Demonstrative words are one of the most important ways of establishing reference in conversation. This work describes Spanish-speaking children’s demonstrative production between ages 2 to 10 using data from the CHILDES corpora. Results indicate that children feature all demonstratives in their lexicon – however, the distal term is scarce throughout development. Moreover, patterns of demonstrative use are not adult-like at age 10. We compare adult and child data to conclude that children’s development of demonstrative production is largely protracted. Adult use of the distal demonstrative is higher than in young children, although both older children and adults use the medial term ese more than any other demonstratives. In contrast, younger children use proximals relatively more frequently than older children and adults. Suggestions for future research and theoretical implications for the Spanish demonstrative system are discussed.

中文翻译：

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儿童对指示词的使用：婴儿期以后的空间指示法


指示词是在对话中建立参考的最重要方式之一。这项工作使用 CHILDES 语料库的数据描述了 2 至 10 岁之间讲西班牙语的儿童的示范性表达。结果表明，儿童在他们的词汇中拥有所有指示词——然而，在整个发展过程中，远端术语很少见。此外，10岁时，示范性使用的模式与成人不同。我们比较成人和儿童的数据得出结论，儿童示范性生产的发展在很大程度上是长期的。成人对远端指示语的使用高于幼儿，尽管年龄较大的儿童和成人都使用中间指示词埃塞比任何其他示威者都多。相比之下，年龄较小的儿童比年龄较大的儿童和成人更频繁地使用近端。讨论了西班牙示范体系未来研究的建议和理论意义。