Demonstratives in Spanish: children’s developing conceptualization of interactive space

• Autores: Naomi L. Shin, Jill P. Morford
• Localización: Language Patterns in Spanish and Beyond: Structure, Context and Development / Juan José Colomina Almiñana (aut.), Sandro Sessarego (aut.), 2021, ISBN 9781003091790, págs. 285-301
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In a puzzle completion task designed to elicit demonstratives, Spanish-speaking children and adults directed an experimenter to select puzzle pieces differing in location and in shared focus of attention. Three- to five-year-old children were not all sensitive to referent location when selecting a demonstrative. By contrast, six- to eight-year-old children routinely produced esta for closer pieces and esa for more distal pieces. Adults demonstrated an additional sensitivity to intersubjective space by increasing reliance on esta to overcome a lack of shared attentional focus, but no such adjustments were found in the children’s demonstrative use. These results suggest a developmental trajectory whereby children first learn the proximal-distal dimension and later learn how to incorporate subjectively-construed space into their use of demonstratives.