GRAMMATICAL FEATURES AND THE ACUISITION OF REFERENCE: A Comparative Study of Dutch and SpanishSergio Baauw, Utrecht UniversityThis book offers a comparative study of the interpretation of definite articles and pronouns by Dutch and Spanish 4-7 year old children. It presents experimental evidence showing that children's interpretation of definite articles and pronouns is affected by their incomplete acquisition of morphosyntactic features of the D-position, the host of both pronouns and definite articles. It is argued that children often interpret definite articles as expletive determiners and third person pronouns as SE-anaphors ("se" in Spanish and "zich" in Dutch). This study also offers evidence that young children are sensitive to inflectional morphology. It shows that children acquiring a poorly inflected language, such as Dutch, have considerably more difficulties with the adult interpretation of pronouns and definite articles than children acquiring a richly inflected language, such as Spanish. Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics series.January 2002: 256 ppHb: 0415937612: $70.00 #50.00AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The Acquisition of Pronouns and Definite Articles2. Underspecification of the D-Position3. The Acquisition of Pronominal Anaphora in Spanish and DutchConclusionsReferencesAppendices