flemish, the

regional variant of Dutch acquired by the children participating in this study.

The number of subjects, the range and median age of testing of the different

groups are presented in Table 2. No significant group differences were found in the

chronological age at testing (Kruskall-Wallis with the three child subject groups as

grouping variable 2=3.893, p=.143).

For both clinical groups, the degree of hearing loss before and after

intervention and the age at first fit of the device are given in Table 3. Appendixes 2 and

3 give an overview of the individual characteristics of the CI and HA subjects

respectively. Median degree of hearing loss before intervention is 117 dB for the CI

children and 61 dB for the HA children. Median degree of hearing loss after

intervention is 34 dB for the CI children and 28 for the HA children. The median age

of first HA fit was 0;8 for both populations. The CI children received their first CI at

the median age of 1;2. Nine out of ten CI children received a Nucleus device (24,

Freedom or Sprint).

Table 2: Group characteristics with respect to chronological age at testing,

presented as (years ; months).

Group Number Age rangea Median agea

normal hearing 30 6;5 – 8 ;11 7 ;7

cochlear-implanted 12 6;11 – 8;8 7;11

hearing aid 10 7;1 – 8;7 7;9


Table 3: Group characteristics of children with a cochlear implant and hearing

aid with respect to the median and range of hearing loss (HL) in decibel (dB)

and median and range of age at intervention in months of age.

Measure Cochlear implant Hearing aid

Range Median Range Median

unaided HL in dB 130 - 82 117.25 95 - 45.5 61.5

aided HL in dB 45 - 17.5 33.75 48 - 20 28.5

age at intervention 0;5 - 5;7 1;2 0;2 - 6;10 0;8

The comparison of the two clinical groups reveals no significant differences in

age at first intervention of HA and CI (MWU=51, p=.553) or in degree of hearing loss

after intervention (MWU=42, p=.234). However, as expected, the degree of hearing

loss before intervention is very highly significantly different for the two clinical groups

(MWU=4, p≤.000), as cochlear implantation is generally considered only for children

that have a loss of at least 90 dB in the better ear who do not show sufficient hearing

gain with a classical hearing aid.

Comprehension tasks. Two well-documented comprehension tasks are used

in this study: a picture selection task and a truth judgment task (Gerken & Shady, 1996,

Gordon, 1996). Both tasks test the comprehension of reflexive and pronominal

relations. The subjects are confronted with a linguistic and two or more visual stimuli.

The linguistic stimuli contain both the masculine and feminine forms of either the

Flemish Dutch spoken variant of the third person singular reflexive (zijn eigen ‘himself’

or haar eigen 'herself') or a third person singular accusative pronoun (hem and (h)em 'him'

or haar and d'r 'her'). The latter consists of either the strong pronoun hem ‘him’ [hm]

and haar 'her' [ha:r] or the weak pronoun (h)em ‘him’ [m] and d'r 'her' [dr]. In the

remainder of this chapter, we will refer to these three conditions respectively as the

reflexive condition, the strong pronoun condition and the weak pronoun condition.

The participants referred to in the linguistic and visual stimuli are cartoon figures that

are well-known by most children: Mickey Mouse, Bob the Builder or Kermit as male

actors and Minnie Mouse, Red Riding Hood and Snow White as female actors. The


verbal part of the linguistic stimuli consists of one of the following four transitive verbs

and one reflexive verb: slaan ‘to hit’, kussen ‘to kiss’, aaien ‘to caress’, stampen ‘to kick’ and

wassen ‘to wash’. The linguistic stimuli are matched with one of two types of visual

stimuli, containing either one self-oriented event (e.g. someone hitting himself) or one

other-oriented event (e.g. someone hitting someone else). For the verbs slaan ‘to hit’

and stampen ‘to kick’, unambiguous visual marking of the recipient of the action was

done by making the relevant cartoon figure cry. For the other verbs, the recipient of

both types of events was marked by a smile on his or her face.

During a preliminary conversation, the subject is familiarized with the

different participants and verbs in both the self- and other-oriented events. The subject

is then tested on the ability to recognize and distinguish these participants and their

actor/recipient role in the different events. All subjects were able to identify the

intended actors and recipients and to take part in both comprehension tasks. The task

itself consists of two phases. A context-setting phase precedes the actual testing phase.

During the context-setting phase, the subject is introduced to the participants of the

test item both visually and linguistically. This creates a discourse context and diminishes

the artificial effect of comprehension tasks. The previous mentioning of antecedents is

expected to enhance the children's performance on tasks in which they are tested on

the comprehension of pronouns (see Matthews, Lieven, Tomasello 2007).

Test items. Both tasks are performed for strong and weak pronouns and

reflexives with both masculine and feminine forms. Each task consist of sixty test items

(thirty masculine and thirty feminine) and six filler items, equally distributed amongst

the reflexive, strong and weak pronoun condition. Filler items have been inserted to

make sure that the subject understands the task. The results of the filler items have not

been included in the statistical analyses. All test items are randomly divided into six test

batches of eleven test items each. Within these batches, the test items are ordered semi-

randomly, avoiding the succession of more than two test items of the same test

condition. The order of test items and test batches is kept constant across the different

groups and the different subjects.

The subjects participating in the elicitation tasks for masculine and feminine

test items were not identical throughout the study. Therefore, for those subjects who


completed the tasks with masculine and feminine forms the possible dependency

between the results on both sets of test items was investigated. A Wilcoxon paired-

sample test and Spearman rho indicate that there is a significant relation between the

scores on masculine and feminine pronouns (see Appendix 4). As such, the percentage

of target-like responses obtained for a total of twenty test items per task and condition

are calculated for each subject.

Statistics. For the descriptive statistics, classical five-parameter-statistics are

used (Woods, Fletcher & Hughes, 1986). For the graphic representations, we use box-

and-whisker-plots, outliers are displayed by an asterisk. Statistical outliers are defined as

cases with values more than one and a half box length from either end of the box.

Because of the lack of normal distribution, we use two-tailed non-parametric tests for

the analytical statistics. Kruskal-Wallis and Mann Whitney U tests are performed to test

for between-group differences. In order to control the family-wise error rate, a

Bonferroni correction was applied in all cases of multiple testing.

5. Results & analyses

5.1. Picture selection task Test set-up. The first task is a so-called picture selection task (PST), i.e. a multiple-

choice comprehension task. This task is of the forced choice type, forcing selection

from a closed set of four items. Together with a linguistic stimulus, the subject is given

four pictures appearing on the computer screen simultaneously. These four pictures are

ordering on the screen in a random way. These show an other-oriented event (e.g.

Mickey hitting Bob the Builder), a self-oriented event (e.g. Mickey hitting himself), a

neutral picture without an event and a non-related filler. The subject is asked to locate

the correct picture by pressing a button on a button-answer-box. Each picture is

associated with a particular colour (yellow, blue, orange and purple). These same

colours also appear on the button-answer-box. Scoring of both tasks happens

automatically via registering of the buttons pressed on the button-answer-box.


The linguistic stimuli consist of a simple declarative sentence containing a

lexical subject, a main verb and an object. In all test items, the gender of the lexical

subject, object and actors on the pictures agreed. The object is a reflexive (reflexive

condition), a strong pronoun (strong pronoun condition) or a weak pronoun (weak

pronoun condition). Figure 7 shows respectively the reflexive and the strong pronoun

condition for the masculine forms.

Reflexive condition

Mickey slaat zijn eigen.

‘Mickey hits himself.’

Strong pronoun condition

Mickey slaat hem.

‘Mickey hits him.’

Figure 7: Visual and linguistic stimuli of the reflexive and strong pronoun condition in

the picture selection task (PST). Panel A. The linguistic stimulus consists of a transitive

sentence with a reflexive or pronominal object. Panel B. The visual stimuli consist of a

picture of a self-oriented, other-oriented, neutral or a non-related action. A bold frame

for each test condition here marks the target-like picture selections.

Results & analyses. As previously mentioned, the comprehension of binding

relations is elicited for reflexives, strong pronouns and weak pronouns, referred to

respectively as the reflexive, strong pronoun and weak pronoun condition. Adults

perform at ceiling level in all three conditions. While the child subjects have

approached ceiling level in the reflexive condition, they differ from adults in the two

other conditions (see Table 4).


Table 4: Median proportion of target-like picture selections (and range) in all three

conditions for all groups: adults, normal hearing (NH), cochlear-implanted (CI) and

children with conventional hearing aids (HA).

Group Reflexive condition Strong pronoun condition Weak pronoun condition

Median Range Median Range Median Range

adults 100 100 - 100 100 90 - 100 100 70 - 100

NH 100 90 - 100 90 0 - 100 100 0 - 100

CI 95 80 - 100 90 5 - 100 77.5 50 - 100

HA 100 90 - 100 92.5 0 - 100 87.5 10 - 95

A significant group difference is found in the reflexive condition (Kruskal-

Wallis with the four subject groups as grouping variable, 2=14.302, p=.009), the

strong pronoun condition ( 2=14.576, p=.006), and the weak pronoun condition

(( 2=21.481, p<.001). The adult group shows a ceiling effect on all three tested

conditions (reflexive: median 100 percent, no range; strong pronoun: median 100 percent,

range 90 to 100; weak pronoun: median 100 percent, range 70 to 100).

Reflexive condition. As for the comparison between NH children and adult

controls, no significant difference is found for the reflexive condition. NH children also

show a ceiling effect (median of 100 percent, MWU=200, p=.264). As for the clinical

populations, CI children perform significantly below adult target (median of 95 percent,

MWU=40, p=.024), and HA children perform marginally below target (median of 100

percent, MWU=56, p=.072, see also Figure 8).


Figure 8: The median proportion (and lower quartile, upper quartile, range and

outliers) of target-like picture selections in the reflexive condition (PST) is presented for

each group: adults, NH = normal hearing children, CI = cochlear-implanted children

and, HA = hearing aided children. The chance level for each group result, obtained

through binomial testing, is 45 percent.

An additional between-group comparison for the child groups reveals that CI

children perform significantly worse than their NH peers on the reflexive condition

(MWU=104, p=.024), while HA children do not (MWU=129.5, p=1.000). No

differences are found amongst the clinical groups themselves (MWU=43, p=.648).

Strong and weak pronoun condition. In the strong pronoun condition, all

child groups differ significantly from the adult group (NH MWU=104.5, p=.003; CI

MWU=30, p=.003; HA MWU=33, p=.015, see Figure 9).



outliers) of target-like picture selections in the strong pronoun condition (PST) is

presented for each group: adults, NH = normal hearing children, CI = cochlear-

implanted children and, HA = hearing aided children. A horizontal line indicates the

chance level for each group result, obtained through binomial testing.

No differences are found between hearing children and both of the clinical

groups in the strong pronoun condition (NH-CI MWU=153.5, p=1.000; NH-HA

MWU=143.5, p=1.000), nor between the clinical groups themselves (MWU=55.5,

p=1.000).

For the weak pronoun condition, however, only the HA and CI group differ

significantly from the adult group. The NH children do not (NH MWU=161, p=.096;

CI MWU=21.5, p≤.000; HA MWU=12, p≤.000, see Figure 10). Both clinical groups

perform significantly lower than their NH peers (NH-CI MWU=92, p=.033; NH-HA

MWU=74, p=.042). Again, no differences are found amongst the clinical groups

(MWU=55.5, p=1.000).



outliers) of target-like picture selections in the weak pronoun condition (PST) is


implanted children and, HA = hearing aided children. Again, a horizontal line indicates

the chance level for each group result, obtained through binomial testing.

In order to detect possible factors influencing the comprehension of reflexives

and pronouns, correlations were made between the obtained results and the children's

age at implantation, pre-operative and post-operative unaided and aided hearing loss

and the age at first fit of the hearing aid. Neither of them was statistically significant.

5.2. Truth judgment task Test set-up. The second task, the truth judgment task (TJT), is a multiple choice

comprehension task. Like the previous one, this task is of the forced choice type, this

time forcing selection from a closed set of two items. The subject is requested to judge

whether there is a match or mismatch between the linguistic and visual stimuli that are

presented. The subject is given one linguistic stimulus and one visual stimulus

simultaneously. The visual stimulus consists of either an other-oriented event or a self-


oriented event. As in the previous task, the linguistic stimulus consists of a reflexive, a

strong pronoun or a weak pronoun. This design gives rise to four combinations of

linguistic and visual stimuli shown in Figure 11. The linguistic and visual stimuli may be

either a match (e.g. reflexive and a self-oriented event) or a mismatch (e.g. pronoun and

a self-oriented event). The subject is instructed to press one of two buttons on the

button-answer-box. The red button is associated with a mismatch and the green button

with a match.

Figure 11: Match-mismatch combinations of the truth judgment task (TJT). The

vertical panel consists of the linguistic stimuli presented during the test condition. The

horizontal panel consists of the visual stimuli presented during the test condition.

Results & analyses. As for the picture selection task (5.1), adults perform at

ceiling in all conditions, i.e. reflexive, strong pronoun and weak pronoun condition.

While the child groups have reached a ceiling level in the reflexive condition, they have

not yet in the pronoun conditions (see Table 5).


Table 5: Median proportion of target-like judgements (and range) in all three

conditions for all groups: adults, normal hearing (NH), cochlear-implanted (CI) and

children with conventional hearing aids (HA).

Group Reflexive condition Strong pronoun condition Weak pronoun condition

Median Range Median Range Median Range

Adults 100 95 – 100 100 90 - 100 100 80 - 100

NH 100 65 – 100 87,5 0 - 100 100 0 - 100

CI 100 55 – 100 72,5 30 - 90 77,5 40 - 100

HA 100 80 – 100 87,5 10 - 100 82,5 40 - 100

For the truth judgement task, no significant group differences are found in the

reflexive condition (Kruskal-Wallis test with the four subject groups as grouping

variable, 2=4.661, p=.594, Figure 11). A significant group difference is found for the

strong pronoun condition ( 2=24.261, p≤.000, Figure 12) and the weak pronoun

condition (( 2=15.151, p=.006, Figure 13 ). As for the adults, a ceiling effect is found

on all three tested conditions (reflexive: median 100 percent, range 95 to 100; strong

pronoun: median 100 percent, range 90 to 100; weak pronoun: median 100 percent, range

80 to 100).

Reflexive condition. None of the child subject groups differs significantly

from the adult group in the reflexive condition (NH MWU=179.5, p=.159; CI

MWU=77, p=.441; HA MWU=52, p=.096). For all groups, a ceiling effect is found on

the comprehension of reflexives (median percentage of 100, Figure 12).



outliers) of target-like picture selections in the reflexive condition (TJT) is presented for

each group: adults, NH = normal hearing children, CI = cochlear-implanted children

and, HA = hearing aided children. A horizontal line indicates the chance level for each

group result, obtained through binomial testing.

No significant differences are found between the NH group and two clinical

groups of hearing-impaired children (NH-CI MWU=171.5, p=1.000; NH-HA

MWU=139, p=.1.000), nor between the clinical groups themselves (MWU=52.5,

p=1.000).

Strong and weak pronoun condition. In the strong pronoun condition, all

child groups perform significantly worse than the adult controls (NH MWU=95.5,

p≤.000; CI MWU=1.5, p≤.000; HA MWU=13, p≤.000, see Figure 13).



outliers) of target-like picture selections in the strong pronoun condition (TJT) is




For the weak pronoun condition, both clinical groups differ significantly from

the adult control group, whereas the hearing children do not (NH MWU=168.5,

p=.171; CI MWU=22, p≤.000; HA MWU=32, p=.012, see Figure 14).



outliers) of target-like picture selections in the weak pronoun condition (TJT) is




An additional between-group comparison for the child groups reveals that no

differences are found between hearing children and both of the clinical groups (strong

pronouns NH-CI MWU=119, p=.258; NH-HA MWU=124.5, p=1.000 ; weak

pronouns NH-CI MWU=105, p=.087; NH-HA MWU=106, p=.435). Similarly as for

the PST, between-group comparisons of the two clinical groups reveal no significant

differences between children wearing a CI or HA for both the strong pronoun

condition (MWU=45.5, p=1.000) and the weak pronoun condition (MWU=52,

p=1.000).

As for the PST, in this task the correlation between the obtained results and

the children's age at implantation, pre-operative and post-operative unaided and aided

hearing loss and the age at first fit of the hearing aid were not found to be statistically

significant.


6. Discussion This study set out to investigate binding relations in two clinical groups of seven-to-

eight-year-old Dutch-speaking hearing-impaired children (children with cochlear

implants versus children with classical hearing aids). They were tested on the

comprehension of reflexive and pronominal relations in two elicitation tasks for both

masculine and feminine forms. Hearing-impaired children are compared to their NH

peers in the comprehension of reflexives, strong pronouns and weak pronouns.

For the picture selection task, the group results on strong and weak pronouns

are summarized in Table 2. The results on the truth judgment task are not included

because all child groups performed below chance-level. Relating the results on this

study with the literature, examining pronoun comprehension with a Truth Judgment

Task, in general, elicits lower performance rates when compared to a Picture Selection

Task (Crain & Thornton, 1998; Avrutin & Baauw, 2003; Zuchermann, Baauw &

Avrutin, 2003). As for Dutch, research has shown that children generally perform at

chance during a TJT (Philip & Coopmans, 1996), while they are approaching adult

performance (i.e. 80% score) on a PST (Zuchermann, 2002). In a TJT, children have to

analyze whether a possible interpretation of the linguistic stimulus (a sentence) matches

the visual stimulus (a picture). In the TJT, children thus need to check all target and

illicit interpretations of the sentence before giving their judgment. No such processing

capacity is required in the PST, in which a target-like matching picture is always present

among the visual stimuli. As such, due to processing capacity, children’s performance

on the PST may exceed that on the TJT even though they are tested on the same

conditions (Zuchermann, Bauw & Avrutin, 2003). Further research including older

children (e.g. nine-year-olds) can shed more light on these results.

For both the picture selection and truth judgement task, the group results are

summarized in Table 6 and 7 respectively. Significant group differences (0.05 > p >

0.01) are indicating by an asterisk and highly significant group differences (p < 0.01) by

two asterisks.


Table 6: P-values of the statistical comparison (MWU) between the child

groups and the adult controls on the three conditions in the picture selection

task (see 5.1).

Group Reflexive

condition

Strong pronoun

condition

Weak pronoun

condition

NH children p.264 ** p.003 p.096

CI children * p.024 ** p.003 ** p.000

HA children p.072 * p.015 ** p.000

Table 7: P-values of the statistical comparison (MWU) between the child

groups and the adult controls on the three conditions in the truth judgment

task (see 5.2).

Group Reflexive

condition

Strong pronoun

condition

Weak pronoun

condition

NH children p.159 ** p.000 p.171

CI children p.441 ** p.000 ** p.000

HA children p.096 ** p.000 * p.012

Acquisitional delay. According to the results of the reflexive condition in

the PST, CI children perform significantly and HA children marginally below adult

target level. At first sight, these results indicate that hearing-impaired children still

experience difficulties with the comprehension of reflexives at eight years of age. In

contrast, normal hearing children have already arrived at a ceiling level at the same age

(median percentage 100). Taking a closer look at the obtained results for both clinical

groups reveals, however, that the median of target-like responses already reaches 95

percent for the CI children and 100 percent for the HA children. This suggests that

hearing-impaired children have a small delay with respect to the comprehension of

reflexives. This is further corroborated by the results for reflexives on the truth

judgment task, in which both hearing-impaired groups do not show such a delay.


Metric structure. Comparing the results of strong and weak pronouns, it can

be seen that NH children perform target-like on weak pronouns but not on strong

ones. Surprisingly, at the age of eight binding relations are only target-like for weak

pronouns but not for strong pronouns. Intuitively, one would expect weak elements to

be acquired later than their strong counterparts. This has been confirmed in the

literature by a large number of studies (Villiers & Villiers, 73; Brown, 1973;

MacWhinney, 1985; Feuer, 1980; Slobin, 1973; Pye, 1980/1983; Peters, 1997; Peters &

Stromqvist, 1996; Gleitman & Wanner, 1982; Goldschneider & DeKeyser, 2001). These

studies highlight the role of perceptual prominence in the acquisitional process.

However, in section 3.2, we have predicted a possible opposite order of

acquisition based on the metric structure of strong and weak pronouns. As such, NH

children would be more tuned in to constructions of the type PW s'wastt w(h)emm

than of the type PW s'wastt PW s'hemm (see also Figure 5). The obtained results

indicate that this prediction is confirmed.

Perceptual deficit. The clinical groups, in contrast to the NH children, do

not show an adult-like performance on weak pronouns. These findings seem to be in

line with other studies investigating the acquisition of morpho-syntax in CI children,

reporting a positive effect of perceptual prominence (Svirsky, et al., 2000; Szagun, 1997;

Szagun, 2000). Here, we take the reduced perceptual prominence of weak pronouns to

be a possible explanation for the observed acquisitional delay in hearing-impaired

children.

At the same time, CI children are not able to rely on the metric structure that

guides the comprehension of weak pronouns in NH children. Interestingly, these

findings may be related to the way in which they perceive speech. In previous work, it

has been shown that CI users are able to notice durational aspects of speech while

having very limited access to voice pitch information (Daemers, et al., 2008; Govaerts,

et al., 2008). In current CI speech processors, very few channels are allocated to present

the full spectrum of fundamental frequency. As a result, CI users often have major

problems with the perception of both music and prosodic aspects of language (Galvin,

Fu & Nogaki, 2007; Sucher & McDermott, 2007; Green, Faulkner & Rosen, 2004;

O'Halpin, Falkoner, Rosen & Viani, 2006; Gfeller et al., 2005; Gfeller, Woodworth,


Robin, Knutson & Witt, 1997; Gfeller & Lansing, 1991, Kong, Cruz, Jones & Zeng,

2004; Leal, et al., 2003; Kong, Stickney & Zeng, 2005). Bearing in mind that in

combination with a transitive verb, weak pronouns belong to the same prosodic word

that contains a stressed (i.e. the verb) and an unstressed (i.e. the pronoun) element, it

comes as no surprise that CI children experience major difficulties to detect a metric

structure that is mainly signalled by the presence or absence of a pitch accent on

respectively the strong or weak syllable.

These findings are in line with previous research showing that the deficient

perception of pitch-marked items has an important effect on grammatical elements

other than pronouns. The acquisition of determiners, for instance, is guided by the

presence of a pitch accent on the noun when used in an informationally novel context.

Crucially, in young deaf children with a cochlear implant, the deficient perception of

pitch has been shown to lead to important delays in the acquisition of determiners. Just

as weak pronouns, such unstressed elements are frequently missed in incoming speech

(Coene, Gillis, Govaerts & Daemers, 2007; Coene, Daemers, Govaerts, Gillis &

Rooryck, 2008).

It is important to notice that the findings under discussion cannot be

explained by the mere inability of CI children to perceive the weak pronoun altogether.

This was verified by means of a discrimination test procedure using an odd-ball

paradigm (A§E®, Govaerts, et al., 2006; Daemers, et al., 2006) in which the subject had

to discriminate the stimulus sound (a simplex transitive verb followed by a weak

pronoun) from a series of repetitive background sounds (the simplex verb alone). From

this, we derive that CI children are more influenced by the acoustic prominence of the

speech signal than by the metric structure of their native language. Yet in hearing peers,

metric structure overrules acoustic prominence.

7. Conclusion This study set out to determine the effect of hearing-impairment on the acquisition of

binding relations. The results show that normal hearing seven-to-eigth-year-old children

perform adult-like on the comprehension of reflexives. However, hearing impaired


children have not yet reached a target-like performance on the picture selection task,

but do so on the truth judgment task. However, more than half of the children are

already at ceiling level. Based on the high performance levels of the other children, it is

reasonable to believe that they will also reach the same level as their hearing peers

within the next couple of months.

As for pronouns, normal hearing children have been found to have acquired

weak pronouns but not yet their strong counterparts. We propose that this is due to a

preference for the trochaic pattern, which is predominant in the input language. Weak

pronouns fit into the trochaic template while strong pronouns do not. As for hearing-

impaired children, weak pronouns are not yet acquired by that age. This is not only due

to the low perceptual prominence of this type of pronouns but also to their deficient

pitch perception. The latter is thought to be of major importance in the discrimination

and identification of Dutch metric structure. As current CI speech processors provide

only reduced access to pitch cues, this particular population is less sensitive to those

structures that contain a transitive verb followed by a weak pronoun.


Appendices

Appendix 1

Regional variation of Dutch reflexives following the transitive verb wassen 'wash'. Copyright © 2004

Syntactic atlas of the Dutch dialects: Volume 1 (reprinted with permission from

Amsterdam University Press).


Appendix 2

Individual subject profiles of the cochlear-implanted children investigated in this chapter.

ID Sexa Ageb Earc

HL un-

aided d

HL with

CI d Device

Age at

implan-

tation b

amb F 8;0 r 120 35 Nucleus 24 1;1

ann F 6;11 r 120 27 Nucleus 24 0;6

l - 38 Digisonic 5;5

bre M 8;8 r 115 40 Digisonic 7;1

l 120 35 Nucleus 24 2;3

dyl M 7;11 l 120 25 Nucleus Sprint 1;7

r 120 25 Nucleus Sprint 1;2

emm F 7;10 r 115 25 Nucleus 24 0;10

l 112 33 NucleusFreedom 5;10

jor M 8;7 r 130 45 Nucleus 24 1;7

lia M 7;5 r 87 32 Nucleus Sprint 2;1

mig M 8;2 r 120 37 Nucleus 24 0;8

mor F 8;8 r 85 35 HA 2;6

l 82 40 Digisonic 5;7

rox F 8;6 r 117 17 Nucleus 24 0;5

l 117 18 Nucleus 24 1;3

tes F 7;6 r 112 30 Nucleus 24 1;7

112 50 HA 0;2

ves M 7;4 l 57 28 HA 0;4

r 90 32 NucleusFreedom 0;8

Legend:

a female (f) or male (m); b chronological age in (years ; months); b ear of CI or HA: right

(r) or left (l); d degree of hearing loss in decibel


Appendix 3

Individual subjects profiles of the children with conventional hearing aids investigated in this chapter.

ID Sex a Age b Ear c

HL un-

aided d

HL with

HA d Device

age at

HA

fit b

ain F 8;2 L 62 35 Phonak 4;2

R 80 45 Phonak 4;2

eli F 7;7 L 63 48 Widex 0;9

jes M 7;3 L 62 35 Phonak 0;3

R 58 28 Phonak 0;3

jul F 8;6 L 57 28 Phonak 2;1

R 47 30 Phonak 2;1

jus F 7;6 L 93 ? Widex 0;2

R 97 28 Widex 0;2

lob F 7;2 L 57 37 Widex 0;7

R 58 28 Widex 0;7

lot F 8;3 L 43 ? GNResound 4;11

R 48 20 GNResound 4;11

mat M 8;7 L 52 ? GNResound 6;10


rob M 7;1 L 75 28 Widex 0;7

R 72 28 Widex 0;7

zen M 8;0 L 85 25 Widex 0;2

R 85 25 Widex 0;2

Legend:

a female (f) or male (m); b chronological age in (years ; months); b ear of CI or HA: right

(r) or left (l); d degree of hearing loss in decibel


Appendix 4

Wilcoxon and Spearman bivariate correlation results on the paired subject data.

Group Task Condition Wilcoxon Spearman Z p-value Sp.C. p-value

Adults (N=4)

PS a Reflexive .000 1.000 - c - c Strong .000 1.000 -.333 .667 Weak -.447 1.000 .272 .728

TJ b Reflexive -1.000 .951 - c - c Strong -1.000 .951 - c - c Weak -1.000 .951 .272 .728

NH children (N=19)

PS a Reflexive -.816 1.000 -.081 .743 Strong -2.103 .105 .460 .048 Weak -.543 1.000 .290 .228

TJ b Reflexive -1.594 .333 .263 .277 Strong -2.166 .090 .682 .001 Weak -.052 1.000 .480 .038

CI children (N=9)

PS a Reflexive -1.890 .177 - c - c Strong -.816 1.000 .580 .101 Weak -1.897 .174 .360 .342

TJ b Reflexive .000 1.000 .750 .020 Strong -2.263 .072 .731 .025 Weak -1.511 .393 .798 .010

HA children (N=9)

PS a Reflexive -.272 1.000 -.188 .629 Strong -1.518 .387 .728 .026 Weak -.351 1.000 .478 .193

TJ b Reflexive -.816 1.000 .314 .411 Strong -.686 1.000 .656 .055 Weak -1.625 .312 .828 .006

Legend:

a Picture selection task; b Truth judgement task; c In the absence of varience in one or

both variables, Spearman correlation cannot be computed.



Chapter 4: The acquisition of co-reference

1. Introduction In the previous chapters, we investigated the development of personal pronouns in

terms of the frequency of use of the pronominal paradigm (chapter two) and the

comprehension of the syntactic binding relation between a pronoun and its intended

antecedent (chapter three).

Co-reference. In this chapter, we investigate the use of pronouns as one of

the possible ways for co-reference at the syntax-pragmatics interface. Co-reference

denotes the grammatical relation between two words that have a common referent, i.e.

a co-referring nominal expression and its antecedent (Reinhart, 1982/1983a/1983b). A

co-referring expression and its antecedent are said to refer to the same entity, which is

notated by giving them the same index.

This is illustrated in one of the narratives under investigation in this study,

produced by a seven-year-old normal-hearing child in (1). The indefinite description een

poesje 'a little cat', the definite description de poes 'the cat', as well as the definite pronoun

ze 'she' are all given the same index (j). They refer to the same animal in the story, a cat.

As such, they all co-refer with the same antecedent, i.e. the cat.

(1) Mamai geeft een poesjej cadeau aan een meisjek. Mommyi gives a little catj present to a girlk. 'Mommyi gives a little catj to a girlk. '

Maar de poesj klimt in de booml. But the catj climbes into the treel. But the catj climbes into the treel.'

Chapter 4: Co-referring relations 108

En zej kan erl nimmer uit. And shej can therel no longer out. 'And shej cannot get out of itl.' En dan probeert het meisjek de poesj te pakken. And then tries the girlk the catj to catch. 'And then the girlk tries to catch the catj.'

Dan komt mamai d'r aan. Then comes mommyi there by. 'Then mommyi comes.' Diei pakt de stoel. That onei takes the chair. 'Shei takes the chair'.

En diei geeft het poesjej aan het meisjek And that onei gives the little catj to the girlk 'And she gives the little catj to the girlk ' (NOT 7;2.20)

A measure for the effectiveness of hearing intervention. In this chapter,

we propose that the effectiveness of hearing intervention in deaf born children can be

investigating by the acquisition of co-reference. Co-reference must be situated at the

syntax-pragmatics interface. As such, it required syntactic and pragmatic competence to

interact. These interface domains in language acquisition are known to cause problems

for normal hearing children (Sorace, 2005). Based on a large set of studies on the

acquisition of co-reference, hearing children experience difficulties with mapping

syntactic and pragmatic knowledge of co-reference until seven years of age. In line with

these findings, it can be expected that hearing-impaired children will experience even

more problems with the acquisition of co-reference. Therefore, we investigate the

acquisition of co-reference in a cohort of ten cochlear-implanted (CI) children will be

compared to ten children wearing conventional hearing aids (HA) and ten normal-

hearing (NH) children between seven and eight years of age.


Overview. The remaining part of this chapter is structured as follows: Firstly,

we will describe co-reference in syntax and pragmatics (section 2). The state-of-the-art

on the acquisition of co-reference by normal-hearing children and a proposal

concerning co-reference as a measure for the effectiveness of CIs and HAs in deaf-

born children are given in section 3 and 4 respectively. The method and analysis are

presented in sections 5 and 6, followed by the discussion in section 7.

2. Co-reference in syntax and pragmatics

Syntax: types of (co)referring expressions. Entities can be referred to by

means of different linguistic expressions. The different linguistic ways of (co)referring

investigated in this study, are listed in (2).

(2) Different linguistic ways for (co)referring in Dutch, based on the narrative

given in (1):

a. proper name mama 'mommy'

b. indefinite description een poesje ‘a little cat'

c. definite description de poes ‘the cat'

d. possessive description haar mama 'her mommy'

e. demonstrative description dat meisje 'that girl'

f. demonstrative pronoun die 'that one'

g. definite pronoun ze 'she'

h. non-lexicalized nominal -

In the non-lexicalized way of (co)referring (2h), there is no overtly realized co-referring

expression. We deliberately opt to label the latter type as a 'non-lexicalized nominal'

instead of more theoretically flavored labels such as 'null argument' or 'omitted

argument' (in line with Valian & Aubry, 2005).


Pragmatics: information status. There are many ways in which information

status in discourse has been analyzed. We will focus on two different accounts: Firstly,

we will present a number of studies that focus on a dichotomy between two types of

information (i.e. new and given). Secondly, we will zoom in on studies that focus on the

relation between co-referring expressions and the accessibility of their antecedent.

New and given information. A number of authors distinguish between two

types of information: new versus given (Halliday, 1967; Chafe, 1976); theme versus rheme

(Halliday, 1967; Vallduvi, 1992); topic versus comment (von der Gabelentz, 1869;

Reinhart, 1982; Gundel, 1974/1988); presupposition versus focus (Chomsky, 1971;

Jackendoff, 1972; Lambrecht, 1994).

Here, our analysis will build on the new versus given dichotomy. In the

literature, this dichotomy has been defined either from a cognitive or a discourse-

internal perspective: (i) From the cognitive (i.e. a hearer-centric) point of view, given

information entails what the speaker believes is in the consciousness of the hearer. As

such, it represents the 'shared knowledge' of both discourse participants. Information

that is only present in the consciousness of the speaker is new to the hearer by

definition (Christophersen, 1939; Chafe, 1976; Clark & Marshall, 1981; Prince, 1992;

Heim; 1992). (ii) From a discourse-internal point of view, new information can be

defined as an entity that is introduced for the first time in the discourse. As such, it is

presented by the speaker to the hearer. Once it has been introduced, this entity is

considered to be given information (Halliday, 1967; Ariel, 1990).

Antecedent accessibility. With respect to nominal expressions in given

information contexts, such as the abovementioned definite nominal expressions and

pronouns, fine-grained hierarchies of co-referring expressions have been proposed

(Ariel, 1990; Givón, 1990; Gundel, Hedland, & Zacharski, 1993).

Ariel (1988/1990/1991/1994/2001) introduces a hierarchy of nominal

expressions, reflecting the degree of accessibility of the entity they refer to (i.e. their

antecedent in the verbal or non-verbal discourse context). She proposes that as for

accessibility there is connection between the nature of memory and the choice of

nominal expressions.


Accessibility and the structure of memory. Some mental entities or

representations are more retrievable in the discourse participant's memory. As such,

there is a continuum from low to highly accessible antecedents. Different criteria have

been proposed to determine the accessibility of antecedents. For child speech, a set of

nine criteria can be distinguished across studies (Clancy, 1992/1996; Allen, 2000/2007;

Guerriero, Cooper, Oshima-Takane & Kuriyama, 2001; Skarabela & Allen, 2002;

Clancy, 2003; Paradis & Navarro, 2003; Cho, 2004; Serratrice, Sorace & Paoli, 2004;

Narasimhan, Budwig & Murty, 2005; Serratrice, 2005; Guerriero, Oshima-Takane &

Kuriyama, 2006; Hughes & Allen, 2006; Skarabela, 2006, for a full discussion see Allen,

Skarabela, & Hughes, 2008):

(i) recency of mention of the antecedent (i.e. the distance between a nominal

expression and its antecedent);

(ii) topichood of the referent in the discourse;

(iii) presence or absence of the referent in the physical context of the

discourse;

(iv) presence of the referent in the query of the speaker (i.e. a question asked);

(v) number of competing potential antecedents (with agreeing gender,

number and case);

(vi) explicit contrast or emphasis made by the speaker;

(vii) person of the antecedent;

(viii) animacy of the antecedent;

(ix) joint attention of speaker and hearer.

In general, highly accessible antecedents have been mentioned very recently in

the discourse, are the topics of the conversation, and have few competing potential

alternatives in the nearby context. On the other hand, antecedents with a low

information status have not been mentioned recently, are seldom the topic, and have

more competing potential antecedents in the nearby context.


Accessibility marking. Nominal expressions encode the accessibility of their

antecedent and thus function as accessibility markers. Some expressions encode high

accessibility while others low. As such, these accessibility markers help the addresse to

retrieve the mental entity intended by the speaker (Ariel, 1990).

Nominal expressions have been divided in three categories based on their

accessibility marking (Ariel, 1990). As summarized in Table 1 (Ariel, 1990), nominal

expressions can either mark low, medium or high accessibility. Full nominal expressions

(NPs) and proper names mark the low accessibility of their antecedent. Demonstratives

mark medium accessibility and finally pronouns mark the high accessibility of their

antecedent.

It is assumed that low accessibility markers encode general knowledge.

Medium accessibility markers co-refer with an antecedent present in the physical

context, and high accessibility markers co-refer with an antecedent in the previous

linguistic context.

Table 1: Three categories of accessibility marking by nominal expressions based on the

source of their antecedent and their location and function in discourse context.

Accessibility

marking Nominal expression

Source of

antecedent

Discourse

context

Low Full NP

Proper name General knowledge

First mentioning

Long distance

Medium Demonstrative Physical context Deictic

Medium distance

High Pronoun Linguistic context Anaphoric

Shorter distance

Based on a corpus of four written texts of each 2200 words, Ariel supports

this categorisation of different nominal expressions in function of the accessibility of

the antecedent. The frequency of use of pronouns, demonstratives and definite

descriptions are investigated in four different text positions with respect to the location

of the antecedent: same sentence, previous sentence, same paragraph and outside the

same paragraph. The findings are given in Table 2.


Table 2: Frequency of use of three types of nominal expressions in function of

text position, ranked from high accessibility (i.e. same sentence) to low accessibility

(i.e. across paragraph). Table adapted from Ariel, 1990:18.

Nominal expression Text position

Same

sentence

Previous

sentence

Same

paragraph

Across

paragraph

Total

Pronoun 110 (21%) 320 (60%) 75 (14%) 24 (5%) 529

Demonstrative 4 (5%) 50 (60%) 17 (20%) 16 (15%) 84

Definite description 4 (3%) 20 (14%) 65 (46%) 53 (37%) 142

Both pronouns and demonstratives are preferred when their antecedent

occurs in the previous sentence. However, pronouns are also target when the

antecedent occurs in the same sentence, while demonstratives are not. By contrast,

demonstratives are preferred when the antecedent is present in the same paragraph.

Finally, definite descriptions are preferred when the antecedent is most distant, i.e. in

the same paragraph and across paragraphs.

A continuum from high to low accessibility. Instead of a categorical

classification of nominal expressions (see Table 1), Ariel (1990) favours an accessibility

hierarchy. In this hierarchy, nominal expressions are ordered in a continuous scale

without any divisions into different categories of markers.


(3) Accessibility hierarchy (adapted from Ariel, 1988/1990/1991/1994/2001)

Accessibility marking Nominal expression

Low accessibile Full name + modifier

Full name

Long definite description

Short definite description

Last name

First name

Distal demonstrative + modifier

Proximal demonstrative + modifier

Distal demonstrative (+NP)

Proximal demonstrative (+NP)

Stressed pronoun + gesture

Stressed pronoun

Unstressed pronoun

Clicized pronoun

Extremely high accessibility markers (gaps,

High accessible including pro, PRO, wh trace, and agreement

This accessibility hierarchy is illustrated in (4-5, Ariel 1990: 65). Depending on the

presence of stress on the pronoun, two different patterns of co-reference can be

obtained. The subject pronoun she in (4a) co-refers with the subject of the preceding

coordinated sentence, i.e. Jane. Similarly, the object pronoun her in (4b) co-refers with

the object of the preceding coordinated sentence, i.e. Mary. In general, a pronoun co-

refers with an antecedent in the same thematic slot, i.e. subject or object.

(4) a. Janei kissed Maryj, and then shei kissed Hary.

b. Janei kissed Maryj, and then Harry kissed herj.


However, the presence of stress on pronouns (indicated by capitals) can change this co-

reference pattern. A stressed pronoun is situated higher in the accessibility scale

compared with an unstressed pronoun. As such, it signals to the addressee that its

intended antecedent is less accessible. Therefore, the intended antecedent of the subject

pronoun in (5a) is no longer the subject but the object of the preceding coordinated

sentence Mary. Similarly, the intended antecedent of the object pronoun in (5b) is not

the object but the subject Jane. Stressed pronouns thus refer to a marked antecedent

which is not the antecedent accessed by an unstressed pronoun. Stressed pronouns are

lower accessibility markers and thus co-refer with antecedent of lower accessibility

when compared to unstressed pronouns (Schmerling, 1976; Bardovi-Harling, 1983;

Ariel, 1990; Stenning, 1978; Solan, 1983).

(5) a. Janei kissed Maryj, and then SHEj kissed Harry.

b. Janei kissed Maryj, and then Harry kissed HERi.

3. The acquisition of co-reference at the syntax-pragmatics interface The concept of given and new information has been proposed to influence different

linguistic phenomena like intonation, word order, and stress (Halliday, 1967; Brown,

1983; Terken, 1984/1985; Gundel, 1978; Fuchs, 1980/1984; Chafe, 1976; Horne,

1991a/1991b). In the literature, it has been shown extensively that there is a close

relation between the type of linguistic expression used and the information status of the

entity it refers to (Chafe, 1976/1987/1994/1996; Clancy, 1980; Clark & Marshall, 1981;

Prince, 1981; Garrod & Sandord, 1982; Marslen-Wilson, Levy & Tyler, 1982; Givón,

1983/1990; Bock & Warren, 1985; Du Bois, 1985; Gundel, 1985; Prince, 1985; Du

Bois, 1987; Ariel, 1988/1990/2001; Gordon, Groz & Gilliom, 1993; Gundel, Hedland,

& Zacharski, 1993; Brennan, 1995; Grosz, Joshi & Weinstein, 1995; Fretheim &

Gundel, 1996; Arnold, 1998; Du Bois, Kumpf & Ashby, 2003, Arnold & Griffin, 2007).

Overgeneralizing, one may take indefinite nominal expressions (e.g. een poesje 'a little

cat') to introduce new information, and definite nominals and definite pronouns (e.g. de


poes 'the cat' - ze 'she') to be preferred in contexts of given information. An important part of discourse comprehension depends on if and how

antecedents are co-referred to. A clear relation is found between the type of nominal

expression used (i.e. syntactic knowledge) and the information status of the antecedent

(i.e. pragmatic knowledge). As such, children not only need to learn to generate

different nominal expressions in the appropriate positions at the syntactic level, but also

to identify the discourse information status. As such, the acquisition of co-reference

should be situated at the syntax-pragmatics interface.

A number of purely pragmatics accounts have proposed that children acquire

the distinction between new and given information by the age of two (De Cat, 2004;

Sperber & Wilson, 1995; Tomasello & Haberl, 2003; Serratrice, Sorace, & Paoli, 2004;

Greenfield & Smith, 1976). Even at the one-word-stage, children prefer to produce

words referring to new information and omit given information (Greenfield & Smith,

1976).

Syntax-pragmatics interface. Mapping this pragmatic knowledge on to the

syntactic set of co-referring expressions is a much more complex operation. Therefore,

it will be acquired later. As proposed in previous research, interface domains cause

difficulties for language acquisition in normal-hearing children, since they involve the

co-ordination of different types of linguistic knowledge (Sorace, 2005). As such, we

argue that co-reference may cause problems in acquisition by normal-hearing children,

and even more so in hearing-impaired children, because it requires syntactic and

pragmatic competence to interact.

Firstly, children acquire the relation between antecedent accessibility and co-

referring relations and only later acquire the relation between information status (i.e.

new versus given information) and linguistic ways of (co)reference.

Antecedent accessibility. The relation between co-referring expressions and

antecedent accessibility has been attested as early as two years of age or at the two-

word-stage (i.e. MLU of 2), and is generally acquired by the age of three. By then,

children produce definite nominal expressions to co-refer with less accessible


antecedents, and pronouns and non-lexicalized nominals when co-referring with highly

accessible antecedents. However, children tend to avoid the use of pronouns and tend

to omit arguments more often than adults until five years of age (for Dutch, see De

Haan & Tuijnman, 1988; Krämer, 1995; Thrift, 2003; Blankenstijn & Scheper, 2003).

With respect to antecedent accessibility, some studies have investigated the

factors by which it is influenced (Narasimhan, Budwig & Murty, 2005; Paradis &

Navarro, 2003; Serratrice, 2005; Serratrice, Sorace & Paoli, 2004; Skarabela,

2006/2007). Most of them are focused on the previously mentioned criterion of recency

of mention (see section 2). By this criterion, an accessible antecedent is identified as: being

mentioned in one of the previous utterances (with the number of utterances varying

between 3 and 20, see Allen, 2000; Guerriero, Cooper, & Oshima-Takane, 2006;

Hughes & Allen, 2006; Skarabela, 2006; Mishina-Mori, 2007; Narasimhan, Budwig, &

Murty, 2005); being mentioned in five to ten previous exchanges (Paradis & Navarro,

2003); or being mentioned explicitly at least once in the linguistic discourse, irrespective

of the distance (Serratrice, Sorace, & Paoli, 2004).

As for the different ways of co-reference, a large set of studies focus on two

categories, i.e. lexical versus non-lexicalized nominals (especially in so-called pro-drop

languages), while others include a third category of pronouns (Jakubowicz, Müller,

Kang, Biemer, & Rigaut, 1996; Pérez-Leroux, Pirvulescu, & Roberge, 2006; Schaeffer,

1997; Wexler, et al., 2003; Karmiloff-Smith, 1985; Hickman & Hendriks, 1999; Allen,

2000/2007; Allen & Schröder, 2003; Cho, 2004; Clancy, 1992/1993/2003; Guerreiro,

Oshima-Takane & Kuriyama, 2006; Hughes & Allen, 2006; Mishina-Mori, 2007;

Narasimhan, Budwig & Murty, 2005; Paradis & Navarro, 2003; Serratrice, 2005;

Serratrice, Sorace & Paoli, 2004; Skarabela, 2006/2007).

New versus given information. Studies on indefinite nominals in new-given

information contexts have reported that this relation is not acquired until seven years of

age. By then, children produce indefinite determiners to introduce new information in

the discourse context, as opposed to definite nominal expressions which co-refer with

given information (Clancy, 1992; de Weck, 1991; Hickmann, Kail & Roland, 1995;

Hickmann, Hendriks, Roland, & Liang, 1996; Kail, 1998; Kail & Hickmann, 1992;

Power & Dal Martello, 1986; Warden, 1976/1981; Bamberg 1986/1987; Bamberg &


Marchman; 1994; Wigglesworth, 1990; Maratsos, 1974; Emslie & Stevenson, 1981;

Hickmann, 2003; De Cat, 2004; Kail & Lopez, 1997). Although children produce

indefinite determiners from three years onwards, indefinite nominals are not used

systematically to introduce new information until the age of seven. Unlike adults,

children initially prefer definite descriptions over indefinite ones when referring to new

information. It has been proposed that indefinite descriptions are initially used as

nominative labelling instead of an introduction (Emslie & Stevenson, 1981). The non-target-like use of definite descritpitons in new information contexts

is illustrated in one of the narratives under investigation in this study, produced by a

seven-year-old normal-hearing child in (6). The child produces the definite nominals het

kindje 'the child' and de bal 'the ball' to introduce new information in the narrative

instead of indefinite descriptions such as een kindje 'a child'.

(6) Het kindjei geeft de balj aan papak. The little childi gives the ballj to daddyk. 'The little girli gives the ballj to daddyk.'

En papak gooit de balj op het dakl. And daddyk throws the ballj on the roofl. 'And daddyk throws the ballj onto the roofl.' En dan weent dat kindjei. And then cries that little childi. 'And then the little childi cries'. En dan gaat papak me(t) een ladder datj daarl terug af halen. And then goes daddyk with a ladder thatj therel back off get. 'And then daddyk gets itj back off of itl with a ladder.' (NH EMI)

Summary. Children acquire the purely pragmatic distinction between new and

given information by two years of age. As for given information contexts, children

acquire the relation between antecedent accessibility and possible co-referring

expressions about one year later. Pronouns and non-lexicalized nominals co-refer with

highly accessible antecedents, while definite nominal expressions co-refer with less

accessible antecedents.


Indefinite nominals, the target linguistic way of introducing new information

in the context, are acquired much later: around seven years of age. A number of

cognitive studies have proposed that this late acquisition is due to the fact that children

are soon aware of the pragmatic difference between new and given information, but

experience difficulties to identify shared knowledge (Givón, 1983; Bock & Warren,

1985; Prince, 1985; Chafe, 1987; Du Bois, 1987; Gundel, Hedberg & Zacharski, 1993;

Avrutin, 1999; Schaeffer, 2000; De Cat, 2004).

4. Co-reference as a measure for the effectiveness for CI and HA. As mentioned previously (see section 2, chapter 1), hearing-impaired children often

experience delays or even deficits in morpho-syntactic development. Similarly, delays

and deficits have also been reported with respect to pragmatic development:

(i) Deaf children experience difficulties in communicative behaviours like

distributing attention between different discourse participants, turn-taking and reaching

autonomy by introducing new information, asking questions, etc. (Tait, 1993; Tait &

Lutman, 1994; Lutman & Tait, 1995; Tait, Lutman, & Robinson, 2000). They often use

gestural methods instead of a vocal mode of communication. More target-like

communicative abilities are used after CI in case of severe to profound hearing loss,

and after HA fit in case of moderate hearing loss. However, HA children with a severe

or profound hearing loss never achieve target use of communicative oral behaviours.

As for CI children, age at implantation positively influences communicative proficiency.

(ii) With respect to pragmatic production, hearing-impaired children have been

found to experience problems to tell well-formed and complex narratives (Ravid, Most,

& Cohen, 2008; Oshinaga-Intano & Snyder, 1985; Griffith, Ripich, & Dastoli, 1990;

King & Quigley, 1985; Marschark, Mouradian, & Halas, 1994; Klecan-Aker &

Blondeau, 1990; Crosson & Geers, 2001; Nikolopoulos, 2005). A narrative is defined as

a story in which the development of a certain event is expressed. It generally contains a

number of propositions, structured in phases, including at least an initial introduction


and a final conclusion (Berman & Slobin, 1994; Ravid, 1995; Ravid & Berman, 2006).

Hearing-impaired children produce less propositions and shorter and incomplete

sentences with a reduced variability in structure. They also omit adverbs and

conjunctions and evaluative elements.

As co-reference is situated at the syntax-pragmatics interface and hearing-

impaired children experience difficulties with both syntax and pragmatics, we expect it

to be a measure for the effectiveness of CIs and HAs in deaf-born children. Mastering

co-reference is a prerequisite to take part in conversation: on the one hand, the task of

the hearer is to identify the antecedent of a co-referring expression, on the other hand,

it is the task of the speaker to co-refer with the antecedent in such a way that it enables

to speaker to identify the intended antecedent. An overuse of nominal expressions in

typically pronominal contexts, violates the Gricean Maxim of Quality in communication:

"do not make your contribution more informative than is required" (Grice, 1975: 45).

The repeated nominal co-reference with (highly) accessible antecedents and the

avoidance of pronominal co-reference hinders the flow of the conversation, as

illustrated in (7).

(7) Mickeyi krijgt een balj van zijn papak. Mickeyi gets a ballj from his daddyk. 'Mickeyi receives a ballj from his daddyk.'

Mickeyi gooit met de balj op het dakl. Mickeyi throws with the ballj on the roofl. 'Mickeyi throws the ballj on the roofl.'

Mickeyi is droevig omdat de balj op het dakl zit. Mickeyi is sad because the ballj on the roofl sits. 'Mickeyi is sad because the ballj lies on the roofl.' De papak heeft de balj van het dakl afgehaald. The daddyk has the ballj of the roofl taken. 'Daddyk has taken the ballj of the roofl.'

En nu is Mickeyi blij. And now is Mickeyi happy. 'And now Mickeyi is happy.' (CI TES 8;6.29)


In line with the Gricean Maxim of Quantity, a speaker must also "make [the] contribution

as informative as is required" (Grice, 1975: 45). A speaker must thus choose a co-

referring expression in such a way that it allows the hearer to associate it with the

intended antecedent. As such, an overuse of pronominal co-reference in new

information contexts is therefore non-target like, hindering the conversation. In (8) for

instance, it is not clear to the hearer who the intended antecedents of the definite

pronouns (ze 'they', ze 'she') are:

(8) Dat zei&j spelen met de balk. That theyi&j play with the ballk. 'That theyi&j are playing with the ballk.'

Zei is aan het wenen omdat de balk op de dak is. Shei is on the crying because the ballk on the roof is. 'Shei cries because the ballk lies on the roof.' De jongeni wil de balk

The boyi wants the ballk. 'The boyi wants the ballk.'

Dan geeft zej de balk Then gives she j the ballk. 'Then she j gives the ballk.' (CI AMB 8;0.7)

5. Method Subjects. This study involves a total of 40 subjects: 30 children and 10 adults. The 30

children are divided into a control group of 10 NH subjects, and two clinical groups of

10 CI and 10 HA subjects. All adults and children are native speakers of Dutch. The

children are between seven and eight years of age at the moment of testing. The

number of subjects, the range and median age of testing of the different groups are

given in Table 3. A significant group difference is found in the chronological age at

testing (Kruskall-Wallis with the three child subject groups as grouping variable 2=12.514, p=.002). The clinical groups are tested at similar chronological ages, but the

NH children are younger, (NH-CI MWU=9, p=.002, NH-HA MWU=11, p=.003) with


a median age differences of ten months.

For both clinical groups, the degree of hearing loss before and after

intervention and the age at first fit of HA and age at implantation are given in Table 4.

Appendices 1 and 2 give an overview of the individual characteristics of the CI and HA

subjects respectively. Median degree of hearing loss before intervention is 119 dB for

the CI children and 63 dB for the HA children. Median degree of hearing loss after

intervention is 31 dB for the CI children and 29 for the HA children. The median age

of first HA fit was 4 months for the CI population and 8 months for the HA

population. The CI children received their first CI at the median age of 14 months.

Nine out of ten CI children received a Nucleus device (24, Freedom or Sprint).

Table 4: Group characteristics with respect to hearing loss (HL)

measured in decibels (dB) and age at intervention measured in months

CI children HA children

range median range median

Unaided HL (dB) 130 - 82 119 97 - 48 63

Aided HL (dB) 45 - 18 31 48 - 20 29

Age at HA fit 1 - 10 4 2 - 82 8

Age at implantation 5 - 67 14

The comparison of the two clinical groups reveals no significant differences in

age at first HA fit (median age: CI children 4 months, HA children 8 months, MWU=25.5,

p=.108), nor when we compare HA fit in the HA children and age at implantation in

Table 3: Group characteristics with respect to

chronological age in months.

Group Number Age range Median age

NH 10 82 – 90 84

CI 10 83 – 104 94

HA 10 84 – 103 93


the CI children (median age: CI children 14 months, HA children 8 months, MWU=44,

p=.650). The degree of hearing loss with HA/CI does not differ (median hearing loss: CI

children 31 dB, HA children 29 dB, MWU=48, p=.909). However, as expected, the degree

of hearing loss before intervention is highly significantly different for the two clinical

groups (median hearing loss: CI children 119 dB, HA children 63 dB, MWU=3, p≤.000).

Cochlear implantation is generally considered only for children who have a loss of at

least 90 dB in the better ear and who do not show sufficient hearing gain with a

classical hearing aid.

Data collection. In this study, the use of co-referring expressions in hearing-

impaired populations will be investigated in a semi-structure context, i.e. in the

production of two narratives. In this study, we use narratives with four phases: an

exposition, a triggering event, an attempt and a solution (Zariff, 2005). The subjects

were asked to tell two stories consisting of four pictures each. Initially, the pictures

were given to the subjects in a random order. They were then asked to put the pictures

in the right order. If necessary, the investigator helped the subject to do so. The subject

was given a couple of minutes to look at the pictures. He or she was then asked to tell a

story about the picture set.

The first narrative revolves around a set of male actors and masculine objects

(i.e. papa 'daddymasc.sg', jongen 'boymasc.sg', bal 'ballmasc.sg', see 1a). The second one has

female actors and a feminine object (i.e. mama 'mommyfem.sg', meisje 'girlfem.sg', poes

'catfem.sg', see 1b). Obviously, these actors and objects were chosen precisely to trigger

co-referring expressions to respectively masculine and feminine antecedents. The two

picture sets are given in Figure 1 and 2. An example of a narrative produced by a 7-

year-old hearing child based on the second picture set can be found in (1) supra.


Figure 1: The first narrative picture set triggering co-referring expressions to masculine

antecedents.

Figure 2: The second narrative picture set triggering co-referring expressions to

feminine antecedents.


Statistics. Conventional five-parameter-statistics are used for descriptive

statistics (Woods, Fletcher & Hughes, 1986). Box-and-whisker plots graphically

represent the results, with extremes displayed with an asterisk. Normal frequency

distribution is investigated with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. We will give median

group results and use two-tailed non-parametric tests for the analytical statistics because

not all group results were normally distributed (Appendices 3 and 4). With respect to

the linguistic ways of co-referring and the information status of the referent, two-tailed

Chi Square (( 2) and Mann Whitney U (MWU) tests are used for within group analyses.

A for between-group analyses with respect to both preferential ways of co-referring and

overall score on co-reference (OCrS), Kruskall-Wallis (KW) and MWU tests are

performed. As for the clinical populations, Spearman correlations (SpC) are used to

investigate the effects of age at implantation and degree of hearing before and after

intervention. Scatterplots with a linear regression graphically represent correlations with

age at implantation with a 95% confidence interval based on the NH population. A

Bonferroni correction was applied to all significant P-values in case of multiple testing,

in order to control the family-wise error rate.

6. Analyses & results

All possible nominal expressions referring to the following actors and objects of the

narrative have been analyzed: the boy, father and ball in the first narrative (masculine

antecedents, see Figure 1), and the girl, mother and cat in the second narrative

(feminine antecedents, see Figure 2). Only transitive constructions have been taken into

account, hence excluding prepositional objects. 6.1. Preferential ways of co-referring The first analysis focuses on information status, distinguishing between new and given

information. In this study, we mainly build on the discourse-internal perspective on

information context (see section 2). As such, given information is defined as what is

already presented in the discourse context, while new information as what is still to be


introduced by the speaker to the hearer (Halliday, 1967; Ariel, 1990). Under these

criteria, we obtain a total of 176 contexts in which new information is introduced and

679 given information contexts, across populations.

Secondly, we have classified the different nominal expressions using the

following categories, see also (2): proper name, indefinite description, definite

description, possessive description, demonstrative description, demonstrative pronoun,

definite pronoun, and non-lexicalized nominal. In total, we obtain a set of 855 nominal

expressions across populations.

No differences were found for the total number of nominal expressions

obtained between populations across information contexts (median number adults 25.5,

NH children 18.5, CI children 18, HA children 20, KW=5.973 , p=.113). Likewise, no

differences were found with respect to the number of nominal expressions in given

information contexts alone (median number adults 21.5, NH children 14.5, CI children 13.5,

HA children 15, KW=5.973, p=.113, KW=5.533, p=.137). However, analyzing new

information contexts separately, some group differences were found: here, NH children

use less nominal expressions than adults, CI and HA children (median number adults 46,

NH children 4, CI children 4, HA children 4.5, KW=8.410, p=.038; adults versus NH

MWU=22.5, p=.010; NH versus CI MWU=31.5, p=.045; NH versus HA MWU=22.5,

p=.010).

However, computing the proportion of new information contexts on the total

of nominal expressions investigated, no significant differences are found (median

percentage adults 16.70, NH children 21.76, CI children 22.88, HA children 24.75, KW=4.418,

p=.220). Therefore, all further analyses will be performed on proportional data. Table 5

summarizes the absolute and median number of nominal expressions obtained per

population.


Table 5: Absolute and median number (N) of non-prepositional nominal

expressions per population.

New information Given information Across contexts

Group Total N Median N Total N Median N Total N Median N

Adults 46 4.5 211 21.5 257 25.5

NH 39 4 157 14.5 196 18.5

CI 44 4 159 13.5 203 18

HA 47 4.5 152 15 199 20

In line with previous research (see section 2), a tight relation is found between

the type of co-referring expression used and the information context: while indefinite

nominals introduce new information, definite nominals and pronouns are found in

given information contexts. For all populations investigated in this study, this relation

between linguistic way of co-reference and information context is highly significant

(adults 2=105.365, p≤.000; NH children 2=89.475, p≤.000; CI children 2=45.812,

p≤.000; HA children 2=47.023). When analyzing new and given information contexts

separately, all groups have identical preferential linguistic ways of co-reference (see

Figure 3).

As can be read from 3, indefinite nominal expressions are used to introduce

information into the discourse (adults MWU=5.5, p≤.000; NH children MWU=11,

p=.002; CI children MWU= 24, p=.001; HA children MWU=11, p=.001), whereas for

given information contexts, definite and demonstrative pronouns and non-lexicalized

nominals are preferred (definite pronouns: adults MWU=8, p=.001; NH children MWU=20,

p=.005; CI children MWU=21, p=.019; HA children MWU=19.5, p=.016; demonstrative

pronouns: adults MWU=15, p=.007; NH children MWU=20, p=.005; CI children

MWU=21.5, p=.015; HA children MWU=27, p=.041; non-lexicalized nominals: adults

MWU=15, p=.007; NH children MWU=20, p=.005; CI children MWU=20, p=.005; HA

children MWU=20, p=.005). No significant preferences for any of the other linguistic

ways of co-reference (i.e. proper name, demonstrative description, possessive

description, definite description) were found.


Figure 3: The median proportion of referential types (and lower quartile, upper

quartile, range) in function of information status and population. The proportional

number of the different nominal expressions (indefinite description, definite pronoun,

demonstrative pronoun and non-lexicalized nominals) are presented as a function of

information context (new and given) for all groups: white for adults, light grey for

normal-hearing children, medial grey for cochlear-implanted children, and dark grey for

children with conventional hearing aids. Statistical outliers are indicated by asterisks.

The obtained tight relation between type of nominal expression and

information context is found both in case of masculine and feminine referents (masculine

referents: adults 2=57.088, p≤.000; NH children 2 =58.796, p≤.000; CI children 2

=32.336, p≤.000; HA children 2 =24.333, p=.001; feminine referents: adults 2 =51.150,


p≤.000; NH children 2 =34.966, p≤.000; CI children 2 =20.165, p=.005; HA children 2

=25.513, p=.001).

6.2. The Overall Co-reference Score (OCrR) In what follows, the production of nominal expressions is quantified by means of an

Overall Co-reference Score (OCrS), a performance measure based on the target hierarchy of

nominal expressions as found in the adult narratives.

Target hierarchy. To define the target use of nominal expressions in

particular information contexts, we have analyzed the 257 expressions obtained from

adult narratives. For each information context, the median percentage use of different

types of nominal expressions has been computed on 10 adults. This yields a target

hierarchy reflecting the relation between the type of nominal expression and the

information context.

Indefinite noun phrases are significantly preferred by adult speakers in new

information contexts, while they are avoided in given information contexts (median

percentage: new information 45, given information 0; statistics MWU=5.500, p≤.000). Yet, on

the other hand, in given information contexts, adults significantly prefer to co-refer by

means of a definite pronoun, demonstrative pronoun or a non-lexicalized nominal,

while these nominal expressions are avoided in new information contexts (median

percentage: definite pronouns: new information 0, given information 34, MWU=8, p=.001;

demonstrative pronouns: new information 0, given information 9.6, MWU=15, p=.002; non-

lexicalized nominals: new information 0, given information 5.6, MWU=15; p=.002).

Adults do not have a significant preference for definite nominals as a function

of information status (median percentage: new information 22.5, given information 23.7,

MWU=45, p=.704). Definite nominals can thus be used to both introduce new

information and co-refer with given information. For all other nominal expressions no

significant effects were found in the adult narratives: proper names (median percentage:

new information 0, given information 4.62, KW=27, p=.089), demonstrative noun phrases

(median percentage: new information 0, given information 1.67, KW=47, p=.804), and

possessive noun phrases (median percentage: new information 0, given information 4.45,

KW=40.5, p=.443).


Figure 4: The median percentage use of nominal expressions (and lower quartile, upper

quartile, range) in new information context in adult narratives. The proportion of

nominal expressions produced in new information contexts in the adult narratives is

presented for the different types of (co)referring expressions as previously listed in (2).

Statistical outliers are indicated by asterisks.


Figure 5: The median percentage use of nominal expressions (and lower quartile, upper

quartile, range) in given information context in adult narratives. The proportion of

nominal expressions produced in given information contexts in the adult narratives is

presented for the different types of (co)referring expressions as previously listed in (2).

Statistical outliers are indicated by asterisks.

The Overall Co-reference Score (OCrS). The proportional use of each type

of linguistic expression in a new/given context serves as a reference norm to measure

the children's performance (normal-hearing and hearing-impaired). As such, each

nominal expression uttered by the child receives the corresponding median percentage

score obtained from adult data in the same information context. Per child, the median

of all different scores obtained is computed. This is illustrated in Table 6 by analyzing

the child narrative given in (1) earlier on.


Table 6: Illustrating OCrS calculation based on example (1)

Information

context

Nominal expression Example Score

new

information

proper name mama 'mommy' 0

indefinite description een poesje 'a little cat' 45 median (=OCrS) 22.5 given

information

definite description de poes 'the cat' 24

definite pronoun ze 'she' 34

definite description het meisje 'the girl' 24

definite description de poes 'the cat' 24

proper name mama 'mommy' 4

demonstrative pronoun die 'that one' 10

demonstrative pronoun die 'that one' 10

definite description het poesje 'the little cat' 24

median (=OCrS) 19.25

Child groups do not obtain significant scores on the OCrS (new information:

median score NH children 28.13, CI children, 19.69, HA children 20.25, statistics KW=5.048,

.080; given information: median score NH children 16.66, CI children 19.93, HA children 17.42,

statistics KW=.320, p=.852, see Figure 6 and 7 for new and given information

contexts respectively)

For both clinical populations, age at HA fit and unaided and aided hearing

loss were not found to be explanatory factors for the subject spread in both new

information contexts (age at HA fit: CI children SpC=-.234, p=.515, HA children

SpC=.553, p=.097; unaided hearing loss: CI children SpC=.583, p=.077, HA children SpC=.-

654, p=.080; unaided hearing loss: CI children SpC=-.318, p=.371, HA children SpC=.167,

p=.644) and given information contexts (age at HA fit: CI children: SpC=.105, p=.773 ;

HA children SpC=.311, p=.382; unaided hearing loss: CI children SpC=-.244, p=.497, HA

children SpC=-.188, p=.603; aided hearing loss: CI children SpC=-.146, p=.688, HA children

SpC=559, p=.603).


Figure 6: Overall Co-reference Score in new information contexts. The median OCrS

(and lower quartile, upper quartile, range and extremes) is presented for the following

groups: NH = normal-hearing children, CI = cochlear-implanted children, and HA =


Figure 7: Overall Co-reference Score in given information contexts. The median OCrS

(and lower quartile, upper quartile, range and extremes) is presented for the following

groups: NH = normal-hearing children, CI = cochlear-implanted children, and HA =



As for the CI population, the effect of age at implantation on the OCrS in

given information contexts is marginally significant (new information SpC=-.093, p=.798,

given information SpC=-.685, p=.058). Early implantation positively influences OCrS,

allowing children to perform within NH range (see Figure 8).

Figure 8: Effect of age at implantation on the overall Co-reference Score in given

information contexts. The absolute OCrS is presented for the cochlear-implanted

children individually by dots. A solid line indicates the linear regression. The upper and

lower boundary of the 95% confidence interval of the NH group are indicated by

dotted lines.

7. Discussion

The outcomes based on elicited narrative production indicate that by seven years of

age, not only normal-hearing children but also two clinical populations of hearing-

impaired children have acquired the tight relation between the type of nominal

expression used and information context. As such, they perform target-like on


matching the type of nominal expression with the information context. Both normal-

hearing and hearing-impaired children prefer indefinite nominal expressions in new

information contexts and prefer definite pronouns, demonstrative pronouns and non-

lexicalized nominals in given information contexts. Identical preferential ways of co-

reference are found in adult narratives.

These results are further corroborated by calculating the Overall Co-reference

Score, a performance measure based on the target hierarchies of nominal expressions as

found in the adult narratives. Again, all child populations (hearing and hearing-

impaired) performed similarly in both new and given information contexts.

Interestingly, a vast number of studies signal the late use of indefinite

nominals in new information contexts in normal-hearing children. Although children

do produce indefinites, they rarely use them target-like from a pragmatic point of view

before they are seven years of age. Instead, they predominantly use definite nominal

expressions to introduce new information, a rather marginal option in adult speech.

This pragmatic delay with respect to indefinites has been reported to persist even until

the age of ten (Warden, 1976; Sauvaire & Vion, 1979; Hickmann, Hendriks, Roland, &

Liang, 1996; Bamberg, 1986/1987, Bamberg & Marchmann, 1994).

These findings are interesting in view of the performance of both clinical

groups under investigation. Bearing in mind that these children perform target-like by

the age of 7 years, it indicates that HAs and CIs are able to provide the necessary

auditory input for the acquisition of co-reference, a syntax-pragmatics interface

phenomenon.

Morphological attributes of the pronominal paradigm. However, a fine-

grained qualitative analysis of the narratives with respect to morphological attributes of

person, number, case and gender indicates that, unlike their NH peers, both clinical

groups still fall out on a number of fine-tuning issues. As for grammatical number,

person and case, no errors are found. The use of the masculine accusative definite

pronoun (hem 'him) in subject position may be regarded as a regional variant (see

SAND, Barbiers e.a. 2004 and the use of subject hem by three adults) and as such has

been left out of the error analysis.


For grammatical gender, nevertheless, both clinical groups produce more non-

targetlike nominal expressions than adults and their NH peers. Two CI children and

two HA children produced in total ten non-targetlike nominal expressions with respect

to grammatical gender. As illustrated in (5) prior, one CI child uses the feminine

nominative pronoun ze 'she' to co-refer with two male actors in the narrative (i.e. the

father and boy). As for the CI children (AMB 8;0.7 and ANN 6;11.26), five definite

nominative pronouns with feminine gender (e.g. ze 'she') co-referred with a masculine

antecedent. As for the HA children, three nominal expressions with feminine gender on

the possessive determiner (e.g. haar papa 'her daddy') co-referred with a masculine

antecedent (ELI 7;7.10) and two definite nominative pronouns with masculine gender

(e.g. hij 'he') co-referred with a feminine antecedent. To ascertain what biological gender

a child actually thought some actor was supposed to represent on the pictures, the

investigator asked the child, at the end of the elicited narrative, whether the actor

depicted on the picture set was either a boy or a girl. In all cases of gender errors, the

children affirmed the intended gender of the picture.

No such errors were found in the ten NH children nor in the ten adults. The

mere presence of such errors is therefore indicative of a persisting problem with the

acquisition of grammatical gender. The non-target nominal expressions as for gender

agreement produced by hearing-impaired children suggest that they have not yet

acquired all morphological attributes of the pronominal paradigm by seven years of age.

Gender at the morphosyntax-semantics interface. These results are in line

with those found on the acquisition of the pronominal paradigm and its morphological

attributes (chapter 2, section 5.2). Of the different morphological attributes of the

pronominal paradigm, gender is the last to be acquired by both normal-hearing children

(40 months) and cochlear-implanted children (95 months). As such, the results indicate

that gender can cause difficulties in language acquisition.

Based on a set of linguistic observations, we propose that gender is situated at

the morphosyntax-semantics interface. Sorace (2005) previously proposed that interface

domains cause difficulties for language acquisition, since they involve the co-ordination

of different types of linguistic knowledge. As such, gender can be expected to cause

difficulties in the acquisition of the pronominal paradigm.


Gender in morphosyntax. Gender can be defined as regulating "classes of

nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words" (Hockett, 1958: 231). As such,

gender assigns all nominal expressions (including inanimate ones) to classes. Moreover,

gender is marked on neighbouring words for agreement (Corbett, 1991), like on

possessive determiners (haar papa 'her daddy').

In the Dutch pronominal paradigm, gender marking on personal pronouns is

restricted to third person singular pronoun (see Table 1, chapter 1; Donaldson, 1997;

Siewierska, 2008). Based on cross-linguistic observations, gender has been proposed to

be an attribute of third person pronouns rather than first and second person pronouns

(Greenberg, 1963: 96). Moreover, it has been proposed to be an attribute of singular

pronouns rather than non-singular pronouns (Greenberg, 1963: 96).

On a total of 378 languages of the world, 67% of these languages do not have

gender distinctions on personal pronouns. Of the languages that do have gender

classes, half of these languages (49%) among which Dutch distinguish between these

classes only on third person singular pronouns (Siewirska, 2008).

Gender in semantics. Most gender distinctions on personal pronouns are

related to biological sex. As such, pronouns used for male referents are masculine and

those used for females are feminine. The treatment of other referents varies. In many

other European languages, they constitute a separate set of neuter pronouns. Dutch

pronouns distinguish between three gender classes: masculine, feminine and neuter.

Grammatical gender is considered to be closely connected with semantic

properties (Garnham, Oakhill, Ehrlich, & Carreiras; 1995). A relation is found between

grammatical gender and semantic gender, since male and female, masculine and

feminine go hand in hand in a wide variety of languages (Hedley, 2004/2005). Entities

are proposed to have a conceptual gender, which is consistent with grammatical gender

of the nominal expression (Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips, 2003: 69).

The biological concept of masculinity and femininity are considered to have

fuzzy boundaries (Deaux, 1987; Maccoby, 1987/1998; Helgeson, 1994). Likewise the

grammatical concept of masculine and feminine gender do not have fixed boundaries.


Gender in language acquisition. Based on previous research and in line with

our predictions based on the influence of interface domains on language acquisition,

gender on personal pronouns have been found to cause difficulties in language

acquisition.

Biological sex. Children are able to distinguish between male and female

biological sex from a very early age (Fagot, Leinbach, & Hagan, 1986). By nine months

of age, they can distinguish between female and male faces (Leinbach & Fagot, 1993).

By nine to twelve months of age, they can associate female and male voices with female

and male faces (Poulin-Dubois, Serbin, Kenyon, & Derbyshire, 1994).

The acquisition of grammatical gender, is proposed to be influences by

biological gender: girls acquire feminine first, while boys masculine (Ruke-Davina, 1973;

Mills, 1986; Christofidou & Stephany, 1997). With respect to biological gender,

Girouard, Ricard & Décharie (1997) have found that girls are faster in reaching a target

level of pronoun comprehension and production compared to boys.

On the other hand, it is proposed that with respect to gender, children

produce more errors when referring to female entities when compared to male entities

(Loeb, 1994; Moore, 1995/2001; Rispoli, 1994). As such, the substitution of the

masculine form in a feminine slot is more frequent in child speech, when compare to

the substitution of the feminine form in a masculine slot.

Grammatical gender. Grammatical errors with respect to the gender attribute

on Dutch determiners are found until six years of age in children learning their first as

well as second language (Hulk & Cornips, 2006; Blom, Polinska, Weerman, 2006; for

Dutch: De Houwer, 1987; Van Beurden, Nijen-Twilhaar, 1990; Van der Velde, 2003).

Similarly, grammatical gender is an aspect of language, which non-native speakers have

considerable difficulty with when learning a second language (Guillelemon & Grosjean,

2001; Harley, 1979; Scherag, Demuch, Roesler, Neville & Roeder, 2004).

Similarly to the acquisition of pronouns in general (see 3.1, chapter 2), previous

research has indicated that with respect to the person attribute, English-speaking

children show different styles (Clark, 1978; Oshima-Takane, 1985, 1992; Shipley &

Shipley, 1969; Charney, 1980 Schiff-Myers, 1983; Chiat, 1986). The majority of children


produce pronouns target-like, while other produce reversal errors persistently during

the acquisition of pronouns.

8. Conclusion

The results indicate that by seven years of age, hearing-impaired children have

mapped co-reference at the syntax-pragmatics interface, i.e. acquired that there is a

close relationship between the linguistic type of co-referring expression used and the

information status of the entity it refers to. Indefinite nominal expressions are preferred

in contexts of new information, while pronouns and non-lexicalized nominals in

contexts of given information. Thus, based on elicited narrative production data,

cochlear-implanted children and children with conventional hearing aids develop co-

reference in narrative production similar to normal-hearing children. As such, in case of

a moderate hearing loss of median 63 dB, a conventional hearing, and in case of severe

to profound hearing loss of median 119 dB, a cochlear implant, may be considered to

be an effective way to provide pre-lingual oral deaf children with the necessary sensory

input to acquire co-reference and therefore also to enhance their conversational skills.


Appendices Appendix 1 Subject characteristics of the CI population

ID sex age ear age at

HA

fit

unaid

ed HL

(db)

HL

with CI

(dbc)

device age

at CI

amb f 8;0 R 0;9 120 35 Nucleus 24 1;1

L 120 35 Nucleus Freedom 6;3

ann f 6;11 R 0;1 120 27 Nucleus 24 0;7

L - 38 Digisonic 4;8

axe m 7;10 L 0;2 120 33 Digisonic 1;5

R 69 48 HA 0;2

dyl m 7;11 L 0;4 120 25 Nucleus Sprint 1;7

R 120 25 Nucleus Sprint 1;2

emm f 7;10 R 0;1 115 25 Nucleus 24 0;10

L 112 33 NucleusFreedom 5;10

jor m 8;7 R 0;10 130 45 Nucleus 24 1;6

mor f 8;8 R 0;8 85 35 HA 2;6

L 82 40 Digisonic 5;7

rox f 8;6 R 0;4 117 17 Nucleus 24 0;5

L 117 18 Nucleus 24 1;3

tes f 7;6 R 0;2 112 30 Nucleus 24 1;7

L 112 50 HA 0;2

ves m 7;4 L 0;4 57 28 HA 0;4

R 90 32 NucleusFreedom 0;8


Appendix 2 Subject characteristics of the HA population

ID sex age at

testing

ear un-

aided

HL

(db)

HL

with

HA

(db)

device age at

HA fit

ain f 8;2 L 62 35 Phonak 4;2

R 80 45 Phonak 4;2

eli f 7;7 L 63 48 Widex 0;9

R 63 48 Widex 0;9

jes m 7;3 L 62 35 Phonak 0;3

R 58 28 Phonak 0;3

jul f 8;6 L 57 28 Phonak 2;1

R 47 30 Phonak 2;1

jus f 7;6 L 93 ? Widex 0;2

R 97 28 Widex 0;2

lob f 7;2 L 57 37 Widex 0;7

R 58 28 Widex 0;7

lot f 8;3 L 43 ? GNResound 4;11


mat m 8;7 L 52 ? GNResound 6;10


rob m 7;1 L 75 28 Widex 0;7

R 72 28 Widex 0;7

zen m 8;0 L 85 25 Widex 0;2

R 85 25 Widex 0;2


Appendix 3 Test results of Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality on OCrS

Group New information Given information

Z p Z p

Adult .458 .985 .699 .712

NH .947 .331 .448 .988

CI .474 .978 .580 .890

HA 1.014 .256 .452 .987


Appendix 4 Test results of Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality on linguistic ways of co-referring in function of

information context (IF)

IF

Co-referring

expression

Adults NH CI HA

Z p Z p Z P Z P

New Proper name 1.657 .008 1.139 .149 1.003 .266 .808 .531

Indefinite DP 1.435 .032 1.063 .208 1.003 .266 .956 .320

Definite DP .784 .570 1.052 .218 .736 .651 .685 .737

Possessive DP 1.254 .086 1.525 .019 1.657 .008 1.525 .019

Demonstrative DP 1.169 .130 .873 .432 1.139 .149 1.525 .019

Demonst. pronoun * * * * 1.657 .008 1.657 .008

Definite pronoun 1.491 .023 * * 1.525 .019 1.491 .023

Non-lexicalized * * * * * * * *

Given Proper name .692 .724 .702 .709 .821 .511 1.100 .177

Indefinite DP 1.657 .008 1.657 .008 1.525 .019 1.657 .008

Definite DP .651 .790 .629 .823 .600 .865 .755 .618

Possessive DP 1.140 .149 1.350 .052 1.144 .146 .963 .312

Demonstrative DP .875 .428 .729 .663 .812 .524 .963 .312

Demonst. pronoun .763 .606 .758 .613 1.131 .155 .721 .676

Definite pronoun .474 .978 .749 .629 .611 .850 .760 .610

Non-lexicalized .913 .375 .774 .587 .738 .648 .838 .483

*When no variance is present, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test cannot be performed.



Chapter 5: Conclusion 1. Aims of the study

Previous research reveals very little about the acquisition of personal

pronouns and their antecedent relations in hearing-impaired children. Only two

studies have reported on the acquisition of personal pronouns in hearing-impaired

children: (i) French-speaking cochlear-implanted children produce significantly less

pronouns than normal hearing peers (Le Normand, Ouellet & Cohen, 2003). (ii)

Two English-speaking children with conventional hearing aids acquire first and

second person pronouns later than NH age peers (Cole, Oshima-Takane &

Yaremko, 1994).

A measure for effectiveness. In this study, the acquisition of personal

pronouns and their antecedent relations are investigated as a measure for the

effectiveness of hearing intervention in deaf born children. This investigation is

based on a set of linguistic observations:

(i) Personal pronouns, and especially weak pronouns like (h)em 'him', are

short morphemes with low perceptual prominence and can therefore be

hard to discriminate in incoming speech.

(ii) The acquisition of the pronominal paradigm is a difficult process due to

its semantic complexity, lack of morphoponological regularity, and

syntactically redundant status (Goldschneider & DeKeyser, 2001).

(iii) The acquisition of personal pronouns involves the coordination of

different types of knowledge: the morphological attributes of the

Chapter 5: Conclusion 146

pronominal paradigm, the syntactic binding relation and the syntactic-

pragmatic co-reference relation. Children have been shown to

experience difficulties in exactly these interface domains of language

acquisition (Sorace, 2005).

This study set out to examine whether a cochlear implant and

conventional hearing aid provide congenitally deaf born children with sufficient

auditory input to acquire syntactically and semantically complex morphemes with

low prominence, such as personal pronouns that function at a linguistic interface

domain. As such, the acquisition of personal pronouns in hearing-impaired

children is compared to that in hearing children.

Developmental steps. This study investigates different developmental

steps in the acquisition of personal pronouns (see Figure 14, section 1). In chapter

two, three developmental steps are examined in the emergence of the pronominal

paradigm and its morphological attributes between one and seven years of age: (1)

the first emergence of a personal pronoun; (2) the building of a full pronominal

paradigm; and (3) the ability to reach a target-like frequency of use of the full set of

pronouns. Between seven and eight years of age, two more developmental steps

are investigated: the syntactic binding relation between a reflexive and accusative

pronoun and its antecedent (chapter three), and the syntactic-pragmatic co-

referring relation between a nominal expression and its antecedent (chapter four).

2. Different developmental steps in pronoun acquisition: Summary of the main results

2.1. The pronominal paradigm. Developmental delay. The acquisition of the pronominal paradigm is investigated

in three developmental steps based on longitudinal spontaneous speech of nine

cochlear-implanted children implanted before 20 months. The results indicate that


their acquisition of pronouns is delayed in the first two developmental steps: (i)

While hearing children produce their first personal pronoun at 29 months,

cochlear-implanted children do not produce their first pronoun until 36 months.

(ii) The different morphological attributes of the pronominal paradigm (deficiency,

person, number, case, animacy and gender) are acquired between 27 and 48

months by hearing children, as opposed to 48 to 94 months in cochlear-implanted

children. As such, the latter start the acquisition of personal pronouns with a

developmental delay.

Non-deviant delay. Importantly, hearing and cochlear-implanted

children acquire the different morphological attributes and values of the

pronominal paradigm in an identical order. The first acquired attribute is

deficiency, which distinguishes strong and weak pronouns. Deficiency is followed

by person, number and case, which are acquired around the same time. Animacy

and finally gender complete the acquisition of the full pronominal paradigm. As

such, cochlear-implanted children acquire the pronominal paradigm in a delayed

but non-deviant way compared to hearing children.

Reversible delay. Moreover, the results on frequency of use of pronouns

at a later age indicate that cochlear-implanted children are able to partially catch up

with hearing children and thus partially catch up the acquisition delay. Based on

frequency of use of pronouns measured in tokens and types, cochlear-implanted

children still use a less varied set of pronouns at six years of age. However, by

seven years of age, they have reached a target-like frequency of use of pronouns

analogous to normal hearing children. This indicates that they have partially caught

up their initial delay in the acquisition of pronouns.

2.2. Binding relations The acquisition of binding relations is investigated in twenty-two hearing-impaired

children of which twelve cochlear-implanted children and ten children wearing

conventional hearing aids. Binding relations are defined as the syntactic relation


between a reflexive or pronoun and its antecedent and have been investigated for

singular third person reflexives and accusative pronouns in two elicited

comprehension tasks, i.e. a picture selection and truth judgment task.

Reflexives. By eight years of age, both normal hearing, cochlear-

implanted and children wearing conventional hearing aids perform at ceiling level

on the comprehension of reflexives in the truth judgment task. In the picture

selection task, the clinical populations perform below target. However, we argue

that it is reasonable to believe that they will be catching up with their hearing peers

within the next couple of months based on their high performance levels (median

percentage of 95 and 100).

Weak pronouns and a trochaic preference. As for the accusative

pronouns investigated in this study, comprehension is elicited for both strong

pronouns hem ‘him’ [h∂m] and haar 'her' [ha:r] and their weak counterparts (h)em

‘him’ [∂m] and d'r 'her' [d∂r]. Surprisingly, the results of this study indicate that

hearing children acquire binding in weak pronouns before their strong

counterparts. We propose that this is related to a preference for the trochaic

pattern, which is predominant in the input language. Weak pronouns are first

acquired because they fit into this trochaic pattern, while strong pronouns do not:

PW s'wastt w(h)emm as opposed to PW s'wastt PW s'hemm .

Developmental delay. As for the comprehension of pronouns, both

clinical populations perform differently from normal hearing children. Weak

pronouns are not yet acquired by that age. We propose that this is not only related

to the low perceptual prominence of this type of pronouns but also to their

deficient pitch perception. The discrimination and identification of Dutch metric

structure has been argued to rely precisely on pitch. Since speech processors in

cochlear implants provide only reduced access to pitch cues, this particular

population is less sensitive to the trochaic metric pattern of a transitive verb

followed by a weak pronoun.


2.3. Co-reference Based on semi-spontaneous elicited narrative production, the acquisition of co-

reference is investigated in twenty hearing-impaired children, ten of whom wear

cochlear implants and the other ten conventional hearing aids. Co-reference is

defined as the grammatical relation between a co-referring nominal expression,

among which personal pronouns, and its antecedent. This grammatical relation

must be situated at the syntax-pragmatics interface, since there is a close relation

between the type of nominal expression and the information status of the entity it

refers to.

The results indicate that by eight years of age both clinical populations

have mapped co-reference at the syntax-pragmatics interface and perform similar

to normal hearing children. They have acquired that there is the close relationship

between the ways of co-referring used to co-refer and the information status of the

entity it refers to. Adults, hearing and hearing-impaired children prefer the same

types of nominal expressions depending on the information contexts: Indefinite

nominal expressions are preferred to introduce new information in the discourse

context (e.g. een poes 'a cat'), while pronouns and non-lexicalized nominals (e.g. ze

'she) in contexts of given information.

3. The benefit of implantation

Based on the results of the acquisition of personal pronouns in Dutch-speaking

cochlear-implanted children, we consider cochlear implantation to yield a benefit

for language acquisition in deaf born children. We have found that a cochlear

implant implanted by 21 months of age may be considered to be an effective way

to provide pre-lingual oral deaf children with the necessary sensory input to acquire

personal pronouns and their syntactic and pragmatic relations with the antecedent.

A child can thus achieve a target-like production and comprehension of

grammatically complex morphemes with low prominence like personal pronouns

despite an initial deprivation of auditory signals. These results are in line with


previous studies revealing a benefit of early cochlear implantation (Miyamoto,

Svirsky & Robbins, 1997; Tomblin, Barker & Hubbs, 2007; Nicholas & Geers,

2007; Schauwers, 2007; Govaerts et al., 2008; a.o.).

Developmental delay. Before implantation, deaf born children generally

develop a delay in language acquisition caused by an unsuccessful auditory access

to human speech. This delay in language acquisition is argued to equal the amount

of time during which a child was deprived of sensory input (Ponton, Don,

Eggermont, Waring & Masuda, 1996). As such, children implanted later in life,

have a greater language delay than those implanted earlier in life.

The results of this study confirm the presence of a developmental delay in

the acquisition of personal pronouns in cochlear-implanted children. Nine deaf

born children with a median hearing loss of 115 dB who have been implanted at

the median age of 12 months initially start out with a delay in the first two

developmental steps in the acquisition of personal pronouns (see sections 5.1 and

5.2 of chapter 2).

The influence of age at implantation on the developmental delay in

language acquisition has also been confirmed by the results of this study. For the

clinical population under investigation in this study, age at implantation has been

found to positively influence the very first step in the acquisition of personal

pronouns, i.e. the emergence of the first pronoun at 36 months of age. The earlier

cochlear implantation takes part, the smaller the developmental delay in the first

step of pronoun acquisition. As such, early implantation can be considered to be a

benefit for the acquisition of personal pronouns.

Non-deviant delay. Importantly, no evidence is found for a deviant

pattern in the order of acquisition of the morphological attributes and values of the

pronominal paradigm for the clinical group of cochlear-implanted children under

investigation. These different morphological attributes and values are acquired in

an identical order by cochlear-implanted and hearing children (see section 5.2 of

chapter 2). This is furthermore corroborated by a detailed analysis of the

acquisition of the person attribute, which is acquired in an identical pattern by


cochlear-implanted and hearing children (see section 5.4 of chapter 2). This

confirmation of a non-deviant acquisitional pattern once more demonstrates the

benefit of cochlear implantation for deaf born children.

These results seem to be in contrast with previous studies attesting a

deviant order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes by cochlear-implanted

children (Svirsky et al, 2002; Spencer et al, 1998; Szagun, 2000). In these studies,

the deviant order of acquisition is attributed to the degree of perceptual

prominence of the different grammatical morphemes. In cochlear-implanted

children, the order of acquisition deviates from that of hearing children because

they are more sensitive to perceptual prominence. Grammatical morphemes with a

low degree of perceptual prominence are hard to perceive in incoming speech and

are, therefore, acquired late. No such effects of perceptual prominence have been

attested in the present study.

We have, however, found a similar fine-grained effect of perceptual

prominence, i.e. pitch perception, on the acquisition of binding relations in

cochlear-implanted children. With respect to the binding relations of weak

pronouns, both children with cochlear implants and conventional hearing aids are

delayed at eight years of age when compared to hearing children. We propose that

these findings may be related to perceptual prominence. While hearing Dutch-

speaking children are sensitive to the trochaic metric structure of a transitive verb

accompanied by a weak pronoun, cochlear-implanted are not. This is probably due

to their very limited access to voice pitch information (Daemers, et al., 2008;

Govaerts, et al., 2008). We propose that CI children experience difficulties to

detect a metric structure that is mainly signaled by the presence or absence of a

pitch accent on respectively the strong or weak syllable. As such, these results are

in line with previous studies finding an effect of perceptual prominence in the

acquisition of grammatical morphemes by cochlear-implanted children.

Reversible delay. As for the delay caused by speech deprivation in

cochlear-implanted children, the question is often addressed whether this delay can

be partially caught up after implantation. It has been shown that due to the benefit

of cochlear implantation on language acquisition, cochlear-implanted children can


partially catch up this initial delay in language acquisition (Hammes, Novak, Rotz,

Willis, Thomas, & Wirth, 2003; Waltzman & Cohen, 1998; Geers, Nicholas &

Sedey, 2003; Svirsky, Teoh, & Neuburger, 2004; Holt, Svirsky, Neuburger &

Miyamoto, 2004; Svirsky, 2005).

This is also confirmed regarding the results of this study on three later

developmental steps in the acquisition of pronouns. The cochlear-implanted

children investigated in this study are able to catch up their initial delay in the

acquisition of pronouns: (i) They reach a targer-like frequency of use of the full set

of pronouns by seven years of age (see section 5.3 of chapter 2); (ii) They

comprehend the binding relation of reflexives by eight years of age (see chapter 3);

(iii) They have acquire the syntactic-pragmatic relation of co-reference by eight

years of age (see chapter 4).

Children implanted around four to five years of age have been shown to

develop language at a growth rate that is on a par with hearing children (Kirk et al.,

2002; Robbins, Koch, Osberger, ZimmermanPhilips & Kishon-Rabin, 2004;

Svirsky, Robbins, Kirk, Pisoni & Miyamoto, 2000; Svirsky, Teoh & Neuberger,

2004). Contrastively, children implanted before 24 months have been found to

have a faster-than-normal language growth, allowing them to catch up the initial

developmental delay (Hammes, et al., 2003; Waltzman & Cohen, 1998; Geers,

Nicholas & Sedey, 2003; Svirsky, Teoh et al., 2004; Holt, Svirsky, Neuburger &

Miyamoto, 2004; Svirsky, 2005). The results of this study are in line with these

findings: children implanted before 21 months are able to partially catch their initial

acquisitional delay on personal pronouns. As such, these results once more confirm

the benefit of early cochlear implantation on language development in deaf born

children.

Effect of age at implantation. As mentioned earlier, age at implantation

is found to positively influence the emergence of the first pronoun at 36 months of

age. Additionally, it facilitates the ability to partially catch up the initial

developmental delay by reaching a target-like frequency of use of pronouns

analogous to hearing children at seven years of age. The earlier the implantation

takes part, the earlier pronouns are first produced and used in a target-like


frequency at a later age. These findings are in line with earlier research (Schauwers,

2007), in which the same developmental trend has been found with respect to pre-

lexical babbling for the clinical group under investigation in this study. Thus, the

benefit of early implantation not only influences early language development but

also the later acquisition of personal pronouns.

4. A triple benefit of early implantation This study affirms that early implantation positively influences language acquisition

in deaf born children. Two different causes for this attested positive effect of age at

implantation have been proposed in the literature (Tomblin, Barker, Spencer,

Zhang, & Gantz, 2005; Tomblin, Barker, & Hubbs, 2007). Based on the results of

this study, we propose a third benefit of early implantation. As such, we argue that

early implantation entails a triple benefit for deaf born children.

A first benefit: Reducing the delay. Early implantation can positively

influence language acquisition by reducing the period during which a child has no

access or exposure to human speech. As such, early implantation reduces the

amount of delay in the onset of language development (Tomblin, Barker, Spencer,

Zhang, & Gantz, 2005; Tomblin, Barker, & Hubbs, 2007).

The results of this study are in line with this first benefit of early

implantation. Age at implantation has been found to reduce the delay in onset of

acquisition of pronouns, i.e. the first emergence of a pronoun in spontaneous

speech. Children implanted earlier in life produce their first pronoun before

children implanted later in life. This developmental result of early implantation on

language acquisition in general has been illustrated in Figure 1.


Figure 1: Average language age, representing the development in language

acquisition, is presented in function of chronological age for normal hearing

children (black), early implanted children (dark grey), and later implanted children

(light grey).

A second benefit: Increasing the language growth rate. Secondly,

early implantation can benefit language acquisition by altering the rate of language

growth. Children implanted earlier in life develop a more rapid language growth

than children implanted later in life. As such, early implantation causes for an

increase in language growth rate (Tomblin, Barker, Spencer, Zhang, & Gantz,

2005; Tomblin, Barker, & Hubbs, 2007).

The results on frequency of use of pronouns indicate that children

implanted earlier in life have a greater increase in pronoun types from six to seven

years of age. However, we have found no further evidence for a faster language

growth in early implanted children like in previous research. The second benefit of

increased language growth due to early implantation has been illustrated in Figure

2.





(light grey).

In increase in language growth does not explain how the cochlear-

implanted children investigated in this study are able to catch up the initial delay in

the acquisition of pronouns. However, we propose a third benefit of early

implantation that does offer such an explantation.

A third benefit: Reaching ceiling level. In addition to the two benefits

of early implantation as proposed in previous research (Tomblin, Barker, Spencer,

Zhang, & Gantz, 2005; Tomblin, Barker, & Hubbs, 2007), we propose a third

benefit. Due to early cochlear implantation, deaf children are able to reach the

ceiling level of normal-hearing children sooner than children implanted later in life.

This third benefit is illustrated in Figure 3.





(light grey). The horizontal line represents the ceiling level in language acquisition.

We are able to posit this third benefit of early implantation due to a long

longitudinal follow-up of the cohort of cochlear-implanted children investigated in

this study. It is the first time that the acquisition of one specific phenomenon in

language acquisition, i.e. personal pronouns, has been investigated over a large time

spread in normal-hearing and cochlear-implanted children, i.e. soon after

implantation until eight years of age. This allows for the observation of a ceiling

level in the acquisition of personal pronouns in normal-hearing children and the

importance of this ceiling level for cochlear-implanted children.

A triple benefit of early implantation. We thus propose that early

implantation entails a triple benefit for deaf born children. Early implantation

entails a benefit for deaf born children because (i) it reduces the delay in onset of

language acquisition; (ii) it can positively alter the rate of language growth (i.e.

spead up); and (iii) it allows for a more rapid reaching of the ceiling level as found


in normal hearing children. Figure 4 summarizes the combination of these three

benefits of early implantation. Since only very few evidence of a faster-than-normal

language growth was found in this study, the second benefit is graphically

accompanied by a question mark. We do, however, include this developmental

trend as a benefit of early implantation because it has been attested in previous

research on cochlear-implanted children (Tomblin, Barker, Spencer, Zhang, &

Gantz, 2005; Tomblin, Barker, & Hubbs, 2007).




(light grey).

5. Sensitive periods and developmental theory Sensitive periods. Although the concept of a sensitive period and its applicability

on speech and language development in hearing-impaired children is still under

debate, the benefit of early implantation is in the literature closely tied to the


presence of sensitive periods in language acquisition (Lenneberg; 1967; Birdsong,

1999; Kyle, 1978; Doupe & Kuhl, 1999; Harley & Wang, 1997; Long, 1990;

Newport, Bavelier & Neville, 2001; Singleton, 1995; Ruben & Rapin, 1980; Neville,

1995; Tomblin, Barker, & Hubbs, 2007; Coene & Rooryck, 2008). A sensitive

period can be defined as a time window with a gradual onset and offset, in which

children are most efficient in acquiring language (see Figure 7, chapter 1).

Developmental theory. Multiple sensitive periods have been proposed

to succeed each other in language acquisition in the developmental theory as

proposed by Locke (1997): prenatal vocal learning, a lexical period between 5 and 7

months; an analytical and computational period between 20 and 37 months; and a

period of integration and elaboration from three years onwards (see also Figure 8,

chapter 1).

According to this developmental theory, the start of each new sensitive

period is dependent on the successive completion of the previous one. The

analytical and computational period, for example, should become appropriately

active between 20 to 36 months of age. However, this can only be achieved when

the preceding lexical period has been successfully accomplished. As such, a child

must acquire sufficient lexical material before 36 months of age in order to acquire

morphology, syntax and phonology in the analytical and computational period (see

also Figure 10 and 11 in chapter 1).

As for hearing-impaired children, the ability to reach a native-like

proficiency and target grammar during language acquisition depends on the child's

auditory access to human speech. Consequently, the age of hearing intervention is

of great importance. Cochlear-implanted children gain adequate access to spoken

language at the moment of implantation. As such, age at implantation is considered

to influence language development (Brackett & Zara, 1998; Ito, Suzuki, Toma,

Shiroma, & Kaga, 2002; Ruben & Schwartz, 1999; Ruben, 1997/1999; Manrique et

al., 1999; Robinson, 1998; Harrison, Gordon, Mount, 2005).

As previously mentioned, the results of this study indicate that children

implanted before 21 months achieve full frequency of use and comprehension of

the pronominal paradigm and the relation between pronouns and their


antecedents. We have previously shown that these results confirm the benefit of

early implantation for deaf born children. Additionally, we propose that these

results confirm the predictions of Locke's developmental theory (1997).

The acquisition of personal pronouns takes place in the analytical and

computational period during which children acquire the morphology, syntax and

phonology of their ambient language. In order for this stage to become adequately

active, the child must store sufficient lexical material before 36 months. The clinical

group under investigation in this study has gained access to human speech by the

median age of 12 months and before 21 months of age. They are implanted and

consequently given access to human speech before 36 months of age. This can

thus be considered to be soon enough to fulfil the requirements of the lexical

period before 36 months and to successfully start the analytical and computational

period, in which they acquire amongst others personal pronouns.

5. Deictic pointing and demonstratives: a suggestion for further research.

Joined attention. Finally, the results of this dissertation also indicate some

interesting topics for further research. These involve, amongst many others, the

development of deictic pointing gestures and demonstratives in hearing-impaired

children with cochlear implants and hearing aids, i.e. demonstrative pronouns (die

'that one' and dat 'that'), demonstrative determiners (die jongen 'that boy' and dat

meisje 'that girl') and demonstrative adverbials (daar 'there' and hier 'here'). Both are

ways to establish joined attention between speaker and hearer in the discourse

context and indicate the location of the attentional focus of the conversation as

opposed to the speaker's location (Clark, 1996; Diessel, 2006; Fillmore,

1982/1997).

Language acquisition. Children initially prefer gestural strategies to

establish joined attention in the discourse context: visual attention (i.e. eye gaze)

around six months of age (Scaife & Bruner, 1975; Bruner, 1983; Butterworth &


Jarrett, 1991); and deictic pointing around twelve months of age (Butterworth,

2003; Carpenter Nagell, & Tomasello, 1998; Franco, 2005; Lizskowski, Carpenter,

Henning, Striano, & Tomasello, 2004). It is only later that children establish joined

attention by means of a linguistic strategy. Demonstratives are generally one of the

first words to be produced by children and are often present in children's first two-

word-utterances in spontaneous speech (Clark, 1978/2003; Clark & Sengul, 1978;

Pinker, 1984; Bloom, 2000; Nelson, 1973; Ingram, 1989; Brown, 1973; Wales,

1986; for Dutch Gillis & Schaerlaekens, 2000; Schlichting, 1996; Bol & Kuiken,

1986; De Houwer & Gillis, 1998). As for Dutch, demonstratives are produced

frequently in child speech by the age of one year and two months (Bol & Kuiken,

1986), and are acquired by two years and half (De Houwer & Gillis, 1989).

Although children produce rather complex demonstrative constructions by 28

months of age (Maratsos, 1979; Brown, 1973), the acquisition of the concept of

attentional focus and its distance contrast in the discourse context causes

difficulties until six to seven years of age (Clark, 1978/2003; Clark & Sengul, 1978;

Tanz, 1980; Hallan, 2001).

Prerequisite. Deictic pointing and demonstratives have been found to be

closely related in language acquisition. Initially, demonstratives in child language are

generally accompanied by pointing gestures (Clark & Sengul, 1978; Grieve &

Hoogenraad, 1979; Capirci, Iverson, Pizzuto, & Volterra, 1996; Rodrigo, Gonzalez,

de Vega, Muneton, & Rodriquez, 2004). Moreover, an early use of pointing

gestures has been found to positively influence the acquisition of demonstratives:

the earlier children start to point to the joint focus of attention, the earlier they will

acquire demonstratives (Bates, Bretherton, & Snyder, 1979; Butterworth &

Morisetti, 1996; Desrochers, Morisetti, & Ricard, 1995).

Deictic pointing gestures precede the onset of language and have been

proposed to provide a non-linguistic basis for the process of language acquisition.

Since deictic pointing and demonstratives are closely related in language

acquisition, demonstratives have also been proposed to be a prerequisite for

communication and language (Butterworth, 2003; Diessel, 2006). As such, they are

also a prerequisite for personal pronouns. Building on this insight, it would be


interesting to investigate the acquisition of demonstratives and deictic pointing in

hearing-impaired children. The transcripts and video recordings of longitudinal

spontaneous child speech and semi-spontaneous elicited narratives, at hand in this

study, might also be used to compare the development of deictic pointing and

demonstratives in cochlear-implanted and hearing children.



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Samenvatting in het Nederlands 1. Introductie Cochleair implantaat. Twee op duizend kinderen worden doof geboren. Vaak is de

oorzaak van doofheid gelegen in de cochlea (i.e. het slakkenhuis). Via universeel

neonatale gehoorscreenings, wordt gehoorverlies zeer vroeg gedetecteerd in pasgeboren

baby's. Bijgevolg kan gehoorverlies zeer snel verholpen worden aan de hand van een

conventioneel hoortoestel of een cochleair implantaat. Een klassiek hoortoestel

amplifieert enkel het geluid, terwijl een cochleair implantaat via elektronische stimulatie

de cochleaire functie van het oor simuleert. In het geval van een gehoorverlies van

minder dan 80 dB wordt meestal geopteerd voor een klassiek hoortoestel. In het geval

van een ernstig gehoorverlies van meer dan 80 dB, daarentegen, gaat men meestal over

tot cochleaire implantatie.

Meerwaarde voor taalontwikkeling. Kinderen die doof geboren worden

hebben vaak ernstige en zelfs permanente problemen met het verwerven van gesproken

taal. Voorafgaande studies hebben aangetoond dat deze kinderen significante

vooruitgang maken in taalontwikkeling dankzij een cochleair implantaat. Dit is

aangetoond op verschillende niveaus van taalontwikkeling, waaronder taalperceptie,

fonologie, morfologie en syntaxis. Aldus wordt cochleaire implantatie als een

meerwaarde beschouwd voor de taalontwikkeling van kinderen met een ernstig

gehoorverlies.

Persoonlijke voornaamwoorden. In deze studie werden kinderen met een

cochleair implantaat en conventioneel hoortoestel vergeleken met horende

leeftijdsgenootjes in het verwerven van persoonlijke voornaamwoorden (voor het


Nederlandse pronominale paradigma zie Table 1, hoofdstuk 1). Dit wordt onderzocht

aan de hand van verschillende ontwikkelingsstadia in het verwerven van persoonlijke

voornaamwoorden: (i) de eerste productie van een voornaamwoord in spontane spraak;

(ii) de verwerving van het volledige voornaamwoordelijke paradigma; (iii) het bereiken

van een productief niveau van de complete set van voornaamwoorden; (iv) de

verwerving van bindingsrelaties van reflexieve en accusatieven voornaamwoorden; en

(v) de verwerving van co-referentie relaties van nominale expressies, waaronder

persoonlijke voornaamwoorden (zie ook Figure 14, hoofdstuk 1).

Meting van effectiviteit. In deze studie, beshouwen wij persoonlijke

voornaamwoorden als een meting voor de effectiviteit van gehoorinterventie in

doofgeboren kinderen. Dit is gebaseerd op een aantal taalkundige observaties over

voornaamwoorden: (i) ze zijn laag perceptueel saillant en dus moeilijk te horen; (ii) ze

zijn semantisch, morphofonologisch en syntactisch complexe morfemen; en (iii) ze

fungeren op verschillende taalniveaus: morfologische kennis van het paradigma,

syntactische kennis van de binding relaties en syntactisch-pragmatische kennis van co-

referentie. Het doel van deze studie is om na te gaan of een cochleair implantaat

doofgeboren kinderen voldoende toegang biedt tot gesproken taal om complexe en

weinig saillante morfemen zoals voornaamwoorden te verwerven.

2. Resultaten

Initiële vertraging. Cochleair-geïmplanteerde kinderen vertonen een

vertraging in de eerste twee ontwikkelingsstappen in de verwerving van

voornaamwoorden. Terwijl horende kinderen hun eerste voornaamwoord produceren

rond 29 maanden, produceren cochleair-geïmplanteerde kinderen dat pas rond 48

maanden. Ook in de verwerving van het pronominale paradigma vertonen cochleair-

geïmplanteerde kinderen een vertraging. Het paradigma wordt door horende kinderen

verworven tussen 27 en 48 maanden, terwijl cochleair-geïmplanteerde kinderen pas

tussen 48 en 94 maanden. Aldus vertonen cochleair-geïmplanteerde kinderen een

initiële vertraging in de verwerving van persoonlijke voornaamwoorden.


Niet-afwijkende verwerving. Hoewel cochleair-geïmplanteerde kinderen

een vertraagde verwerving vertonen van persoonlijke voornaamwoorden, verwerven zij

deze morfemen op een niet-afwijkende manier. Zowel de klinische als de controle

groep verwerven de verschillende morfologische attributen en waarden van het

pronominale paradigma in een identieke volgorde. Het efficiency attribuut wordt als

eerste verworven en onderscheidt sterke van zwakke voornaamwoorden (bijvoorbeeld

mij van me). Daarna worden de attributen van persoon, getal en casus simultaan

verworven. Uiteindelijk vervolledigen het attribute animacy, opgevolgd door gender,

het pronominale paradigma. Aldus is de verwerving door cochleair-geïmplanteerde

kinderen wel trager dan maar niet afwijkend van die van horende kinderen.

Inhaalbare vertraging. Op latere leeftijd, zijn cochleair-geïmplanteerde

kinderen in staat om de initiële vertraging in de verwerving van persoonlijke

voornaamwoorden in te halen en aldus horende kinderen in te halen. Op zesjarige

leeftijd, gebruiken cochleair-geïmplanteerde kinderen nog steeds een minder

gevarieerde set van voornaamwoorden in spontane productie. Eén jaar later, bereiken

zij echter een productief niveau van persoonlijk voornaamwoorden overeenkomstig

met horende kinderen.

Bindingsrelaties. Bindingsrelaties zijn de syntactische relaties tussen een

reflexief of persoonlijk voornaamwoord en de entiteit waarnaar het verwijst (i.e. het

antecedent). De comprehensie hiervan werd getest in twee elicitatietaken. Hoewel,

cochleair-geïmplanteerde kinderen op achtjarige leeftijd een identieke comprehensie

met horende kinderen vertonen van de binding van reflexieven (zijn eigen en haar eigen)

en sterke voornaamwoorden (hem en haar), tonen zij een vertraagde verwerving van

zwakke pronomina ((h)em en d'r). In deze studie, stellen wij voor dat Nederlandstalige

horende kinderen gevoelig zijn voor de trocheïsche metrische structuur tijdens

taalverwerving. Aangezien zwakke pronomina deel uit maken van een trocheïsche

structuur en sterke voornaamwoorden niet, worden bindingsrelaties van zwakke

pronomina eerst verworven. Kinderen met een cochleair implantaat, daarentegen,

hebben een gereduceerde toegang tot toonhoogte markering die hoofdzakelijk


metrische structuur aanduidt. Aldus, zijn cochleair-geïmplanteerde kinderen minder

gevoelig voor metrische structuur en verwerven zij bindingsrelaties van zwakke

pronomina later.

Co-referentiële relaties. De verwerving van co-referentiële relaties door

kinderen met een cochleair implantaat en conventioneel hoortoestel werd vergeleken

met horende kinderen in semi-spontane, semi-geëliciteerde narratieve productie. Co-

referentiële relaties zijn de syntactisch-pragmatische relaties tussen een nominale

expressie (waaronder persoonlijke voornaamwoorden) en het antecedent. Beide

klinische groepen hebben deze grammaticale relatie verworven op achtjarige leeftijd. Zij

verkiezen dezelfde nominale expressies als horende kinderen en volwassen: Indefiniete

nominale expressies (een poes) introduceren nieuwe informatie in de discours, terwijl

voornaamwoorden (ze) en niet-gelexicaliseerde nominale expressies verwijzen naar

gekende informatie.

3. De meerwaarde van vroege implantatie.

De klinische groep die bestudeerd wordt in deze studie bestaat uit doofgeboren

kinderen die voor 21 maanden geïmplanteerd zijn met een mediaanleeftijd van

implantatie op 12 maanden. De resultaten van deze studie tonen aan dat een dergelijk

vroege implantatie voldoende is om laag saillante en grammaticaal complexe morfemen

zoals persoonlijk voornaamwoorden te verwerven. Hoewel, de cochleair-

geïmplanteerde kinderen aanvankelijk voornaamwoorden op een vertraagde manier

verwerven, doen zij dit op een niet-afwijkende manier en zijn zij in staat om deze

initiële vertraging in te halen op achtjarige leeftijd in het bereiken van een productief

niveau van persoonlijke voornaamwoorden enerzijds en de comprehenesie van

bindingsrelaties en co-referentiele relaties anderzijds.

Bovendien beïnvloedt vroege implantatie de verwerving van persoonlijke

voornaamwoorden op een positieve manier. Een vroege implantatie leidt tot een vroege

eerste productie van een voornaamwoord in longitudinale spontane spraak. Dezelfde

invloed kan gevonden worden bij het inhalen van de initiële vertraging in de productie


van voornaamwoorden op zevenjarige leeftijd. Hoe vroeger de implantatie heeft plaats

genomen, hoe sneller een productief niveau van voornaamwoorden bereikt kan worden

op latere leeftijd. Leeftijd van implantatie beïnvloedt dus niet enkel de vroege

ontwikkelingsstadia in de verwerving van voornaamwoorden maar ook de latere.


Curriculum Vitae Annemie Verbist was born on the 27th of January 1983 in Mol, Belgium. After

graduating from secondary school Rozenberg S.O. in Mol in 2001, she started studying

Germanic languages (i.e. Dutch and English) at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

Directly after graduating as Master in September 2005 (cum laude), she became a PhD-

student at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). This dissertation is the

result of four years of PhD research from October 2005 until the end of 2009 at

LUCL. She is currently employed as a docimologist at OFO-IFA, Opleidingsinstituut van

de Federale Overheid - Institut de Formation de l'Administration Fédérale at the Belgian federal

government.

Documents

The acquisition of personal pronouns in cochlear-implanted children