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The effect of perceptual availability and prior discourse on young children's use of referring expressions.
Choosing appropriate referring expressions requires assessing whether a referent is “available” to the
addressee either perceptually or through discourse. In Study 1, we found that 3- and 4-year-olds,
but not 2-year-olds, chose different referring expressions (noun vs. pronoun) depending on whether
their addressee could see the intended referent or not. In Study 2, in more neutral discourse contexts
than previous studies, we found that 3- and 4-year-olds clearly differed in their use of referring
expressions according to whether their addressee had already mentioned a referent. Moreover, 2-yearolds
responded with more naming constructions when the referent had not been mentioned previously.
This suggests that, despite early social–cognitive developments, (a) it takes time tomaster the given/new
contrast linguistically, and (b) children understand the contrast earlier based on discourse, rather than
perceptual context
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