Interpretation of ambiguous subject pronouns in Croatian by people with Down syndrome and typically developing children
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Kraš, Tihana; Stipeć, Tanja
- Source
- Subject
- pronoun interpretation
subject pronouns
null pronouns
overt pronouns
Croatian
Down syndrome
- Language
- English
This study investigates the interpretation of ambiguous subject pronouns in intra-sentential contexts in Croatian (a null-subject language) by people with Down syndrome (DS) and typically developing children. People with DS, mentally matched typically developing children and typically developing adults completed a picture selection task. Complex sentences featured an ambiguous null or overt subject pronoun in the subordinate clause, which followed the main clause. The participants had to choose between two pictures, thereby selecting the matrix subject or object as the antecedent of the pronoun. People with DS and typically developing children did not differ in their antecedent preferences for null and overt pronouns, but both differed from adults in the overt pronoun condition. This suggests that people with DS are developing in the same way as typically developing children in the domain under investigation and that both populations exhibit a developmental delay with respect to the interpretation of overt pronouns.