Pronoun reversal

Last updated

Pronoun reversal or pronominal reversal is when children refer to themselves as "he", "she", "they", or "you", or by their own proper name (pronoun avoidance). [1] While it may signal an autism-spectrum disorder when it persists for an unusual length of time, some degree of pronoun confusion can occur as a part of allistic speech development, and it is common in toddlers. Pronoun reversal is closely linked to echolalia: referring to themselves as they have heard others speak of them, resulting in the misapplication of pronouns.

For example:

Parent: What are you doing, Johnny?
Child: You're here.
Parent: Are you having a good time?
Child: You sure are.

As with many other autistic traits, if speech continues to develop more normally, this pronoun reversal might be expected to disappear. However, it can also be highly resistant to change. Some children require extensive training to stop pronoun reversal, even after they have stopped echolalia.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Utterance</span> Smallest unit of speech

In spoken language analysis, an utterance is a continuous piece of speech, by one person, before or after which there is silence on the part of the person. In the case of oral languages, it is generally, but not always, bounded by silence. Utterances do not exist in written language; only their representations do. They can be represented and delineated in written language in many ways.

A third-person pronoun is a pronoun that refers to an entity other than the speaker or listener. Some languages with gender-specific pronouns have them as part of a grammatical gender system, a system of agreement where most or all nouns have a value for this grammatical category. A few languages with gender-specific pronouns, such as English, Afrikaans, Defaka, Khmu, Malayalam, Tamil, and Yazgulyam, lack grammatical gender; in such languages, gender usually adheres to "natural gender", which is often based on biological sex. Other languages, including most Austronesian languages, lack gender distinctions in personal pronouns entirely, as well as any system of grammatical gender.

A toddler is a child approximately 1 to 3 years old, though definitions vary. The toddler years are a time of great cognitive, emotional and social development. The word is derived from "to toddle", which means to walk unsteadily, like a child of this age.

Gender neutrality, also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions should avoid distinguishing roles according to people's sex or gender. This is in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than another. The disparity in gender equality throughout history has had a significant impact on many aspects of society, including marketing, toys, education and parenting techniques. In order to increase gender neutrality in recent years, there has been a societal emphasis on utilizing inclusive language and advocating for equality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leo Kanner</span> Austrian-American physician and psychiatrist

Leo Kanner was an Austrian-American psychiatrist, physician, and social activist best known for his work related to infantile autism. Before working at the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Kanner practiced as a physician in Germany and South Dakota. In 1943, Kanner published his landmark paper Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact, describing 11 children who displayed "a powerful desire for aloneness" and "an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness." He named their condition "early infantile autism". Kanner was in charge of developing the first child psychiatry clinic in the United States and later served as the Chief of Child Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is one of the co-founders of The Children's Guild, a nonprofit organization serving children, families and child-serving organizations throughout Maryland and Washington, D.C., and dedicated to "Transforming how America Cares for and Educates its Children and Youth." He is widely considered one of the most influential American psychiatrists of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eastern Slavic naming customs</span>

Eastern Slavic naming customs are the traditional way of identifying a person's family name, given name, and patronymic name in East Slavic cultures in Russia and some countries formerly part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

Baby talk is a type of speech associated with an older person speaking to a child or infant. It is also called caretaker speech, infant-directed speech (IDS), child-directed speech (CDS), child-directed language (CDL), caregiver register, parentese, or motherese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Echolalia</span> Speech disorder

Echolalia is the unsolicited repetition of vocalizations made by another person; when repeated by the same person, it is called palilalia. In its profound form it is automatic and effortless. It is one of the echophenomena, closely related to echopraxia, the automatic repetition of movements made by another person; both are "subsets of imitative behavior" whereby sounds or actions are imitated "without explicit awareness". Echolalia may be an immediate reaction to a stimulus or may be delayed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English personal pronouns</span> Closed lexical category of the English language

The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and Middle English.

Language development in humans is a process which starts early in life. Infants start without knowing a language, yet by 10 months, babies can distinguish speech sounds and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the earliest learning begins in utero when the fetus starts to recognize the sounds and speech patterns of its mother's voice and differentiate them from other sounds after birth.

The Japanese language makes use of a system of honorific speech, called keishō (敬称), which includes honorific suffixes and prefixes when referring to others in a conversation. Suffixes are often gender-specific at the end of names, while prefixes are attached to the beginning of many nouns. Honorific suffixes also indicate the speaker's level and refer an individual's relationship and are often used alongside other components of Japanese honorific speech.

Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person, second person, or third person. Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number, grammatical or natural gender, case, and formality. The term "personal" is used here purely to signify the grammatical sense; personal pronouns are not limited to people and can also refer to animals and objects.

In general, a Vietnamese pronoun can serve as a noun phrase. In Vietnamese, a pronoun usually connotes a degree of family relationship or kinship. In polite speech, the aspect of kinship terminology is used when referring to oneself, the audience, or a third party. These terms may vary by region. Many are derived from Chinese loanwords but have acquired the additional grammatical function of being pronouns.

The Korean language has a system of linguistic honorifics that reflects the social status of participants. Speakers use honorifics to indicate their social relationship with the addressee and/or subject of the conversation, concerning their age, social status, gender, degree of intimacy, and situation.

In linguistics, an honorific is a grammatical or morphosyntactic form that encodes the relative social status of the participants of the conversation. Distinct from honorific titles, linguistic honorifics convey formality FORM, social distance, politeness POL, humility HBL, deference, or respect through the choice of an alternate form such as an affix, clitic, grammatical case, change in person or number, or an entirely different lexical item. A key feature of an honorific system is that one can convey the same message in both honorific and familiar forms—i.e., it is possible to say something like "The soup is hot" in a way that confers honor or deference on one of the participants of the conversation.

Hidatsa is an endangered Siouan language that is related to the Crow language. It is spoken by the Hidatsa tribe, primarily in North Dakota and South Dakota.

Kéo or Nagé-Kéo is a Malayo-Polynesian dialect cluster spoken by the Kéo and Nage people that reside in an area southeast of the Ebu Lobo volcano in the south-central part of Nusa Tenggara Timur Province on the island of Flores, eastern Indonesia, largely in the eponymous Nagekeo Regency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Triplett</span> First person diagnosed as autistic (1933–2023)

Donald Gray Triplett was an American banker known for being the first person diagnosed with autism. He was first diagnosed by Leo Kanner in 1943 and was labeled as "Case 1". Triplett was noted for his savant abilities, particularly the ability to name musical notes played on a piano and the ability to perform rapid mental multiplication.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spanish personal pronouns</span> Personal pronouns in Spanish

Spanish personal pronouns have distinct forms according to whether they stand for the subject (nominative) or object, and third-person pronouns make an additional distinction for direct object (accusative) or indirect object (dative), and for reflexivity as well. Several pronouns also have special forms used after prepositions.

Pronoun avoidance is the use of kinship terms, titles and other complex nominal expressions instead of personal pronouns in speech.

References

  1. (Psychiatrist), Goodman, Robert (1997). Child psychiatry. Scott, Stephen (Psychiatrist). Oxford: Blackwell Science. ISBN   0632038853. OCLC   36470680.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  1. Tramontana & Stimbert, 1970 [ full citation needed ]
  2. Davison, Neale & Kring, 2004 [ full citation needed ]