The main focus of the book is the development of referential
abilities in young children. A number of findings suggest that
errors exhibited by young children in various experiments and
spontaneous speech result from the inability to implement
discourse-related knowledge. It is further argued that the
deficiency is due to the lack of language-specific processing
resources characteristic for young children. In order to support
the lack of processing resources argument, certain similarities
between the language of children and Broca's aphasics are also
discussed. A new theoretical model of the syntax-discourse
interface is presented, and it is shown how the proposed model can
explain various psycholinguistic findings. The book is intended for
scholars and graduate students working in the field of language
acquisition and language impairment. It may also be of interest to
linguists whose work focuses on the theory of syntax-discourse
interface.
Acknowledgements. Introduction. I. Establishing Reference. II. Syntax, Discourse and Interpretation of Pronominals. III. Anomalous Indexation. IV. Experimental Evidence for the Proposed Model. V. Possessive Pronouns and Reflexives in Russian. VI. Plural Pronouns. VII. Children's Interpretation of the Discourse-dependent Reflexives. VIII. Discourse-Based Analyses of Root Infinitives. IX. Summary and Concluding Remarks. Notes. References. Index.
