Language development in autistic children: null subjects, pronominal use and role reversal

Abstract of B.CogSci Thesis

Mak Ching-Sum, Ophelia

This paper attempts to investigate the language development of autistic children. Firstly, the paper tries to examine whether autistic children produce more null subects sentences than normally developing children do. Also this paper attempts to look into the use of pronouns in autistic children's language. Corpora from two autistic subjects and two controls who are all American-English speaking children are examined. It is found that the differences in the rate of null subject sentences between children with autism and normal children are non-significant. Morevoer, it is discovered that the the proportions of null subjects with first and second person reference in autistic children do not differ significantly from that in normally developing children. It is also found that sometimes pronoun reversal does not involve simply the reversal of first and second pronoun reference, but role reversal of a more general nature.

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