Cover not available

In:Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition
Edited by Danielle Matthews
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 10] 2014
► pp. 161–182

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

The production and comprehension of referring expressions

 | Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, USA
 | Linguistics and Phonetics, University of Leeds, UK
Published online: 26 June 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.10.10gra
In this chapter, we provide a developmental outline of the emergence of referential skills during early childhood. We first briefly outline the major theoretical frameworks of reference as based on the adult literature and also introduce the growing body of developmental work. In two subsequent sections, we focus on typically developing children’s comprehension and production skills, respectively. Next, we look to clinical populations, summarising research on referential skills in children with autism spectrum disorders. We conclude by outlining a developmental sketch of children’s referential skills, considering some of the current debates within the development of reference.
References (89)
Allen, S. (2000). A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut. Linguistics , 38(3), 483–521. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Allen, S., Skarabela, B., & Hughes, M. (2008). Using corpora to examine discourse effects in syntax. In H. Behrens (Ed.), Corpora in Language Acquisition Research: Finding Structure in Data (pp. 99–137). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anselmi, D., Tomasello, M. & Acunzo, M. (1986). Young children’s responses to neutral and specific contingent queries. Journal of Child Language , 13, 135–44. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ariel, M. (1990). Accessing Noun Phrase Antecedents . London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arnold, J.E., Bennetto, L., & Diehl, J. (2009). Reference production in young speakers with and without autism: Effects of discourse status and processing constraints. Cognition , 110(2), 131–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Arnold, J., Brown-Schmidt, S. & Trueswell, J. (2007). Children’s use of gender and order-of-mention during pronoun comprehension. Language and Cognitive Processes , 22(4), 527–565. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, N.D., & Greenfield, P.M. (1988). The development of new and old information in young children’s early language. Language Sciences , 10(1), 3–34. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baltaxe, C. (1977). Pragmatic deficits in the language of autistic adolescents. Journal of Pediatric Psychology , 2, 176–180. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bahtiyar, S., & Kuntay, A.C. (2009). Integration of communicative partner’s visual perspective in patterns of referential requests. Journal of Child Language , 36, 529–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Begeer, S., Malle, B.F., Nieuwland, M.S., & Keysar, B. (2010). Using Theory of Mind to represent and take part in social interactions: Comparing individuals with high-functioning autism and typically developing controls. European Journal of Developmental Psychology , 7(1), 104–122. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brener, R. (1983). Learning the deictic meaning of third person pronouns. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research , 12, 235–262.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, R., & Fraser, C. (1963). The acquisition of syntax. In Cofer, C.N., Musgrave, B. (Eds). Verbal Behaviour and Learning: Problems and Processes . New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charman, T., & Shmueli-Goetz, Y. (1998). The relationship between theory of mind, language, and narrative discourse: An experimental study. Current Psychology of Cognition , 17, 245–271.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chafe, W. (1976). Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, & point of view. In C.N. Li (Ed.), Subject and Topic (pp. 25–56). New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1994). Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chien, Y.C., & Wexler, K. (1990). Children’s knowledge of locality conditions in binding as evidence for the modularity of syntax and pragmatics. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics , 1, 225–295. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clancy, P.M. (1993). Preferred argument structure in Korean acquisition. In E.V. Clark (Ed.), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Child Language Research Forum (pp. 307–314). Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2003). The lexicon in interaction: Developmental origins of preferred argument structure in Korean. In J. Du Bois, E. Kumpf, & W.J. Ashby (Eds.), Preferred Argument Structure: Grammar as Architecture for Function (pp. 81–108). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, H.H., & Schaefer, E.F. (1987). Collaborating on contributions to conversation. Language and Cognitive Processes , 2, 19–41. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, H.H., & Wilkes-Gibbs, D. (1986). Referring as a collaborative process. Cognition , 22, 1–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, H.H., Schreuder, R., & Buttrick, S. (1983). Common ground and the understanding of demonstrative reference. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior , 22, 245–258. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, H.H., & Bangerter, A. (2004). Changing ideas about reference. In I.A. Noveck & D. ­Sperber (Eds.), Experimental Pragmatics (pp. 25–49). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahlgren, S., & Sandberg, D.A. (2008). Referential communication in children with autism spectrum disorder. Autism: The International Journal of Research and Practice , 12(4), 335–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, C., & Katsos, N. (2010). Over-informative children: Production/comprehension asymmetry or tolerance to pragmatic violations? Lingua , 120(8), 1956–1972. Special Issue on Asymmetries in Child Language . Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Cat, C. (2011). Information tracking and encoding in early L1: Linguistic competence vs. cognitive limitations. Journal of Child Language , 38(4), 828–860. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deutsch, W., & Pechmann, T. (1982). Social-interaction and the development of definite descriptions. Cognition , 11(2), 159–184. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Villiers, J., Stainton, R.J. & Szatmari, P. (2007). Pragmatic abilities in autism spectrum disorder: A case study in philosophy and the empirical. Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 31(1), 292–316. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evans, K.E., & Demuth, K. (2011). Individual differences in pronoun reversal: Evidence from two longitudinal case studies. Journal of Child Language, 39(1), 1–30.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ford, W., & Olson, D. (1975). The elaboration of the noun phrase in children’s description of objects. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 19(3), 371–382. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Girbau, D. (2001). Children’s referential communication failure: The ambiguity and abbreviation of messages. Journal of Language and Social Psychology , 20(1–2), 81–89. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glucksberg, S. & Krauss, R. (1967). What do people say after they have learned how to talk? Studies of development and referential communication. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly , 13, 309–316.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glucksberg, S., Krauss, R.M., & Higgins, E.T. (1975). The development of referential communication skills. In F.D. Horowitz (Ed.), Review of Child Development Vol. 4 . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Graf, E., Theakston, A., Lieven, E. & Tomasello, M. (in press). Subject and object omission in children’s early transitive constructions: A discourse-pragmatic approach. Applied Psycholinguistics .
Grice, H.P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics, 3: Speech Acts (pp. 41–58). New York, NY: Academic Press. Reprinted in Grice, H.P. (1989). Studies in the Way of Words (pp. 22–40). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guerriero, S., Oshima-Takane, Y., & Kuriyama, Y. (2006). The development of referential choice in English and Japanese: A discourse-pragmatic perspective. Journal of Child Language , 33, 823–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gundel, J.K., Hedberg, N., & Zacharski, R. (1993). Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language , 69(2), 274–307. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hughes, M., & Allen, S. (2013). The effect of individual discourse pragmatic features on referential choice in child English. Journal of Pragmatics . [URL]
Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nervous Child , 2, 217–250.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1946). Irrelevant and metaphorical language. American Journal of Psychiatry , 103, 242–246.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keysar, B., Barr, D.J., Balin, J.A., & Brauner, J.S. (2000). Taking perspective in conversation: The role of mutual knowledge in comprehension. Psychological Science , 11(1), 32–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, A., Hobson, R.P., & Chiat, S. (1994). I, you, me and autism: An experimental study. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders , 24, 155–176. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liebal, K., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2010). Infants’ use of shared experience in declarative pointing. Infancy , 15, 545–556. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liebal, K., Behne, T., Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Infants use shared experience to interpret pointing gestures. Developmental Science , 12(2), 264–271. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Loveland, K. (1984). Learning about points of view: Spatial perspective and the acquisition of “I/you”. Journal of Child Language , 11, 535–556. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Loveland, K., Tunali, B., Kelley, M.L., & McEvoy, R.E. (1989). Referential communication and response adequacy in autism and Down’s syndrome. Applied Psycholinguistics , 10, 301–313. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matthews, D., Butcher, J., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2012). Two- and four-year-olds learn to adapt referring expressions to context: Effects of distracters and feedback on referential communication. TopiCS , 4(2), 184–210.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matthews, D., Theakston, A., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Pronoun co-referencing errors: Challenges for generativist and usage-based accounts. Cognitive Linguistics , 20(3), 599–626. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., Theakston, A., & Tomasello, M. (2006). The effect of perceptual availability and prior discourse on young children’s use of referring expressions. Applied Psycholinguistics , 27, 403–422. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2007). How toddlers and preschoolers learn to uniquely identify referents for others: A training study. Child Development , 78(6), 1744–1759. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. (1974). Preschool children’s use of definite and indefinite articles. Child Development , 45, 446–455. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Menig-Peterson, C.L. (1975). The modification of communicative behaviour in preschool-aged children as a function of listener’s perspective. Child Development , 46, 1015–1018. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moll, H., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Level 1 perspective-taking at 24 months of age. British Journal of Developmental Psychology , 24, 603–613. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2007). How 14- and 18-month-olds know what others have experienced. Developmental Psychology , 43(2), 309–317. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morisseau, T., Davies, C., & Matthews, D. (2013). How do 3- and 5-year-olds respond to over- and under-informative utterances? Journal of Pragmatics . [URL]
Nadig, A. & Sedivy, J. (2002). Evidence of perspective-taking constraints in children’s on-line reference resolution. Psychological Science , 13(4), 329–336. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nadig A., Vivanti, G., & Ozonoff, S. (2009). Adaptation of object descriptions to a partner under increasing communicative demands: A comparison of children with and without autism. Autism Research, 2(6): 334–347.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Narasimhan, B., Budwig, N., & Murty, L. (2005). Argument realization in Hindi caregiver-child discourse. Journal of Pragmatics , 37, 461–95. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nelson, B., Adamson, L., & Bakeman, R. (2008). Toddlers’ joint engagement experience facilitates preschoolers’ acquisition of Theory of Mind. Developmental Science , 11(6), 847–852. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nilsen, E.S., & Mangal, L. (in press). Which is important for preschoolers’ production and repair of statements: What the listener knows or what the listener says? Journal of Child Language .
Nilsen, E., & Fecica, A.M. (2011). A model of communicative perspective-taking for typical and atypical populations of children. Developmental Review , 31, 55–78. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nilsen, E., & Graham, S. (2009). The relations between children’s communicative perspective-taking and executive functioning. Cognitive Psychology , 58, 220–249. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nilsen, E., Graham, S., Smith, S., & Chambers, C. (2008). Preschoolers’ sensitivity to referential ambiguity: Evidence for a dissociation between implicit understanding and explicit behavior. Developmental Science , 11(4), 556–562. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norbury, C.F. & Bishop, D.V.M. (2003). Narrative skills of children with communication impairments. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders , 38, 287–313. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Neill, D.K. & Topolovec, J. (2001). Two-year-old children’s sensitivity to the referential (in)efficacy of their own pointing gestures. Journal of Child Language , 28, 1–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Neill, D.K. (1996). Two-year-old children’s sensitivity to a parent’s knowledge state when making requests. Child Development , 67, 695–677. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paradis, J. & Navarro, S. (2003). Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English. Journal of Child Language , 30, 1–23. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peterson, C., & McCabe, A. (1994). A social interactionist account of developing decontextualized narrative skill. Developmental Psychology , 30(6), 937–948. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pyykkönen, P., Matthews, D., & Järvikivi, J. (2010). Verb semantics affects children’s pronoun comprehension: Evidence form eye-movements. Language and Cognitive Processes , 25(1), 115–129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, R., & Patterson, C. (1983). Perspective taking and referential communication: The question of correspondence reconsidered. Child Development , 54, 1005–1014. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Robinson, E., & Robinson, W. (1982). The advancement of children’s verbal referential communication skills: The role of metacognitive guidance. International Journal of Behavioral Development , 5, 329–355. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Salomo, D., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2013). Children’s ability to answer different types of questions. Journal of Child Language , 40(2), 469–491. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saylor, M.M., Baird, J.A., & Gallerani, C. (2006). Telling others what’s new: Preschoolers’ adherence to the given-new contract. Journal of Cognition and Development , 7(3), 341–379. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serratrice, L., Sorace, A., & Paoli, S. (2004). Crosslinguistic influence at the syntax-pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in English-Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , 7(3), 183–205. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serratrice, L. (2005). The role of discourse pragmatics in the acquisition of subjects in Italian. Applied Psycholinguistics , 26(3), 437–462. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2007). Null and overt subjects at the syntax-discourse interface: Evidence from monolingual and bilingual acquisition. In J. van Kampen, S. Bauw, & M. Pinto (Eds.), Selected Papers from The Romance Turn II. LOT Occasional Series (pp. 181–200). Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Song, H., & Fisher, C. (2007). Discourse prominence effects on 2.5-year-old children’s interpretation of pronouns. Lingua , 117, 1959–1987. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2005). Who’s “she”? Discourse structure influences preschoolers’ pronoun interpretation. Journal of Memory and Language , 52, 29–47. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sonnenschein, S., & Whitehurst, G.J. (1984). Developing referential communication – A hierarchy of skills. Child Development , 55(5), 1936–1945. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sonnenschein, S. (1988). The development of referential communication – Speaking to different listeners. Child Development , 59(3), 694–702. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Skarabela, B. (2007). Signs of early social cognition in children’s syntax: The case of joint attention in argument realization in child Inuktitut. Lingua , 117(11), 1837–1857. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tager-Flusberg, H. (1993). ‘What language reveals about the understanding of minds in children with autism’. In S. Baron-Cohen, H. Tager-Flusberg, & D.J. Cohen (Eds.), Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from Autism (pp. 138–157). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1994). ‘Dissociations in form and function in the acquisition of language by autistic children’. In H. Tager-Flusberg (Ed.), Constraints on Language Acquisition: Studies of Atypical Children (pp. 175–194). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (1995). ‘Once upon a ribbit’: Stories narrated by autistic children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology , 13, 45–59. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. (2001). A re-examination of the theory of mind hypothesis of autism. In J. Burack, T. Charman, N. Yirmiya, & P. Zelazo (Eds.), The Development of Autism: Perspectives from Theory and Research (pp. 173–193). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Volden, J., Mulcahy, R.F., & Holdgrafer, G. (1997). Pragmatic language disorder and perspective taking in autistic speakers. Applied Psycholinguistics , 18(02): 181. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Whitehurst, G.J. (1976). Development of communication – changes with age and modeling. Child Development , 47(2), 473–482. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Whitehurst, G.J., & Sonnenschein, S. (1981). The development of informative messages in referential communication: Knowing when vs. knowing how. In W.P. Dickson (Ed.), Children’s Oral Communication Skills . New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wykes, T. (1981). Inference and children’s comprehension of pronouns. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 32, 264–278. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (12)

Cited by 12 other publications

Sah, Wen hui
2024. The use of referring expressions in Mandarin-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 38:1 ► pp. 40 ff. DOI logo
Fernández-Flecha, María, Andrea Junyent & María Blume
2023. Pragmatic development in Peruvian children. Pragmatics & Cognition 30:2 ► pp. 377 ff. DOI logo
Thorson, Jill C., Lauren R. Franklin & James L. Morgan
2023. Role of Pitch in Toddler Looking toNewandGivenReferents in American English. Language Learning and Development 19:4 ► pp. 458 ff. DOI logo
Vasil, Jared
2023. A New Look at Young Children’s Referential Informativeness. Perspectives on Psychological Science 18:3 ► pp. 624 ff. DOI logo
Salazar Orvig, Anne, Geneviève de Weck, Rouba Hassan & Annie Rialland
2021. A dialogical approach to the acquisition and usage of referring expressions. In The Acquisition of Referring Expressions [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 28], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Jara‐Ettinger, Julian, Sammy Floyd, Holly Huey, Joshua B. Tenenbaum & Laura E. Schulz
2020. Social Pragmatics: Preschoolers Rely on Commonsense Psychology to Resolve Referential Underspecification. Child Development 91:4 ► pp. 1135 ff. DOI logo
DAVIES, Catherine & Helene KREYSA
2018. Look before you speak: children's integration of visual information into informative referring expressions. Journal of Child Language 45:5 ► pp. 1116 ff. DOI logo
Malkin, Louise, Kirsten Abbot-Smith & David Williams
2018. Is verbal reference impaired in autism spectrum disorder? A systematic review. Autism & Developmental Language Impairments 3 DOI logo
ABBOT-SMITH, KIRSTEN, ERIKA NURMSOO, REBECCA CROLL, HEATHER FERGUSON & MICHAEL FORRESTER
2016. How children aged 2;6 tailor verbal expressions to interlocutor informational needs. Journal of Child Language 43:6 ► pp. 1277 ff. DOI logo
Ateş, Beyza Ş., Özlem Ece Demir-Lira & Aylin C. Küntay
2016. Children’s referential choices in Turkish. In The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 20], ► pp. 153 ff. DOI logo
FILIPI, ANNA
2016. How children aged seven to twelve organize the opening sequence in a map task. Journal of Child Language 43:4 ► pp. 731 ff. DOI logo
Filipi, Anna
2018. Making Knowing Visible: Tracking the Development of the Response Token Yes in Second Turn Position. In Longitudinal Studies on the Organization of Social Interaction, ► pp. 39 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue