Abstract

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ABSTRACT

Dutch-speaking children, like English-speaking children, make mistakes in their interpretation of pronouns until age 7 (English: e.g., Wexler & Chien, 1985; Chien & Wexler, 1990; Grimshaw & Rosen, 1990. Dutch: e.g., Philip & Coopmans, 1996; Spenader, Smits & Hendriks, 2009; van Rij, van Rijn, & Hendriks, 2010). This pattern is known as the Delay of Principle B Effect, or Pronoun Interpretation Problem. In contrast to English and Dutch-speaking children, children acquiring German already interpret pronouns correctly from age 4 (Ruigendijk et al, 2010). This cross-linguistic difference is not yet fully understood. In collaborative work with Esther Ruigendijk (University of Oldenburg), the question is addressed what happens if a bilingual child acquires a language showing the Pronoun Interpretation Problem (Dutch) and a language that does not show the Pronoun Interpretation Problem (German). Bilingual Dutch-German children were tested on pronoun interpretation in both languages (n=21, age range 3;5-6;11, mean age 5;4). In this talk I will present the results of this study and discuss the implications for linguistic theory and for monolingual and bilingual language acquisition.