I am you when you speak - The role of turn taking in personal deixis acquisition

Personal pronouns are deictic terms which, unlike most other words, are characterized by the lack of a stable reference. They shift the referent with every change of speaker in a conversation. In the process of language acquisition, children have to discover how to comprehend and produce personal deixis correctly, which demands knowledge of speech roles. To study this process, researchers have focused mainly on pronoun analysis. In this thesis, we suggest that turn taking can also be used for this purpose, since this interactional system constitutes the context where language is learned. We analysed turn taking competence, role reversing competence and correct personal deixis production in typically developing and autistic children. Our results showed different performance between groups, and suggest that turn taking competence is positively correlated with correct deixis production. To sum up, this is the first study to point out the importance of children's competence in turn...Show morePersonal pronouns are deictic terms which, unlike most other words, are characterized by the lack of a stable reference. They shift the referent with every change of speaker in a conversation. In the process of language acquisition, children have to discover how to comprehend and produce personal deixis correctly, which demands knowledge of speech roles. To study this process, researchers have focused mainly on pronoun analysis. In this thesis, we suggest that turn taking can also be used for this purpose, since this interactional system constitutes the context where language is learned. We analysed turn taking competence, role reversing competence and correct personal deixis production in typically developing and autistic children. Our results showed different performance between groups, and suggest that turn taking competence is positively correlated with correct deixis production. To sum up, this is the first study to point out the importance of children's competence in turn taking to measure and study personal deixis acquistion.Show less

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I am you when you speak - The role of turn taking in personal deixis acquisition