Between direct and indirect speech: The acquisition of pronouns in reported speech

Reporting the speech of others is a fundamental part of human communication. Most languages, such as Dutch, distinguish between two types of speech reports: direct speech (Anna said: “I am happy”) and indirect speech (Anna said that she was happy). In my dissertation, I investigate how and when children are able to distinguish direct from indirect speech. I have developed a tablet app, in which children have to decide which animal gets the football on the basis of spoken sentences such as “Elephant said that I get the football”. The results show that Dutch children understand indirect speech at the age of four, while they still struggle with the interpretation of direct speech at the age of eleven. This is surprising because children’s books contain a lot of direct speech. To solve this puzzle, we created an interactive children’s book on a tablet. It turns out that from the age of six, children can understand direct speech correctly when it is presented in the context of a story. We conclude that children have a less strict direct–indirect distinction than adults and are more dependent on the context.