This study investigated the acquisition of demonstratives (e.g., this/that, here/there) by 45 children (1;0 – 4;11) learning Ticuna, an Indigenous Amazonian language with an unusually complex demonstrative system. I analyzed 89 10-minute samples from video recordings of child-caregiver interaction, examining how often children and caregivers produced each demonstrative type, as well as relationships among children’s age, children’s demonstrative production, and caregivers’ production. Caregivers’ demonstrative production displayed few relationships with children’s age or production. Children produced speaker-proximal and speaker-distal demonstratives (this near me, that far from me) earlier in developmental time than addressee-proximal demonstratives (that near you), and nominal (this/that) demonstratives earlier than locative (here/there) ones. Compared to caregivers, children overused speaker-proximal demonstratives, but used other demonstrative types with adult-like frequency beginning at 2;0. These results support the view that cognitive biases toward egocentric, proximal, and semantically simpler items substantially influence children’s acquisition of demonstratives.

本研究调查了45 名学习提库纳语的儿童 (1;0 – 4;11) 对指示词（例如，这个/那个，这里/那里）的习得，提库纳语是一种亚马逊土著语言，具有异常复杂的指示系统。我分析了 89 个 10 分钟的儿童看护者互动录像样本，检查儿童和看护者产生每种示范类型的频率，以及儿童年龄、儿童示范产生和照料者产生之间的关系。照顾者的示范性生产与儿童的年龄或生产几乎没有关系。与听话人近端指示词（that near you），以及比方位（here/there ）更早的名词性（ this/that ）指示词。与照顾者相比，儿童过度使用说话者近端指示词，但使用其他指示类型，其频率从 2:0 开始与成人相似。这些结果支持这样一种观点，即对自我中心的、近端的和语义上更简单的项目的认知偏见会显着影响儿童对指示词的习得。