Correct Response: B. Many languages mark the gender of inanimate objects. This is called grammatical gender and has nothing to do with natural gender, as evidenced by the fact that an object may be considered masculine in one language and feminine in another. In languages that feature grammatical gender, gender markers play an important role in signaling grammatical relationships between words in a sentence. Thus, pronouns must match the grammatical gender of their antecedent. In the scenario, the student's first language most likely identifies a pencil as a masculine object, explaining why the student responds with "he" instead of "it." A is incorrect because the scenario does not suggest that the student is unsure if the object is animate (alive) or inanimate (not alive). C is incorrect because the student's response clearly demonstrates that the student does understand the word pencil, since the student replies that it is on the student's desk. D is incorrect because the dialogue does not provide evidence that the student is overgeneralizing rules related to using a pronoun in place of a noun phrase.
