Binding Principles in the Grammars of Young Children

Principle C of the binding theory says that names must be free in all domains. It entails that a pronoun may not c-command its referent (Reinhart, 1976). C. Chomsky (1969) was probably the first to investigate this principle in acquisition. With two exceptions, the children in her study over the age of 6 knew that he could not refer to Pluto in sentence (1), whereas 77% of her 5-year-olds allowed coreference in such sentences, in violation of Principle C.