Person-referring pronouns in the first and second person (I, your) have been viewed as signs of increasing social understanding in children due to their shifting reference properties. However, they are linguistically complex elements and might depend on general language development. We used longitudinal transcript data from Manchester corpus (12 children aged 2 to 3 years) to examine concurrent and predictive relations between pronouns, general language development (MLU), and social understanding (indexed by the use of mental state language). In the key analysis, social understanding but not general language was found to be a developmental precursor of first-, second- and third-person pronoun mastery. Results suggest that social understanding is needed for acquisition of all person reference, not only in first and second person. Results for first- and third-person pronouns were more similar than for second person, suggesting that social-cognitive demands of person reference go beyond shifting reference of first- and second-person.

第一人称和第二人称（我，你的）中的人称代词由于其不断变化的参考属性而被视为儿童社会理解能力增强的标志。然而，它们在语言上是复杂的元素，可能依赖于一般语言的发展。我们使用来自曼彻斯特语料库（12 名 2 至 3 岁儿童）的纵向转录数据来检查代词、一般语言发展 (MLU) 和社会理解（通过使用心理状态语言作为索引）之间的并发和预测关系。在关键分析中，社会理解而非一般语言被发现是第一、第二和第三人称代词掌握的发展前兆。结果表明，社会理解是获取所有人参考所必需的，而不仅仅是第一人称和第二人称。