Pragmatic children
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Anja Müller
Abstract
Our study investigated the abilities of 6-year-old German-speaking children to interpret sentences with and without the focus particle nur (only). We report two experiments: In Experiment 1 the study by Paterson et al. (2003) on English was replicated in German. We found that German-speaking children do not interpret only-sentences target-like. This supports Paterson et al. that children ignore information that is not verbally given. The second experiment investigated children’s pragmatic ability to judge underinformative sentences. The results indicate that children take into account information that is showed on a picture, but not verbally introduced. We argue that children’s performance in Experiment 1 is not caused by an insufficient pragmatic knowledge but rather to its methodological set up.
Abstract
Our study investigated the abilities of 6-year-old German-speaking children to interpret sentences with and without the focus particle nur (only). We report two experiments: In Experiment 1 the study by Paterson et al. (2003) on English was replicated in German. We found that German-speaking children do not interpret only-sentences target-like. This supports Paterson et al. that children ignore information that is not verbally given. The second experiment investigated children’s pragmatic ability to judge underinformative sentences. The results indicate that children take into account information that is showed on a picture, but not verbally introduced. We argue that children’s performance in Experiment 1 is not caused by an insufficient pragmatic knowledge but rather to its methodological set up.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction 1
- The development of conversational competence in children with Specific Language Impairment 19
- The impact of literal meaning on what-is-said 43
- Discourse under control in ambiguous sentences 63
- Pragmatic children 79
- Adult response uniformity distinguishes semantics from pragmatics 101
- Numerals and scalar implicatures 129
- Meaning in the objects 151
- Blocking modal enrichment ( tatsächlich ) 177
- The hepatitis called … 199
- The role of QUD and focus on the scalar implicature of most 221
- Index 239
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction 1
- The development of conversational competence in children with Specific Language Impairment 19
- The impact of literal meaning on what-is-said 43
- Discourse under control in ambiguous sentences 63
- Pragmatic children 79
- Adult response uniformity distinguishes semantics from pragmatics 101
- Numerals and scalar implicatures 129
- Meaning in the objects 151
- Blocking modal enrichment ( tatsächlich ) 177
- The hepatitis called … 199
- The role of QUD and focus on the scalar implicature of most 221
- Index 239
