Benveniste's theory on personhood and its unfolding in child enunciation

The purposes of this study are to discuss (Benveniste´s theory 1988,1989) as regards the person category in language and to examine its implications in child enunciation. To this end, Benveniste´s approach to enunciation will be revisited with the purpose of highlighting some issues related to the theory of personhood. After that, we will analyze illustrative data in order to discuss the emergence and functioning of person indices in child speech. The corpus consists of data drawn from Ferreira Júnior´s previous research (2009) involving three children engaged in spontaneous interaction with their respective mothers. The results indicate that there are enunciative mechanisms underlying child speech that comprise modes of appropriation of the language system and modes of subject's engagement in discourse.

Child enunciation; Benveniste; person category; subjective anchoring