Forty-two English-speaking children aged 3.3 to 7.0 were asked to act out instructions of the type 'There is clay on the table, give it to me', where the pronoun 'it' occurs in object position and refers to a collective noun, or to a count noun, or to a noun ('chocolate') which can be either. They were also asked to describe actions performed by the experimenter and to repeat the experimenter's instructions. A hierarchical pattern of behavior emerged and unexpected errors were noted. The results do not appear to be interpretable from the purely linguistic point of view; it is argued that analogous observations have been made in problem-solving tasks and that therefore cognitive development in general must play an important part.