Longitudinal study of the production of verbal deictics in Spanish children between 12–36 months of age during everyday activities

Abstract

This longitudinally study examined the rate of production of deictics in four Spanish 1-and 2-year-old children, in interactive situations with their mothers at home over a one-year-period. First, we compared the production of deictics with that of open-and-closed-class words and related it to the mean length of the utterances in which at least one deictic was used. Second, we observed the order of emergence of deictic words. Third, we analysed changes in the production of deictics, taking into account their semantic dimensions (spatial, personal and temporal), their grammatical categories (pronouns, adjectives, adverbs), and their morphological features (gender, number, distance). The results of the different analyses indicated that deictic words help to anchor the speaker’s and the addressee’s discourse to the deictic center (I, here, now, this). The spatial domain seemed to be relevant for the development of personal deictics.