The communicative infant from 0-18 months
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Gemma Stephens
Abstract
This chapter reviews pragmatic development in the first two years of life. We first concentrate on the period from birth to nine months, during which time communication is essentially dyadic in nature: it is not ‘about’ some third entity but rather involves the infant and caregiver responding to each other (including turn taking, emotional attunement, imitation, and responsiveness to eye contact, speech and temporal contingency). We next examine the period after nine months of age when infants begin to enter into triadic communication. During this period, the infant and caregiver communicate about or jointly attend to things that are external to the dyad, and infant abilities extend to reading intentions, initiating and responding to joint attention, and appealing to common ground. We argue that a better understanding of this period is essential to providing a full picture of the nature of human communication.
Abstract
This chapter reviews pragmatic development in the first two years of life. We first concentrate on the period from birth to nine months, during which time communication is essentially dyadic in nature: it is not ‘about’ some third entity but rather involves the infant and caregiver responding to each other (including turn taking, emotional attunement, imitation, and responsiveness to eye contact, speech and temporal contingency). We next examine the period after nine months of age when infants begin to enter into triadic communication. During this period, the infant and caregiver communicate about or jointly attend to things that are external to the dyad, and infant abilities extend to reading intentions, initiating and responding to joint attention, and appealing to common ground. We argue that a better understanding of this period is essential to providing a full picture of the nature of human communication.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The communicative infant from 0-18 months 13
- The development of speech acts 37
- Turn-taking 53
- Conversation Analysis and pragmatic development 71
- Ontogenetic Constraints on Grice’s Theory of Communication 87
- Two Pragmatic Principles in Language Use and Acquisition 105
- Learning conventions and conventionality through conversation 121
- The pragmatics of word learning 139
- The production and comprehension of referring expressions 161
- Scalar Implicature 183
- Children’s pragmatic use of prosodic prominence 199
- The Pragmatic Development of Humor 219
- “The elevator’s buttocks” 239
- Irony production and comprehension 261
- Narrative Development across Cultural Contexts 279
- Children’s understanding of linguistic expressions of certainty and evidentiality 295
- Crosslinguistic and crosscultural approaches to pragmatic development 317
- Atypical pragmatic development 343
- Assessing pragmatic language functioning in young children 363
- Developmental pragmatics 387
- Index 393
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The communicative infant from 0-18 months 13
- The development of speech acts 37
- Turn-taking 53
- Conversation Analysis and pragmatic development 71
- Ontogenetic Constraints on Grice’s Theory of Communication 87
- Two Pragmatic Principles in Language Use and Acquisition 105
- Learning conventions and conventionality through conversation 121
- The pragmatics of word learning 139
- The production and comprehension of referring expressions 161
- Scalar Implicature 183
- Children’s pragmatic use of prosodic prominence 199
- The Pragmatic Development of Humor 219
- “The elevator’s buttocks” 239
- Irony production and comprehension 261
- Narrative Development across Cultural Contexts 279
- Children’s understanding of linguistic expressions of certainty and evidentiality 295
- Crosslinguistic and crosscultural approaches to pragmatic development 317
- Atypical pragmatic development 343
- Assessing pragmatic language functioning in young children 363
- Developmental pragmatics 387
- Index 393
