Subject Omission and Discourse Anchorage in Early Swedish Child Language

This paper addresses the question whether a connection exists between subject omission and discourse anchorage in early Swedish child language. By analysing data from three Swedish children, I investigate whether previous mentioning in the discourse affects the occurrence of subject omission. A Danish study by Hamann & Plunkett (1998) reported that no connection between subject omissions and discourse anchorage could be established for Danish. My study partly contradicts their results: in finite utterances, the majority of the omissions found were anchored to the discourse. Furthermore, the results indicate that the development of a Theory of Mind might be of importance for the decrease of subject omission in child language